Pigeon steals poppies from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, Australia in order to build a nest beside a stained glass window.
This is two pigeons, pigeons nest in bonded pairs (notice the first one is checked and its mate on the nest is barred). Usually they don’t make nests nearly so big but I guess if you have the materials, go for it.
The nest is so unusually big because the vast majority is a platform to keep the actual nest (just that tiny ring in the corner around the bird sitting in it) cushioned from the anti bird spikes.
This is a work of beautiful defiance.
Using the very thing installed to make just a moment’s rest impossible as structural supports for an immovably stable nursery.
The symbolism achieved by these pigeons is better than some writers can hope for and I love it!
From the nest on the bird repellent spikes to the fact that those spikes are along the stained glass windows of a church, a place associated with sanctuary and compassion. The fact that the nest is made of stolen poppies for remembrance day hits the hardest though. Of the 54 animals to be awarded the Dickin Medal for acts of gallantry during WW2, 32 of them were pigeons. These were messengers who flew through battlefields and across borders, many of whom were killed or severely injured by enemy forces including gunfire and trained falcons. Many of their achievements saved the lives of hundreds of soldiers, and yet now their descendants are faces with anti-bird spikes, shooting and poisoning in an attempt to rid the cities from the rats with wings. I love this picture because it feels like they’re taking back just a little bit of that credit owed to them.
Reblogging for this beautiful addition.
Those aren’t exactly their descendants though. Passenger pigeons are extinct.
The last passenger pigeon died in 1914, so they weren’t used in WWII.
No one said that messenger pigeons were passenger pigeons. Passenger pigeons are a certain breed, common to the Americas, that, yes, went extinct. Messenger pigeons are just regular rock doves/common pigeons that were trained to carry messages.
Moreover, wwi lasted until 1918 so if passenger pigeons went extinct in 1914, they couldn’t have been used in the first world war either, could they?
The fact is, though, that messenger pigeons were used extensively in BOTH wars and we have lots of documentation, photographs and even bird-sized medals to prove it.
Here’sa link to my post where I include a few photos and stories about messenger pigeons.
So, yes, the random pigeon you see on the street or the ones in the photos above could be descended from carriers of war messages. If you want to know how likely it is, you’ll have to ask someone else because that kind of math is not my specialty.
