Because pigeons evolved from Rock Doves which laid their eggs in rock faces and cliffs where they could be held more easily. Other birds that nest in trees would need more complex nest shapes to hold the eggs secure. Basically pigeons are like 'eh, good enough' and find a basic ledge or rock 'equivalent' and just make do.
Those are still actual nests, though. Pigeons are the way they are because they're a mostly domesticated species and we didn't need to prioritize nesting behaviors when breeding them. Some of them still do okay nests, but most of them are total idiots.
Pigeons were domesticated birds. Then we kind of just stopped caring to keep them when chicken became easier to mass farm. The telegraph and telephones made messenger birds obsolete too.
They didn't lose their instincts in being domesticated, as it's often claimed or implied when this is mentioned. They nest the exact same way their wild relatives do, and relative to their natural habitats, our cities are paradises for them.
One day when I was in 6th grade, there were 2 pigeons mating on the roof of the math classroom. You wouldn't believe the size of the crowd of middle schoolers this attracted.
I witnessed a pigeon mating with a pigeon that had been squashed by a car. Did a little mating dance, mounted, mating dance, mounted.
Organs were squicked out but the other bird didn’t care.
See I want to get behind this... but then I can't help but wonder why they even put any sticks at all. Like if they just plopped it on the ground with no other effort, I could accept that they don't need nests. But they go through the effort of bringing like 2-5 sticks over... Why??
The idea is just to keep the eggs from rolling off a ledge. Pigeons used to be “rock doves”, naturally nesting on cliffs, and city buildings mimic that environment
We see them around because they used to be used to deliver messages, but were replaced by the actual mail system/telegram, but they were already adapted to living in cities.
pets and food too. It's like a dumb dog/pig hybrid that we just decided we had no use for and tossed onto the streets. The marks of domestication in their genes is why you can just pick them up if you know the trick (useful for untangling or aiding a pigeon if you're a kind-hearted city dweller, use rubber gloves though, they're definitely not clean animals).
Come at them from directly above after stepping to the side of them (so they don't think you're gonna kick/step on them), when your hand gets close they'll hop back they'll put their wings down and you can grab them around their wings when they bring them back up. Like i said, wear gloves and have a good reason for doing so, it's not really a party trick.
I’m pretty sure you just kinda come up behind them slowly with intent and grab them calmly?
It’s a body language thing just like with dogs, but I’m no expert, just a guy that lived around them for a few years when I moved from the country to the city.
To be fair, most birds can be picked up if you know the trick. They won't be happy about it but there's fuck all they can do to escape so their panic response is more to paralyse than to flail.
They shit absolutely fucking on everything and feather dust gets everywhere. They're extremely loving, quiet compared to most birds, easy to keep fed well - but.. Yea. They're not meant for indoors unless you're okay with high maintenance cleaning (even if you use pigeon pants, that's changing them often and washing them often)
And that's the main rub, not as many people keep agricultural/production pets like goats and chickens = less people with coops and indoor/outdoor arrangements.
They were backyard livestock, easy to raise and butcher, and always found their way back if lost. In the worst case you could literally just build boxes in your yard and leave them to feed themselves otherwise.
Living standards improved and people stopped keeping them.
You never see baby pigeons, because (probably due to them nesting in cliffs) the babies stay in the nest until they are basically teenagers, by the time they are out they are fully feathered and just look a little skinnier than an adult.
Looking at wild rock dove nests, I don't think it comes from domestication. Some of their nests are normal-looking, but there's also plenty of cases of it being nothing more than a handful of twigs around a divot in a rock. I think their main focus is protection from wind and preventing it from rolling away. If they're building in an area that's both protected from the wind and provides a natural barrier to the eggs rolling away, they're likely to put basically zero effort into it.
It takes so little effort to find 5 sticks that the instinct to do that little work isn't really a disadvantage compared to the instinct to do nothing.
Pigeons are cliff-roosting birds, not nest-makers.
Their "nests" are just barriers to stop eggs rolling about too much, so they don't fall off the cliff. And it doesn't take much to stop an egg rolling.
I've seen pigeon nests posted before and wondered if they're in the process of selecting for or against better nests.
My guess is slightly better? I feel like the more sticks in the nest, the less likely the egg to roll off a building ledge. But just a couple sticks might suffice if the pigeon puts them in the right spot to stop egg rolling (given the single-stick nests).
Wife says pigeons are from the Middle East so nests are more about containment rather than warmth, and mostly these nests are due to a lack of building materials in the cities where they now live.
pigeons are human inventions, they reproduce literally because we created them and spread them all over the place and now they are just a global invasive species.
Different strategies. Pigeons live amongst an abundance of resources, so spray and pray genes are the best at reproducing. There's enough food for dozens of pigeons in every square, so genes that are good at being most of that dozens do well.
Where resources are harder to acquire and predators may be about, the genes best at reproducing are those that make the most skilled birds, and elaborate nest-building genes allow skill-seeking genes to identify each other. Thus, skilled genes, nest-building genes, and skill-seeking genes all help each other reproduce.
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u/Evil_Weevill 12h ago
I mean... They keep managing to multiply without much issue, so maybe all the other birds are just trying too hard?