The Pigeon Dilemma

I'm back! Well it seems like I haven't posted much in ages as there just hasn't been a spare minute. Bear's challenge has gone out of the window for another month, although there was some closure on the pigeon front.....

I had the opportunity to go for a walk in Bramcote Park in Nottingham, which is quite lovely despite the background hum of traffic. I chatted with friendly dog walkers, spotted a few familiar wild foods and was just generally enjoying the evening, when there was a 'plop'. I was walking through some trees and something small had fallen out of one of the trees. I turned round to investigate and found a dead pigeon on the ground with a bundle of soft fluffy feathers beside it. The bundle of fluff was a baby pigeon still clearly alive, but with a cracked beak and it must have literally dropped out of the tree just as I walked past.

Dilemma. The parent bird had clearly been killed by a cat or fox ( I am thinking cat, because it wasn't eaten whereas a fox would have had it for dinner). The young pigeon's feathers were not mature enough to fly and it would no doubt die without a parent bird, even if the damaged beak recovered. Why did it plop down next to me?

I could see the nest in the tree and it was too high up for me to reach, but with my heart thumping I grabbed the scared little bird and tried to balance it on a lower branch in the hope it would climb back. Plop!

Now I stood for several minutes thinking this through. There was absolutely no way I could save this bird or any hope it would survive. I have saved baby blue tits before, but they had fully fledged wings that had got wet in a shower, so lifting them into a hawthorn bush until their wings dried out meant they had a good chance of surviving. This pigeon had none. Plus they are classified as a pest (for good reason) so you are not supposed to rescue them.

Could I kill it? It was clearly going to die anyway, so a quick bash with a stick would save it from suffering. I still couldn't do it and just walked away. Let nature take its course and no doubt something will come and eat it.....just not me.

And so the great pigeon question has been answered - roadkill I can just about handle. Killing is something I am still not ready for. It does seem rather pathetic, but I am being honest with myself, which would be fine if I was a vegetarian, and wasn't expecting other people to kill animals for me to eat.

I have watched some of 'The Island with Bear Grylls' series 2, where a group of women and a group of men were left to survive on separate desert islands. It was interesting to see the women struggling with the dilemma of killing their adopted pet piglets (episode 6), which they aptly named Sage and Onion. In a situation where you are starving hungry your survival instinct clearly kicks in and they describe not thinking of them as animals anymore, just food. If you think you have the strength for this then you can apply for the next series here.