Crowfangs

Skippy does the same thing!! I’ve no idea why exactly he does it either, but my guess is it’s related to being horny in some way since usually I see them do it in between bouts of feeding their mate and a lot of the time it’s followed by them getting it on for real in the end.

Oh yeah also almost forgot to tag it for #pigeonsky

Have some happy rescue news to brighten your morning as it did mine after so many recent birds I couldn’t manage to save too! 🥹

They’re all super adorable - which makes it all the more sad to know that this little one’s suffering was entirely preventable to begin with. It’s neither sick nor injured, it just couldn’t find enough food in the city and almost starved to death because of it. 😔

Normally a pigeon this age should be weighing at least 250-300gr, “5 weeks of age and 250gr of weight” are the recommendations for PMV vaccination for example, a healthy pigeon manages that easily.
So this one we weren’t even sure if it’d survive the night tbh. 🥲

It’s still got a long way to go now of course, and I’ll need to check for any underlying diseases that might endanger its recovery now that it’s so weak already too, but considering it was a meagre 190gr of weight yesterday, this is a huuuge step forward already.

Yeah I reckon it’s maybe 6-8 weeks old at most? Didn’t even notice me approaching it until I actually touched it, and even then it hardly resisted being picked up. It was really cold already too then, I’m pretty sure it had just huddled up by the stairs to literally die.

A young pigeon sitting on my hand, feathers all fluffed up, a sign that the bird is feeling incredibly unwell. Its eyes are closed and the beak is tucked into its chest feathers too, typical signs the bird is very cold and/or utterly exhausted - in this case both

The same young pigeon from the previous image, the morning after. It’s now standing on my hand upright, eyes wide open and curious. Its feathers are now smooth against its body too as they should be, a sign that the bird’s body has enough energy again to maintain its temperature on its own.

Before and after - picked up this little guy from the gutter yesterday evening where it had huddled up, already ready to accept its fate. Completely emaciated.
It received immediate care in the form of subcut fluids, baby formula and all the warmth - totally different bird already this morning!

Thanks, from what I understand about the colour genetics that does sound pretty plausible. I figured ash red and bar were the base, but I’m not particularly great at identifying all the many modifiers that exist yet. Super interesting stuff though!

Dang that really is one heck of an orange pigeon! I’m not the most knowledgable about pigeon genetics, maybe @graemeboyd.bsky.social can enlighten us with some details about this bird? Definitely within the range of the possible for fancy pigeons though.

Define orange, you mean like neon orange? Or more like a faded reddish brown that looks kinda orange?
The former could be spray paint, often used for racing pigeons but pigeons do also come in a variety of bred colours in the red and brown spectrum

Skippy, a dark-chequered feral pigeon lying on his side on a towel and looking up at the camera, relaxing as he’s drying off after a bath.

Skippy has such a little babyface, despite being almost 10 months old now, his cere is still rather soft and pink. He also still has a soft reddish patch on his chest, which usually fades before adulthood. 🤔
(Pic: The Skibbles chilling on my desk after an evening bath)
#pigeonsky

Still feeling art-blocked to hell and back even after what’s been five years now, so I’m doodling pigeon face studies in crappy ballpoint ink pen so I don’t forget how to even hold a pen at this point. 🫠

Good morning to the ornery little gargoyle above my bed, please stop biting me.

World’s most spoiled little b—, refuses to eat anything other than peeled sunflower seeds apparently.
(Eye got worse so now we’re on antibiotic eye drops on top of oral antibiotics, it’s not the eye seen in the video tho)

#pigeonsky

So far so good, the eye looks terrible but from what we can tell right now it seems like there isn’t any more serious damage actually, just lots of blood and swelling. As for that whole other thing… one thing at a time, it’s an old wound so there’s only so much we could do either way.

Ngl I don’t have high hopes that the eye can even be saved or that this pigeon wouldn’t be better off euthanised in general, but for now it’s getting all the painkillers and antibiotics and care I can give it, and we’re seeing the vet in a few hours.

Photo of a feral pigeon with a severely swollen closed eye, wrapped in a towel

A lump of old dead tissue still attached to the pigeon on the side of its chest

Same pigeon after the lump of dead tissue fell off. There is now a giant mostly healed over cavity in its side.

Why do I keep finding the absolute weirdest freak accident pigeons?! What even hurt this poor bird to leave a lump and cavity the size of my thumb?! And how did it survive to heal only to end up huddled up against the wall with nasty head trauma anyway?!

Our rescue as a whole also benefits though as the owner of the building is making quite a decent sized donation to our cause - which, you know, means a lot because without money we can’t help any birds either.
Also we can now educate people on the reality of cleaning dirty attics from pigeon poop.

Look, when she was found she was a lil squab caked in poop. No way to tell except for DNA testing… so we just make a lucky guess based on behaviour and it turns out Joachim was a bit of an unusually rowdy girl.
But then suddenly there was a surprise egg.

Although that said I did get a pretty neat free cage out of it all. Was on one of the attic we checked/cleaned and since it was to be thrown away anyway… YOINK, mine now. 👀

Man this week has been insane. 36 hours of all pigeon related work in just three days. And that not even counting transit times or regular care for the pigeons I have at home. 🫠

Haino Update:
Still RoundTM (off Screen)
And his wifey (blue and white bands) Joachim has graced us with her presence again

We’re doing our best! Which just makes it all the more infuriating really when things like this happen that were just entirely preventable.
Maybe we shoulda just ripped one of those old ass windows out of the wall entirely last week so nobody could even think to close it… 😅

It’s so sad, this was 100% entirely preventable and would’ve saved us four whole hours of work too if only people had done the lazy thing of not effing touching anything they were explicitly notified to leave alone to begin with.

Mind you the owner and his associates have been nothing but friendly and were so happy they found us and we agreed to help move these animals the gentlest way possible. We don’t know who did it, but our guess is most likely one of the residents of the building. Gods I’m so tired now.

We went there to check the situation one week ago precisely and our instructions were in no way unclear: leave the windows open for now, we will deal with the pigeons when we come back. Closing the windows would mean their death.
Today we came back to find someone had done just that though. 🫠

Photo showing eight feral pigeons in a cage, hungrily devouring some seeds. These were the lucky ones, still fit enough to be able to fly at all, but already so weak it was incredibly easy to catch them regardless.

Today was probably one of the hardest days in my whole time rescuing pigeons. 18 pigeons locked up in an attic, two already dead when we arrived, six on the verge of dying. Three of those also died in our hands, despite the fact we immediately gave them infusions and all the warmth we could find.

We literally did nickname him “Final Bossfight” because he’s super defensive and slaps HARD.

If you see this post a bird 🪶