‘Dinosaur,’ a colossal 16-foot pigeon sculpture, highlights the urban bird’s prehistoric roots. It comes bearing a warning that humans too could go the way of the dinosaurs.
Such great heights: Giant pigeon statue reigns supreme over Manhattan
“Dinosaur,” a colossal 16-foot pigeon sculpture, comes with a warning that humans too could go the way of the dinosaurs.
NEW YORK − There’s a giant pigeon in Manhattan. And it’s making people everywhere understand more about the much-maligned birds and the flightiness of their biggest critics – humans.
The 16-foot pigeon statue is named Dinosaur out of homage to one of its titanic ancestors, the Tyrannosaurus rex. Both are descendants of theropods, two-legged creatures that wreaked havoc in various periods on Earth. The T-Rex for being a colossal predator during the Jurassic period 145 million years ago, and pigeons for being an even more gigantic scourge on modern cities.
Pigeons are particularly iconic in New York City, where they’ve been dubbed, among other things, “rats with wings.” Such phrases were coined by city leaders referring to the pigeon’s propensity to make the city look like a dump – or feel like a dump was taken on it.
So how do T-rex and the modern pigeon, separated by tens of millions of years, eons of evolution and completely different dispositions, come to intersect in a two-story high statue on New York City’s High Line?
“One day we won’t be around anymore, but perhaps a remnant of humanity will live on – as pigeons do – in the dark corners and gaps of future worlds,” said Colombian artist Iván Argote, the statue’s creator. “This sculpture could generate an uncanny feeling of attraction, seduction, and fear among the inhabitants of New York.”
Argote’s pigeon comes bearing a message: Just as dinosaurs went from ruling the earth to glorified cockroaches, the status humans enjoy on earth is also precarious.
The statue might be the first time New Yorkers have anything to fear from pigeons aside from perhaps their filth. The birds have strutted the streets for hundreds of years, arriving in the 1600s with some of the earliest European colonists, according to the New York Public Library. They were brought over to be raised for food but soon became the ubiquitous street urchins they are today.
“It’s like pigeons’ revenge,” said Tod Winston, an urban biodiversity specialist at NYC Bird Alliance, formerly New York Audubon Society.
Bird experts like Winston find a certain justice in the sculpture’s size, saying it might as well represent the huge misconceptions modern Americans hold about pigeons.
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Argote and others hope the giant hand-painted aluminum sculpture is providing a different perspective on the pigeon.
Pigeons have a bad reputation among some because they live in proximity to humans and are extremely common, Winston said. But their large presence in U.S. cities points back to our dependence on pigeons in a different time − such as when they were first domesticated for food, and used to carry messages before modern technology. We were fine to share our lives with pigeons then, Winston said, but now that they’re feral, we don’t pay attention to them unless forced.
Even the coloring and patterns pigeons display is remarkable, Winston said, noting that people just fail to appreciate them.
“If the rock pigeon were a rare bird, birders would be lining up around the block oohing and “aahing” over them because they’re really very beautiful,” Winston said.
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The common pigeon is technically called a rock pigeon because they’ve evolved over thousands of years to live on cliffsides near the water. That’s precisely why they like the skyscrapers and bridges in and around New York City, said Ariel Cordova-Rojas, a Manhattan Ranger with NYC Parks.
“They’re the ultimate New Yorker, in wildlife form,” said Cordova-Rojas, who’s lived in New York City her whole life and grew up in East Harlem.
Here are more surprising facts about pigeons, according to New York City bird experts.
Pigeons are highly intelligent
A lot of people think pigeons appear to be dumb, Cordova-Rojas, 33, said, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Pigeons can recognize words and follow directions, and can recognize people and themselves in a mirror, said the park ranger, who previously worked for New York City’s Wild Bird Fund rescue group.
When taken far from their nest, such as when they are delivering a message, pigeons find their way back by analyzing patterns in the sun’s position in the sky, as well as sensing the geomagnetic force of the Earth, Winston said.
“I definitely 100% think that pigeons are misunderstood,” Cordova-Rojas said.
Baby pigeons are yellow
You’ve probably never seen a baby pigeon. In fact, no one really does, because their nests are way higher than those of other birds, Cordova-Rojas said.
“They’re so urbanized and they’re so high up,” Cordova-Rojas said.
Most people can’t recall seeing a baby pigeon, because unlike most birds, pigeons stay in their nest until they are fully grown, according to Cordova-Rojas. As babies, they’re yellow.
“A pigeon baby is yellow when it is born,” Cordova-Rojas said. “It has yellow fluff on it.”
There are hundreds of pigeon breeds
Since humans domesticated pigeons thousands of years ago, we’ve also bred about 300 different breeds of the pigeon species, Winston said.
“They come in this crazy variety of sizes, shapes,” he said.The population of pigeons in New York City is estimated to be somewhere between one and four million, according to both Cordova-Rojas and Winston. The city is also home a couple dozen plumage varieties of pigeon, including the standard grey pigeon, called a blue bar, and red and tan pigeons, Cordova-Rojas said.
Pigeons make milk
In the first 10 days of a baby pigeon’s life, it’s getting fed milk its mother and father make in their throats, Winston said.
“They both have an interesting adaptation, which not many birds have,” Winston said, adding that female and male pigeons split the job of raising the kids.
“They’re egalitarian in their child-bearing − the male and the female alternate incubating eggs,” he said.
Pigeons are ‘flirty’ and monogamous
Like more exotic birds you may have seen on nature television shows, pigeons have a flamboyant mating ritual in which the male will coo and bob his head to get a female to mate with him.
Pigeons have sex much more often than other birds, Cordova-Rojas said, and they lays eggs year-round, which is rather unusual among birds, most of which have a particular mating season.
“They’re one of the sexiest birds to like their significant others,” Cordova-Rojas said. “They flirt a lot.”
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