Why rescued pigeons and doves  should not be released into the wild. And why baby pigeons in rehab need to be cuddled.
Edited to be more accurate and less confusing
Why should rescued pigeons and doves not be released back into the wild? And why do they need to be handled in the rescues and humans should imprint on them unlike other birds? I'm writing a paper on rescued pigeons and doves if you're wondering XD
ramseyringnecks answered:
First and foremost because they are not wild animals.
They are the children of lost and abandoned domestic pets. Mostly performance breeds like homers, rollers, tumblers, tipplers and sky cutters, with the occasional escaped or abandoned fancy mixed in.
What would your reaction be to a person taking a young dog they found in an alley or parking lot, worming it, bringing it back from emaciation or disease, maybe treating a broken bone or car injury, and then taking it right back and releasing it into the wild once they got it healthy?
Really. List all the reasons. Because I guarantee that all of them except rabies apply to pigeons.
Never seen a healthy stray dog? I can guarantee you that you’ve never seen a healthy stray pigeon either.
The streaked white poo you always see on buildings or sidewalks under pigeon roosts?
Its an indicator of starvation.
Healthy poo is brown, round, and solid with a small white urate.
White poo is pure uric acid, with little to no food matter, whick is why it does the structural damage it does.
The cute poofball pose? They are cold, and most are hunched up in the universal posture of “I don’t feel so good…”
Being malnourished and usually heavily parisitized makes it hard to keep enough muscle mass to thermoregulate.
On mobile, I can’t see the question anymore once I start to answer it, so if I missed anything, I’ll reblog with more detail.
Ok. Looks like I have missed a few things.
So, alluding to dogs again because pigeons have been domesticated AT LEAST as long and as completely as Dogs.
Imagine if, after all of the time Humanity has spent with Dogs, training them to work with us as partners, companions, therapy, and service animals; Society suddenly fell out of love with dogs and abandoned them completely, except for races and shows, where any non feral puppies born that could not be expected to win or produce winners were immediately killed.
That is exactly what happened to pigeons.
Really. Just fifty years.
And dogs, who are still VERY much societally beloved as companions and in rolls of service, need rescues.
Because people refuse to spay and neuter their house pets, and more puppies are born than there are homes for, there is a stray population of unwanted dogs that breed uncontrolled.
And the reason feral dogs don't have NEARLY the population of feral pigeons? SO many people respond SO fast to the sight of a lost, sick puppy or dog!
It's just an automatic knee-jerk reaction for most people to at least network on behalf of a stray dog to get it somewhere safe and either reunite it with its owner, or find it a permanent home.
After all, we KNOW dogs are pets! If a dog is wandering unattended, something must be wrong, and it is automatically assumed to need help, no matter how healthy it looks at first glance.
Now, imagine if NO one EVER did that for ANY stray dog, over a period of 50 years, and now you know why there is such an overwhelming number of feral pigeons.
You may find the occasional purebred in a shelter, but I can pretty much guarantee that was a pet 9 times out of 10, whose owner either died or suffered some misfortune and had no other option. (Mill busts aside.)
Like I said in a previous ask, when animals are bred on purpose, there has to *be* a purpose. There must be a goal AND a plan for EVERY single litter.
If you boil it down, THAT is what separates an Ethical breeder from a Mill.
Ethical breeders have a SPECIFIC goal for a litter and have preparations set up for the rest of the pups.
Space to house them long term, resources set aside for food and medical care, time set aside to train and socialize them, and a fee and screening process set up to make the best possible match between a pup and a family, and a return policy in case things don't work out, in order to ensure that there is the least possible likelihood of any of those puppies winding up abandoned.
Pigeons, because of the smear campaign against them 50 years ago (http://www.audubon.org/…/the-origins-our-misguided-hatred-p…) no longer have the overwhelming public support with which Dogs are almost universally blessed.
Pigeons are either purebred show birds, purebred performers, or feral.
There are SO few pigeons blessed to be house companions.
Humanity has largely forgotten that they ARE domesticated.
There are SO few places even willing to look at them.
Wildlife rehabs are up to their eyes in DOMESTICATED birds that really should be in pet shelters. If pigeons were not constantly mistaken for wild animals, imagine how much funding and resources could be freed up for genuinely native wildlife!
While ADULT feral pigeons can survive release back “into the wild”, babies ALL almost immediately die upon release.
Pigeons are very human like in just HOW socially complex they are. Babies have to be TAUGHT how to pigeon!
Not just where and how to forage, but how to respect the spaces of older flock mates so that they can make and defend their own space with in the flock.
With out that knowledge, which humans are just not equipped to teach, baby pigeons will never be accepted into a flock.
Pigeon flocks are extended families. Strangers are competitors for limited resources and can only join a flock by marrying in.
Alone, they can’t survive. Feral flocks depend on cooperation to eat, drink, gather nest materials, and avoid predation. With no one to watch their back, a single pidge is under constant stress trying to feed itself and keep watch for predators at the same time. It steadily weakens, and dies of disease if it manages not to get eaten first.
Because of this, I make absolutely NO attempt to release any baby pigeons I get through wildlife rehab.
It would literally be dumping a stray puppy back into the alley or on the road side.
They ARE domestic pets. It is a fact.
And they deserve to be treated like it.
So the few shelters there are that accept them make it their life's mission to remind humanity that PIGEONS ARE ABANDONED SKY PUPPIES!
OF COURSE THEY CAN BE GREAT COMPANIONS!
THAT IS WHAT THEY HAVE *ALWAYS* BEEN!
Now, let’s touch on imprinting.
The difference between pigeons and exotic birds isn’t that it’s ok to imprint pigeons, but not exotics.
It’s that pigeons do not NEED to be imprinted in order to be safely tractable.
Parrots are not domesticated.
The tame ones are imprinted. They *have* to think of humans as parents and potential mates, or they will see us as predators and can inflict potentially crippling injuries in self defense.
Pigeons are genuinely domesticated, and have been since the dawn of written history. They are *hatched* already tame and do not have to be stolen and bottle fed to be safe to handle or capable of bonding as a companion to a person. Like puppies, pigeon babies only need to be socialized as they grow up in order to bond easily to people.
I missed what you were actually asking in regards to imprinting!
You asked why baby pigeons in shelters NEED to be handled!
It's because pigeons are intensely social. Babies and hens are VERY touch oriented, to the extent that they suffer touch starvation the way human toddlers do.
Baby Pigeons grow up in a cuddle puddle, constantly snuggled and verbally soothed by both parents until they wean.
They usually don't even leave the flock after weaning. They become part of it, like a village made up of a huge, extended family; Nesting next door to or across the way from their parents and siblings, rather than going off on their own to claim an entirely separate territory.
Mater of fact, young birds ONLY have to leave and start a new flock when the one they hatched in grows too large for local resources to support.
Wild animals in rehab need to be handled as little as possible to avoid imprinting, so that they are not hindered in their survival upon release.
Pigeons are NOT wild animals. They are not even native to anywhere but Turkey and neighboring parts of the middle east.
They are domesticated pets. Imprinting avoidance should not apply to them.
