A Nature Book ReaderANDREW MALEAndrew 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 StreetPigeon by Eric SimmsI bought The Public LifeOf the Street Pigeon in asecond-hand book shop inLyme Regis in 2001, as a bitof a joke. My friend Simonand I had been out walkingalong the Cobb, singingthe praises of the herringgulls that lined the harbourwalls and lamenting the factthat these beautiful birdswere now being labelled as“pests” by the local council.Finding a copy of Simms’book, I held it aloft andannounced that it was nowtime to reclaim yet anothermaligned bird. Little didI know...At a time when lettersto his local newspaper werepredicting a near futurewhere “pedestrians willbe ankle deep in pigeondroppings” Simms78appointed himself asthe valiant biographerof this rejected andreviled bird.Opening with ananecdote about a pigeontravelling by tube fromKiburn to Finchley Roadin 1965, the book educatesus in the grand historyof this “confident butvigilant opportunist”,from the rock doves ofIsrael some 310,000 yearsago, to “the sacred pigeonsof Aphrodite” on MountEryx in Sicily. Explaininghow the domesticated birdwas brought to Britain bythe Romans (and why thedovecote became a hatedsymbol of feudal nobilityin the middle ages)The Public Life Of theStreet Pigeon is half
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