r/interesting • u/I-T-Y • Jul 14 '26

NATURE Pigeon walks into falcon's nest

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

61.4k Upvotes

90% Upvoted

6.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

866

u/sagesmoke_ Jul 14 '26

Falcons face when the pigon walked in.

https://giphy.com/gifs/ukGm72ZLZvYfS

130

u/SharkByte1993 Jul 14 '26

Fucking pigeon starts rummaging around their nest. Who do they think they are?

40

u/WifesPOSH Jul 14 '26

I think the irony is that falcons don't build their own nest. They usually use prebuilt nests and come back to them every year. Effectively utilizing squatter's rights.

The company I used to work for had a falcon nest, and every year there was a vote to name the hatched chicks (or whatever the babies are called).

36

u/meowsterpainter Jul 14 '26

There is no way a falcon would ever steal a pigeon’s nest though. They are famous for being the worse nest builders in the entire bird kingdom, often placing as little as two sticks on the ground and calling it good.

25

u/Legacyopplsnerf Jul 14 '26

That strat makes sense when you remember their natural habitat is cliff faces, just find a divot in the rock, lay the egg and put down a few twigs so it doesn't roll off. Most of the work is in finding a good spot to lay the egg.

City pigeons just make do with whatever looks vaguely cliff shaped.

9

u/meowsterpainter Jul 14 '26

Sounds sensible on paper, but then if you go look at some of the nests on that dove subreddit you start to wonder.

5

u/IHKPruefling Jul 14 '26

And yet they are the most common bird species in cities all around the world. So seems like it's working.

2

u/Cronicfangirl2 Jul 14 '26

Well they’re also domestic animals that were released by humans in a lot of places so it makes sense that they’d be in cities while a lot of birds were pushed out when cities were built. Pidgeons were bred to live along humans.

1

u/SylvesterPSmythe Jul 14 '26

The pigeon in the video is a wood pigeon. They actually have to put effort into nests, because they nest in trees.

2

u/Majestic-Beyond-2541 Jul 14 '26

Correct me if I’m wrong but could it be because pigeons used to be domesticated animals and they simply forgot how to pigeon properly?

1

u/RoseyMommyFindom Jul 14 '26

Can you explain why? Suddenly I'm very interested in the behaviour of pigeons 😅 Some people say they are the dumbest birds ever, but I think homing pigeons are pretty smart right?

2

u/Aiderona Jul 14 '26

We made them I think like domesticated. Not sure why they may have something we needed from them other than brains.

3

u/SylvesterPSmythe Jul 14 '26

Food. Ancient Egyptians, Romans, Chinese, Indians and Persians regularly ate them, as they're an easy source of protein that can live in cities without being too disruptive. Which can't be said for cattle or swine. You can feed poor quality seeds (or just excess seeds) to pigeons to plump them up. It's a very efficient way of turning carbohydrates into protein in a city setting.

There's a name for a building where pigeon is kept: a dovecote

The eggs and bird itself can be eaten, and the dung is a very useful fertilizer.

They're also useful in war, pigeon was the fastest method of delivering a message from a frontline to the city. Take a homing pigeon hatched from your city to the frontlines, write about the conditions of the frontlines, and release the bird. It will fly back to the city with the message tied to its leg. It's one of the few methods of communication that was faster than a horse.

1

u/turej Jul 14 '26

This is a wood pigeon they build good nests.