Nature Book Reader June 2020 - Flipbook - Page 78
A Nature Book Reader
ANDREW MALE
Andrew Male writes about music, books, radio, film & TV for publications including MOJO, Sight & Sound,The Guardian,The Sunday Times, and The Radio Times.
The Public Life of the Street
Pigeon by Eric Simms
I bought The Public Life
Of the Street Pigeon in a
second-hand book shop in
Lyme Regis in 2001, as a bit
of a joke. My friend Simon
and I had been out walking
along the Cobb, singing
the praises of the herring
gulls that lined the harbour
walls and lamenting the fact
that these beautiful birds
were now being labelled as
“pests” by the local council.
Finding a copy of Simms’
book, I held it aloft and
announced that it was now
time to reclaim yet another
maligned bird. Little did
I know...
At a time when letters
to his local newspaper were
predicting a near future
where “pedestrians will
be ankle deep in pigeon
droppings” Simms
78
appointed himself as
the valiant biographer
of this rejected and
reviled bird.
Opening with an
anecdote about a pigeon
travelling by tube from
Kiburn to Finchley Road
in 1965, the book educates
us in the grand history
of this “confident but
vigilant opportunist”,
from the rock doves of
Israel some 310,000 years
ago, to “the sacred pigeons
of Aphrodite” on Mount
Eryx in Sicily. Explaining
how the domesticated bird
was brought to Britain by
the Romans (and why the
dovecote became a hated
symbol of feudal nobility
in the middle ages)
The Public Life Of the
Street Pigeon is half
