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I'm John Baxter with the author and the producer Stephen Moss, his new book,

Ten Birds that Change the World. We turn to the Humble Pigeon, everywhere in New York.

In fact, they're everywhere in Connecticut and everywhere in New England in some form because they've taken very well to America. They urbanize as well as

survive in rural America. But you make a very excellent case that pigeons have a skill set

that has been fundamental to success, communication, saving people's

lives. Good heavens. The pigeon has a skill that is, to my knowledge, it doesn't seem to

fit any other bird. It always must go home through rain and storm. It's the ultimate mailman.

That's right.

It's the great communicator.

And I mean, the pigeons are very, very paradoxical bird, because this is the feral pigeon, as we call it, or the, you know, we call them the London pigeon or the, you know, maybe you call it the New York pigeon, you know, but this is, they

are wild birds in a sense, but they descend from wild birds which were captured and domesticated

and then have escaped and gone feral. So they're not a bird that, for example, birders play a lot of

attention to. We don't like pigeons very much, a lot of birders. They, you know, they don't put them on their lists. And yet, this bird, as you say, although it was originally domesticated for food, and possibly the use of its feathers and things, but mainly food, it was soon discovered that they have this extraordinary skill which of course a lot of birds

...