WINTER’S WILDLIFE Fear for future of wild pigeons
with
Scruffy street pigeons, with their horrible habit of defacing landmarks in big cities, are threatening the very existence of rock doves, one of our most beautiful birds.
Continual cross-breeding means they have contaminated the gene pool of their wild ancestors by producing hybrid young.
Feral pigeons owe their origins to the domestication of the rock dove by early civilisations, when they were used for food and as message carriers. Cyrus the Great used the birds’ homing instincts to keep in contact with his ancient Persian armies.
Over the centuries, pigeon-fanciers have bred increasingly ornate varieties and that’s why the estimated 400 million feral birds around the world sport so many different plumages.
The more domestic pigeons have flown the coop, the greater the threat to their forebears, with their natural shades of dove grey, an iridescent sheen and striking black wing bars.
New research published in the journal British Birds explores the genetic status of our native rock doves and assesses the impact of ongoing hybridisation on their future. The study charts how wild rock doves have become extinct in England and Wales and also undergone a significant reduction in Scotland over the past 100 years.
Fortunately, some areas of Scotland still have populations that show little or no evidence of hybridisation.
A majority of birds in Shetland, Mull, Skye, Tiree and Islay display limited genetic evidence of cross-breeding, while those sampled in the Outer Hebrides have no signs of hybridising.
Yet researchers conclude that it seems inevitable the gene flow between rock doves and their feral counterparts will continue, causing a further reduction in the wild bird’s numbers.
Efforts to reintroduce rock doves in areas where they have become extinct, such as Yorkshire and West Wales, would be unsuccessful without the continual removal of feral pigeons.
“Any such populations would be completely conservation-dependent, which is not a desirable outcome,” say scientists.
“The only hope for expanding the British rock dove population would require a significant decline in the feral pigeon population.”
Wild rock doves have already become extinct in parts of UK