Spatio-temporal use of the urban habitat by feral pigeons (Columba livia )

Abstract

Feral pigeons are descendants of wild rock pigeons that have adapted to the urban habitat. They have partially conserved the foraging behaviour of their wild ancestors (flights to agricultural areas) but have also developed new habits. Previous studies on the foraging strategies of feral pigeons have given various results, e.g. maximum distances reached by the pigeons (measured in a straight line from the resting places) differed between 0.3-0.5 km and 18-25 km. This study focuses on the spatiotemporal activity of feral pigeons in the urban habitat. We equipped 80 free-living feral pigeons from Basel, Switzerland with GPS receivers. We found three different foraging strategies for pigeons in Basel: (1) in the streets, squares and parks near the home loft, (2) in agricultural areas surrounding the city, (3) on docks and railway lines in harbours. The maximum distance reached by a pigeon was 5.29 km. More than 32% of the pigeons remained within 0.3 km of the home lofts and only 7.5% flew distances of more than 2 km. Females covered significantly longer distances than males, preferring to fly to more abundant and predictable food sources. Temporal activity patterns showed to be influenced by sex, breeding state and season. In contrast to wild rock pigeons and to feral pigeons in other cities, pigeons in Basel showed a clear bimodal activity pattern for breeding birds only. The differences between our results and those of other studies seem to be partly methoddependent, as the GPS-technique allows to record the pigeons' localisations continuously in contrast to other methods. Other differences might be due to different kinds of food supply in the various cities. Our study shows that feral pigeons have individual foraging strategies and are flexible enough to adapt to different urban environments.

Feral Pigeons: Problems, Dynamics and Control Methods

“…Food resources management may be particularly effective when feral pigeon populations mostly depend on food resources located within the urban environment (see Murton et al, 1972;Rose et al, 2006;Sol & Senar, 1995). In this case it can be possible to manage food availability, although both theoretical considerations and field data indicates that this may be difficult (see Giunchi et al 2007a and references therein).…”

“…The distribution of food resources and the annual trend of reproductive attempts appear to exert a leading role in shaping the characteristics of these flights, as previously suggested both for feral pigeons (Soldatini et al, 2006) and for wild rock doves (Baldaccini et al, 2000 and references therein). The distances covered in such commuting flights vary between 3 and 20 km (see Rose et al, 2006 for a review), mainly depending on the landscape and distribution of food resources (Hetmanski et al, 2010;Soldatini et al, 2006). These foraging flights can be a significant source of damage for agriculture which adds to the damages done by colonies resident in the countryside.…”

O pombo (Columba livia) como agente carreador de Salmonella spp. e as implicações em saúde pública

“…O tamanho da população de pombos é influenciado positivamente pelo número de habitantes humanos, pela área da cidade (Hetmański et al, 2010) e pelas características desta, como a idade dos edifícios (Sacchi et al, 2002), a distribuição espacial dos recursos e o fornecimento de alimentos (Rose et al, 2006). A cidade de Barcelona possui uma das maiores densidades de aves em áreas urbanas do mundo (Senar;Sol, 1991), ocasionando problemas significativos que geram altos custos, os quais são causados pelo excessivo número de pombos urbanos (Zucconi et al, 2003).…”

Avaliação parasitológica de excretas de pombos refugiados em edificações da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul

“…É uma ave sinantrópica longeva, vivendo até 16 anos, é granívora e frugívora, porém consome restos de alimentos (Foti et al, 2009). O tamanho da população é influenciado positivamente pelo número de habitantes humanos e pela área da cidade (Hetmański et al, 2011), distribuição espacial dos recursos disponíveis e do fornecimento de alimentos (Rose et al, 2006). Têm papel fundamental na contaminação de fontes de água potável e culturas agrícolas pelas fezes contaminadas, podendo transmitir agentes infecciosos a outras aves (Lillehaug et al, 2005), além de trazer riscos de contaminação para o homem e outros animais (Millán et al, 2004).…”