Pigeons

In my etsy perusing I came across this lovely photo of a pigeon.  As my family and friends could tell you, I was interested in pigeons for a while, and told everyone I know about it!  It all started when I saw a dove, and I noticed that it walked like a pigeon, sounded like a pigeon, AND looked like a pigeon. 

Then I started wondering where pigeons are originally from, since now they live all around the world.  That seemed strange since people seem to be one of the few other animals to have that distinction, most creatures seem to have one habitat.

 Here are a few lovely items relating to pigeons that I found on etsy:

1. photo    4. t-shirt
 2. beads   5. pattern
3. decal    6. photo

So, answers to all these questions from Wikipedia:

Pigeons are a type of dove.  Which is really funny to me.  I've heard that people in cities call pigeons rats with wings, whereas doves are generally highly esteemed birds that represent peace.  Turns out they're pretty much the same thing; one's just a city bird, and the other is a country bird. 

Pigeons are originally from Southern Europe, Southern Asia and Northern Africa.  They are now spread around the globe to all the places inhabited by people, because people have been domesticating pigeons for a long time.  Many of the domesticated birds were freed or escaped, and bred with wild pigeons to create the feral pigeons we have today.  Latching onto people seems to be a great strategy to spread your seed all over the world, and have a very successful species.

So, that's probably more than you ever wanted to know about pigeons.  Enjoy the mini treasury above!