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

Ten Birds that changed 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 but because this is the feral pigeons we

call it or the you know we call them the London pigeon or

the you know other maybe you call it the New York pigeon you know but this is they are

wild birds in a sense that they descend from our 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 attention to. We don't like pigeons very much a lot of

burdens. 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 migrate a lot of birds can find their way to a

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