Superdove
How the Pigeon Took Manhattan ... And the World
One
The Pigeon's Progress
I don't know what it is about fecundity that so appalls. I suppose it is the teeming evidence that birth and growth, which we value, are ubiquitous and blind, that life itself is so astonishingly cheap, that nature is as careless as it is bountiful, and that with extravagance goes a crushing waste that will one day include our own cheap lives.
Annie Dillard
I first really noticed pigeons when I traveled in Europe after college. I sat in the Piazza San Marco in Venice, where it was impossible not to notice them. They gathered in a gray, shuddering mass, an ocean of bodies at once marvelous and disgusting. Children, I noticed, tended to see what was marvelous, to step into that vibrating pool of pigeons and watch the chaos as the birds parted around them. Adults were more on the side of disgust; they edged away from the birds and thought of crowds and filth and disease. But in spite of its sanitary implications, the sight of that throng of pigeons was certainly arresting, a muddled swarm o ... read full excerpt from Superdove ebook
