Fireweed*

By Sandra Gibson
Photograph by Geoff Edwards

Pigeon Street

October 2012

Eating songbirds is forbidden in Britain, I’m glad to say, but this doesn’t include pigeons. Regarded as the avian equivalent of vermin, pigeons do not, generally speaking, enjoy hospitality in our urban environment. There are spikes to prevent them from landing on window sills, wire to prevent them pootling about in guttering and notices urging you not to feed them. All in the interests of health and safety.

Not theirs.

Yet they do have their champions, though the ordinary pigeon cannot be called a war hero. That’s the homing pigeon, specially bred for outwitting Johnny Foreigner in two world wars. But old ladies have been served ASBOs for encouraging them with crumbs; children joyfully chase them to see them take off in an upward surge of feathered energy; TV streets have been named after them. Every day I watch the pigeons who have squatted in an empty house across the road. A fire damaged property, this Victorian house has broken windows on the first floor and attic floor. For three years the pigeons have hopped over the jagged glass in the bay window, past the smoke-damaged table lamp and into the shadowy rooms. They bring life to dereliction.

Because they are not song birds and because they might interfere with our sandwiches and because they are so numerous, familiarity breeds complacency. Concerned that they are crapping on our statues, we fail to see the beautiful iridescence of their neck feathers or wonder at the amount of draught they produce as they fly en masse overhead. If pigeons were rarer we’d sit all day in a field with binoculars, hoping to see them. And we wouldn’t mind their ridiculous feet.

But as it is, perhaps we prefer Patrick Murphy’s tribute in the form of brightly coloured but immobile pigeons roosting at the Walker Gallery.

To read other Fireweed columns click here

*Also known as Rose Bay Willow Herb, the prolific wild flower called Fireweed, five feet tall with spikes of magenta flowers, cheers the hearts of those whose cityscape has become a bomb site or whose buildings have been cleared by machine. The dormant seeds spring to life after destructive events such as forest or man-made fires, hence the name, Fireweed. This occasional column will celebrate the persistence of wildlife in urban conditions.

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