The pigeon is a funny bird. how this bird has gravitated to an urban life and become ubiquitous with city streets of large metropolitan areas is amazing and is covered by Courtney Humphries book called "SuperDove". A bird that some consider pests many others love and call pets and this author covers everything about the pigeon and why they love big buildings from how well they serve as homing devices and are trained by owners in competitions around the world.
Courtney was long fascinated by these pigeons and I hope to see her equally write enthusiastically on parakeets or budgerigar. perhaps if people let go of these birds and they populated the urban landscape there would be more cause for one book on feral parakeets. Pigeons have long been manipulated by soldiers to send messages back and forth along lines all the way back to Persia and Assyria. pigeons are intelligent birds but not as intelligent as parakeets.
Ms Humphries also goes into detail why these birds are popular in the field of psychology and the tests including the infamous B.F Skinner dude and his important behavioral research laboratory and the use of pigeons in directing missiles. The author also goes into detail with the pigeon advocacy group that fights all attempts of government attempts to limit the population of these pesky birds and their droppings. 
The book explains also that pigeons have thrived in no part thanks to the bird bran whack jobs that do nothing but all day live off government aid and take food from homeless shelters and feed pigeons all day until nightfall when the birds go back to their nests to roost. These attempts obviously spurred by a tenacious urban pigeon hating part of the human populace unwilling to share their precious gemstone and skyscraper man -made landscape. there are just people that can't come to grip that some species either wild or feral thrive in human habitat and often make the comparison of these great funny looking birds to dirty rats out of the sewer. Courtney travels for this book takes her to Chinatown wear she eats some squab. The Chinese will eat anything and a pigeon is more visually pleasing than some of the other shit these people have been known to down their throat in some different meat.. She ends the book trying to do the difficult study of wild rock pigeons of Capo Cacci in Sardinia. 
Now I have never flown and been to Sardinia but I'm guessing there are more cool things than finding the most remote cliffs for observing these more shy versions of the pigeon. it was very difficulty but she caught a glimpse of a wild pigeon or two and it was much different than seeing the beggers in the parks. if you like birds or are one like me then I highly recommend this book. One thing to remember about pigeons is that they have pig in their name.
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