The Rock Pigeon is the city bird — the strutting, head-bobbing resident of Michigan's downtowns, bridges, barns, and grain elevators. The classic bird is gray with two black wing bars and an iridescent neck, but centuries of domestication show in flocks that range from white to rusty red to checkered.
Pigeons were brought to North America by European colonists in the 1600s, and every feral flock descends from domestic birds. Their homing ability is legendary — they navigate by the sun, magnetic fields, smell, and even memorized landmarks, which made them war heroes as message carriers and favorites of Darwin as study subjects.
Seeds and grain by preference, plus whatever a city offers — dropped fries included. In farm country they glean waste grain around elevators and feedlots.
No — they're descendants of domesticated birds brought from Europe in the 1600s, originally native to Old World cliffs. Buildings and bridges are simply modern cliffs to them.
Centuries of selective breeding produced dozens of plumage types, and feral flocks still carry those genes. The gray "blue-bar" pattern is the ancestral wild type.
Within limits, yes — homing pigeons released hundreds of miles away routinely return. They combine a sun compass, magnetic sensing, smell, and landmark memory; researchers still debate the full recipe.
No — this is a permanent resident here, recorded in all twelve months. Numbers stay fairly steady from month to month. What changes through the year is behavior rather than presence: conspicuous song and display in spring, quieter foraging the rest of the year.
Because they stay in the nest until they are nearly adult size — about a month, far longer than most birds — and nests are tucked under bridges, ledges, and building overhangs. A 'young' pigeon on the street is usually already fledged, told by its dark eye and lack of neck iridescence.
A kit, when they are flying together — a term from pigeon keeping that describes a flock wheeling as one unit. On the ground, a feeding group is just a flock.
Other birds you might be looking at instead.
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