W is for Woodpigeon

WOODPIGEON (COLUMBA PALUMBUS)

There is no such thing as ‘just a pigeon’. It amazes me that people don’t realise the difference between the feral, city pigeon (domesticated descendants of rock doves* Columba livia originally kept for food), and the fully wild wood pigeon Columba palumbus.  ‘Woodies’ can be discerned by their salmon-pink breast  and white neck clasp, and wing patches. Like feral pigeons, they have an iridescent flash on their their neck, glinting metallic green and purple. The rest of their body is a pastel blue- grey.

Woodpigeons are also larger than feral pigeons (around 50% heavier¹), one of our biggest garden birds. They’re often thought of as fat and can look quite comical strutting with their tiny legs. One of my friends likens them to the portly figure of Winston Churchill. In truth though, their breast is mainly powerful flight muscle, not flab. 

But they are certainly big eaters. Wood pigeons are mainly herbivorous, grazing on plants and shoots and gulping down seeds, berries, buds and leaves along with the occasional insect, worm or snail^2,3.  A wide gape allows them to swallow acorns whole and despite their size, they are capable of quite acrobatic feats to feed on fruiting branches.
Plant foods are difficult to digest, so they eat a lot. This makes them a serious pest as winter flocks descend in their hundreds on fields of cereals and vegetables, and are understandably shot to control their numbers. One woodpigeon was found with its crop and stomach full of 1020 grains of corn, whilst another had swallowed 198 beans⁴.  They’re also begrudged in gardens for `taking food meant for smaller birds. This can be averted by caging the feed or using smaller seed mixes⁵. I personally welcome woodies in the garden over the more piggish feral pigeons.

The woodpigeon was proclaimed Britain’s commonest garden bird in 2005⁶. Once limited to rural woods and fields, their numbers have soared due to changing practices on the farms they pilfer. Switching from spring to autumn sowing of cereals and increased growing of oilseed rape provide extensive winter food sources which help the pigeons survive the leaner times. It is from these farms that many have spilled into suburban and urban areas⁵. They even outnumber their feral cousins in London gardens⁷.

But winter survival is only half the story. Woodpigeons can also breed all year round provided there is enough food available, thanks to a trick up their sleeve, or rather down their throat.

Most birds feed their young on insects to provide the protein they need to grow, restricting their breeding season to the warmer spring and summer months. Pigeons have curbed this by producing a protein-rich milk. Yes, milk!  Of course this ‘pigeon milk’ does not come from teats but from a cell lining of the crop. More winter food means woodpigeons can raise more broods later.

Woodpigeons mate for life, and courting males go to great effort to earn their mates. Their haughty cooing has a drowsy quality that accentuates the humid late summer. They also perform display flights, flapping vertically into the air before gliding down in a wide arc. Any interested female is greeted with a display of tilting,tail-fanning and cooing . Though she will often spurn his advances, he follows her persistently. If they suit, they become hopeless romantics, cuddling up together, preening and even ‘kissing’ by locking beaks and exchanging food. 

Woodpigeon courting (Video by vriesap) and song (Recording by Ashley Fisher). 

The couple builds a messy platform of sticks in the branches of a tree. Their plain white eggs can sometimes be seen from below. The young pigeons, called squabs have faces only a mother could love with bulging eyes, a roman nose and straggly down, growing into juveniles which lack the white markings of the adults.

Male woodpigeons are defensive of their breeding territories and mates, getting into fights by smacking each other with their wings. These tussles look silly, but the blows are powerful. Woodpigeons also clap their wings together over their backs when fleeing a predator, sounding a clattering alarm signal. Buzzards Buteo buteo, female sparrowhawks  Accipiter nisus, foxes Vulpes vulpes and humans all enjoy a meaty woodpigeon.

All too often we hear of species declining due to human land use. The woodpigeon provides a brilliant example of the opposite, even if it is at our expense. Whether viewed as a pest or handsome garden visitor, even the humble woodpigeon has a remarkable life. It is far from “just a pigeon”.

* There's no real difference between 'pigeons' and 'doves'. The sacred white dove symbol of christianity is simply a colour form of domestic pigeon. 

References

1- R.A. Robinson. (2005) BTO BirdFacts: profiles of birds occurring in Britain & Ireland: Woodpigeon Columba palumbus   [Linnaeus, 1758]. (BTO Research Report 407). BTO, Thetford. Available from:  http://blx1.bto.org/birdfacts/results/bob6700.htm

2- Peter Holden and Tim Cleeves. (2010) RSPB Handbook of British Birds (Third Edition). London, A&C Black.

3- Peter Holden and J.T.R. Sharrock. (1988) The RSPB Book of British Birds. London, Papermac.

4- Mark Cocker and Richard Mabey. (2005) Birds Britannica. London, Chatto and Windus.

5- BTO (No date) A BTO Garden BirdWatch factsheet: Woodpigeon. Available from: http://www.bto.org/sites/default/files/u23/downloads/pdfs/factsheet_woodp.pdf

6- BBC News. (2004) Wood pigeon 'most common UK bird'. Available from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4646685.stm

7- BBC News. (2008) Wood pigeons 'flocking to towns'. Available from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7166536.stm

V is for Vanellus

LAPWING (VANELLUS VANELLUS)

Lapwings Vanellus vanellus  are beautiful birds, with a stately figure and sweet rounded face topped off with a whisp of a headcrest. They appear pied, but to call them black and white would be an understatement, since their wings iridesce with green, purple and bronze. A flock of lapwings flashing dark and light as they twist and turn is a sight to behold, and one of my favourite childhood memories was watching these flocks descend on fields in my hometown.

The lapwing’s flight, with sweeping strokes of its distinctive broad wings earned it both its scientific name, meaning a ‘a waving fan’¹ and the common name, from the Old English ‘Hleapewince’ to leap with a waver². Their aerial prowess peaks in spring when males show off in tumbling display flights whilst giving their unusual  call, giving it it’s other common name the ‘Peewit’ (Though I’d personally translate it as ‘peao-wee’).

Lapwings are a familiar site in the British countryside, commonly encountered in open areas from moors and marshes to sheep pasture and ploughed fields.  Here they indulge their habit of plucking invertebrates off the ground, feeding in a teetering motion.

 It seems that lapwings are faring well in Britain, but unfortunately this is not the case. The numbers of adult birds, which live for over ten years, are masking a poor breeding success.

Breeding lapwings need open areas with short vegetation where they can dig a nest scrape and look out for predators, alongside insect-rich areas nearby for the chicks to feed. Naturally, lapwings nest in marshy habitats, but with the take-over of agriculture spring-sown cereal fields became choice habitat, especially in mixed farms with food-rich pastureland nearby. 

In the past, the lapwing had made a success in Britain’s agricultural landscape, but as goes the story for many farmland birds, increased agricultural efficiency and changes in land use have not been in their favour. From around the 1960’s, drainage of wet fields, decreases in mixed farming, ‘improvements’ of pastureland reducing their insect life, and switching from spring to autumn sowing have contributed to a shocking 50% decline in breeding lapwings since 1985³. It is now an RSPB red status species.

Lapwing conservation presents special problems since they don’t always benefit from measures for other farmland birds. For example, hedgerows which provide food and shelter for songbirds also act as highways for lapwing nest predators such as foxes and stoats.  Special ‘lapwing plots’ in cropped fields also benefit  smaller birds⁴.

Lapwings begin breeding in March. The male makes several scrapes lined with grass or leaves and the female chooses where to lay her eggs.  The eggs are a mottled brown, concealing them against the ground and the downy, bobble-headed chicks are equally well camouflaged. Both parents care for the eggs and chicks and are very defensive of the nest. They will give aerial chase to any corvid or raptor that gets too close, and will distract ground predators by loudly calling, fluttering and even feigning injury away from the nest. This has earned the lapwing a deceitful reputation, famously observed by Chaucer who refers to the “false lapwynge, ful of treacherye” in his poem ‘The Assembly of Fowls’, and is established in their collective noun, a deceit of lapwing.

Whilst the adults go on the defensive, the chicks respond to threat by lying low and making like a pebble. If they are discovered, they can run away just minutes after hatching, with the charming side effect of scampering off still stuck with eggshell ². Shakespeare draws on this behaviour in Hamlet, when Horatio refers to young Osric getting ideas above his station “The lapwing runs with shell on his head”. These curiously astute observations of rare behaviour stem from the past practice of harvesting lapwing eggs².

After breeding, lapwings may move about depending on the weather. Small flocks arrive from Northern Europe in June swelling numbers through to winter, whilst British breeders may fly as far south as Spain in harsh winters ^3,5.

History has shown that the fate of the lapwing is interlinked with that of the British countryside. It would be a great shame to lose this culturally and visually enigmatic bird from our landscape. Hopes lie with our farmers and agrienvironmentalists to keep the peewits calling evermore.

References

1- R.A. Robinson. (2005) BTO BirdFacts: profiles of birds occurring in Britain & Ireland: Lapwing Vanellus vanellus   [Linnaeus, 1758]. (BTO Research Report 407). BTO, Thetford. Available from: http://blx1.bto.org/birdfacts/results/bob4930.htm

2- Fransesca Greenoak. (1979) All the Birds of the Air. A. Brown and Sons.

3- Peter Holden and Tim Cleeves. (2010) RSPB Handbook of British Birds (Third Edition). London, A&C Black.

4- D. Chamberlain, S. Gough, G. Anderson, M. Macdonald, P. Grice and J.Vickery.(2009)Bird use of cultivated fallow 'Lapwing plots' within English agrienvironment schemes. Bird Study 56, 289-297.Summary available from: http://www.bto.org/sites/default/files/u31/downloads/details/lapwingsinplots.pdf

5- Peter Holden and J.T.R. Sharrock. (1988) The RSPB Book of British Birds. London, Papermac.