Among the birds customarily used were ravens, crows, cranes and owls, but only the pigeon with its innate homing instinct could be relied upon to return without fail, particularly when used covertly as a messenger. In the Greco-Roman classical world Aphrodite (Venus) was regarded primarily as the goddess of love to whom pigeon offerings were made in exchange for blessings and favours in such matters, while Demeter (Ceres), another version of the Mother Goddess, sometimes borrowed the dove symbol.Īncient Greek legend tells of the sacred oak grove at the Dodona where the god Zeus (Jupiter) and his dove-priestesses made oracular interpretations based on the flight and behaviour of birds. Worship of the goddess and her bird spread to Crete, where she was depicted with doves on her head, and also to Cyprus where the birds can be seen on Roman coins perching on the temple roof-tops. The archaeological discovery of lifelike pigeon images beside the figurines of the goddess, dating from the Bronze Age (2400-1500 BC) in Sumerian Mesopotamia, confirms these ancient roots. The symbolic bond between them stemmed primarily from the pigeon’s exceptional fecundity, but may have been allied with the curious tenderness of its courtship behaviour. The earliest history of the pigeon dates back to a remote time in antiquity when primitive man worshipped the all-powerful Mother Goddess with whom the bird was inextricably linked. A later account comes from the 1st century Jewish philosopher Philo, who noted, on a visit to Ascalon, that the pigeon had become ‘very bold and impudent’ on the domestic scene due to religious protection. In a poem, describing the bird’s flight as a messenger carrying a love-letter to the poet’s lover, we read that, at home, it drank from his cup, ate from his hand, flew around the house and slept on his lyre. One of the earliest tame pigeons belonged to the Greek poet Anacreon, who lived more than 2000 years ago. Natural HabitatAccounts of the affinity between man and pigeon have been recorded since earliest times even today intriguing examples of the bird’s tameness and adaptability to its domestic life are sometimes highlighted. The bird makes its natural home in the rocky ledges and niches of coastal and inland cliffs, but it has an inborn affinity with man and a tendency to nest in and around his dwellings to the extent that in the first place it probably domesticated itself and man may have done no more than meet its advances halfway. Nor does there seem to be an obvious resemblance between the white dove of peace and the pigeon in a pie, but all these birds are directly descended from the blue rock pigeon ( Columba Livia), which is found in the wild everywhere in the world except at the polar icecaps. It is not immediately obvious that both the Old Testament dove of Noah and the New Testament dove of the Holy Spirit are the ancestors of the dovecote birds of the past and today’s multitude of urban pigeons. In general, ‘dove’ is traditionally reserved for use in the aesthetic contexts of religion, literature and art, and ‘pigeon’ for much more mundane matters, such as sport, fancy breeds and culinary use. Sadly, this current prejudice overlooks many aspects of the bird’s long history and fails to acknowledge the great debt owed to it in the past it is not just any other bird.įeral PigeonsThe complete story of this remarkable bird has been much obscured by the age-long confusion between the terms ‘pigeon’ and ‘dove’, both of which are still used loosely and are interchangeable today.

Today, people are divided into those who love the creatures and those who detest them. In the cities of the world, where most of them now live, they are much in the public eye but are generally regarded as a civic nuisance. It cannot be said that the pigeon is a very popular bird nowadays. Today, the gentler pursuits of pigeon fancying and racing both have a large following in many parts of the world. It has also played a minor role as bait and decoy in the ancient sport of falconry and was massacred by the hundred in the English pigeon-shooting matches of the 19th century. Over the centuries the pigeon has served him as symbol, sacrifice, source of food and, not least, as a messenger, both sacred and secular. No other bird has had such close links with man, nor been useful to him in so many ways. Pigeon Controls for Roofing & Guttering.De-Bird Bird Repellent Reflective Scare Tape.Physical Bird Deterrents & Bird Barriers.Bird Deterrent Bird Spikes - Specialist.

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