16: Band Tailed Pigeon
Cooooo,
I write to you from Arapahoe, Ute, and Cheyenne land. I am interested in learning about the different animals that live in the place where I was born. I want to mention that biological classification as taught by western science has its roots in racism, sexism, and transphobia – here’s a good explainer about why.
Pigeons don’t get enough respect, except in the room at Bletchley Park called Pigeons at War (one of my all time favo(u)rite museum exhibits). Today’s bird, the Band Tailed Pigeon (Patagioenas fasciata), is the closest living relative to the tragically extinct Passenger Pigeon. They were also heavily hunted until after the winter of 1912 when public outcry – heightened by the recent loss of the Passengers – led to the Band-Taileds receiving federal protection. Their population rebounded and today they can once again be hunted in Colorado.
When I was doing some research about this bird, I came upon an article from 1946 called “Nesting of the Band-Tailed Pigeon in Colorado”. While I did learn about the bird nesting (usually July and August in the mid-20th century), the most delightful thing I learned was the term “cherry damage season”, which is apparently what they called the time from late June to about July 20 at that time – maybe due to heat damage to the cherry crop as that is the hottest time of the year? I have no idea because the only reference on the entire internet that Google can find to this term is found in that article. I love reading old journal articles so I hope you enjoy the things I find in them too.
Band-tailed pigeons in the US and Canada are split into two populations – a much larger one that occupies the Pacific Coast including into British Columbia, and an interior population of less than 25,000 birds who live in the Four Corners states. Flocks are often nomadic (though some have set up permanent homes in suburbs along the Pacific, presumably where the foraging is good), traveling for food sources. When nesting, they like to live among the ponderosa pines that dominate the mountainous terrain of a certain elevation throughout the Four Corners. They do not stay for the winter, instead journeying south to Mexico where they stay mainly in the mountains of the Sierra Madre. The beautiful birds have a slightly purple tinge to their feathers and are just a bit larger than the pigeons you commonly see in cities.