I'm John Baxter 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 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 a sense that 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 pay a lot of attention to we don't like pigeons very much a lot of burders they you know

they don't put them on their lists and 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 place

the other side of the world and back home to the area where they were born but pigeons have

been bred through time to be exceptionally good at this and they are the great communicators yes the

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