WINTER’S WILDLIFE Boom time for humble pigeon
Hardly a minute passes without woodpigeons making their presence known in urban neighbourhoods or deep in the countryside. Whether cooing from treetops or foraging on the ground, these subtly beautiful birds are an ever-present feature of our daily lives.
The woodpigeon’s journey from scarce inhabitant of deciduous woodlands to the fourth most recorded species in last winter’s RSPB’S Big Garden Birdwatch has been shaped by remarkable adaptations.
Huge steps in modern agricultural practices have seen woodpigeons take advantage of autumn sown crops, particularly oilseed rape, allowing them to feast on greenery and boost their survival throughout the winter.
Another woodpigeon strategy is to nest most months of the year, thus providing a conveyor belt of squabs throughout the year when most other birds are primed to breed only in spring. Little wonder the population has more than doubled from 2.3 million to 5.2 million since the turn of the millennium.
While seeing woodpigeons loafing at street level is an everyday event, each autumn many perform one of the most spectacular bird migrations.
Cranes, storks and pink-footed geese are hailed for their dramatic autumn flights across the skies of Europe, yet the humble woodpigeon makes equally impressive flights from Scandinavia, the Low Countries and Britain down into the Iberian peninsula.
Raggle-taggle migrating woodpigeon flocks lack the artistic grace of V-shaped skeins of geese but for sheer numbers, they are on another level.
Trektellen.org – the largest public database for bird migration sightings – has been reporting incredible woodpigeon counts in Western Europe these past few weeks. The largest British numbers were 66,000 birds over Calne in Wiltshire, 54,000 in Gwent and 51,800 at Ogston Reservoir in Derbyshire.
However, these tallies pale into comparison with the 800,000 birds seen flying over the French stretch of the Rhine Valley at Marlenberg on a single day in late October.
One likely reason for the increase in woodpigeons moving south is that the birds feed on the huge numbers of fallen acorns in Spain’s vast oak forests.
Migration takes them from the UK to the Iberian peninsula