Does anyone know why pigeons in the South Cheshire have suddenly become suicidal? I managed to drive over one this morning and then this evening 3 of them flew into my car windscreen or side windows in 3 separate incidents while driving to and from the gym. For the record I was driving my wife’s Mini Clubman both times which I don’t normally do so perhaps they were expressing their displeasure at my being behind the wheel rather than her. That’s not all. At the weekend a really fat pigeon was sat on the wall of my brick barbecue in the back garden and then for no apparent reason just fell off onto the ground whereupon it stumbled around for a bit in a daze and then flew off in a haphazard way towards the woods at the back.
Theories please.
This pigeon was unavailable for comment, but clearly distressed by your news…..
Ha ha ha
Birds fall from the window ledge above mine
Then they flap their wings at the last second
You see, birds fall from the window ledge above mine
Then they flap their wings at the last second
I can see their dead weight
Just dropping like stones
Or small loaves of bread
Past my window all the time
But unless I get up
Walk across the room
And peer down below
I don’t see their last-second curves
Toward a horizontal flight
All these birds just falling from the ledge like stones
Now due to a construct in my mind
That makes their falling and their flight
Symbolic of my entire existence
It becomes important for me
To get up and see
Their last-second curves toward flight
It’s almost as if my life would fall
Unless I see their ascent.
Cake – Mr Mastodon Farm
I was quite impressed at your work then Chiz til the acknowledgment.
But when it comes to these tendencies better ask the Lieutenant.
Memorably described by Bob Stanley as “The brownest record ever made”
@chiz
Hats off for that.
Possibly the wheat they have ingested has been riddled with ergot fungus and therefore they have been hallucinating and are not in control of their Columbidae proclivities.
The Ergot Fungus were on Vertigo, weren’t they? I well remember their mammoth concept album Columbidae Proclivities. Great days mate.
One of Storm Thorgerson’s best album covers if I recall.
Were Suicidal Pigeons on Vertigo too or did they just have vertigo?
Aren’t they just this year’s new crop of flying rats who just don’t dodge stuff properly yet? Darwin and all that.
They are knackered, they’ve spent every daylight hour for the last 6 weeks or so finding food for their young and feeding them.
They are too bloody fat! Simples.
Clean up the mess in your garden. Stop spoiling them with bread and seed. They are wild creatures perfectly capable of looking after themselves.
Pigeons navigate by ‘the starcluster algorithm’, a much studied, but little understood mechanism involving magnetic fields and The Readers Digest AA Book of the Road. Extensive research carried out at The Institute for Avian Advancement in Aarhus, Denmark, has found that pigeon navigation is extremely susceptible to radio wave interference, both from high powered telescopes, and more conventional sources. A recent study illustrated how pigeons can become completely disoriented by an accidental encounter with the music of Ed Sheeran.
Working under the assumption that a disorientated pigeon is a depressed pigeon, I am guessing that we need look no further than a decision made last month by the astronomers of Jodrell Bank, to switch from 6 Music to Radio 2’s Steve Wright in the afternoon, while they busy themselves tuning their telescopes.
I read that as “The Readers Digest AA Book of the Dead”, which would be much more interesting. Could you please spend a few months writing said book so I could half heartedly flick through it in Waterstones one lunchtime?
Turn off at the Third Bardo on the left.
PS. “Aarhus” – hur.
PPS. “Jodrell Bank” – hurr.
I see a large format, slender tome, Ahh_Bisto’s artful black and white photography illustrating a compendium of pigeon suicides.
Martin! I was thinking of you for the Pop crossover thread. Have you ever produced anyone irredeemably shite?
Pigeons produce irredeemable shite. Just ask Horatio Nelson.
I was all set to produce The Pigeon Detectives but they couldn’t find the studio.
Was that back in 2009? I think I ran them over on the Kirkstall Road.
Your knighthood (“services to music”) is in the post.
I was actually aiming for Scouting for Girls but they managed to jump over a retaining wall before I could reach them.