Nestingmaterial

The nest of a wild pigeon.                   The nest of pigeon breeders.

For as long as pigeon breeders exist they have occupied themselves with the subject. Every pigeon breeder has its own recipe. The selection is large. There are straw, hay, bark branches, tobacco stems (they keep vermin away) or short cut bundle of sticks to choose from. The “hygienic” pigeon breeders envelop the nesting bowls into newspaper, but of course that is no nesting material!! It also in no way correlates to the pigeon’s nature. If the pigeons do not get nesting material it is a clear disturbance of a natural drive they can’t live out.

What would the pigeon’s gather if they could choose? For several years I kept 4 pigeons (1,3) in a barn in free flight. They were mongrels. Their father was a Burmali Frill, the mother a mix of Indian Fantail and Baku Height Flyer. These pigeons therefore had many different genes and lots of mixed blood. They had 4 nesting cells to themselves, were fed once a day and to drink they had to fly a few meters away from the barn. Regularly they had 6 eggs from which most were fertilized. The male was therefore not as loyal as one usually says about pigeons.

The above-mentioned pair of pigeon.

I once took the time to count the nesting material and to separate it into length and thickness. I took the nest as the first egg was laid. I have to add that straw and hay was kept in the barn.

Bevor and after analysing the nest.

Following are the different nesting materials. The length is always written down in cm.

Straw:    4 – 20 cm 102 stems/ 20 –  40 cm 11 stems/ Total 113 stems

Hay:      8 – 25 cm  403 stems/25 –  42 cm 25 stems/ Total 428 stems

Leaf stems: 3 – 20 cm 63 stems / 20– 32 cm 41 stems / 32 – 45 cm  
                            6 stems                                   total 110 stems

Not clearly defined nesting material:                6 – 27cm 104 stems

This ist the nesting material from the researched nest.

The nest consisted of  755 straws and stems.  This means that the pigeons flew in about 800 times with nesting material. Adding to that you also have to consider that they often loose material on the way or that something falls from the nesting cell. The longest material was 45cm the shortest 3cm. The diameter was between 0.5 and 4.5 mm.

Conclusion: Pigeons prefer a nesting material of 18-21cm length and a diameter of 1-1.5mm. They also prefer round nesting material. They found the leaf stems on a flat roof on which also lay lots of thin branches. Of these they only took one of 25cm length and a diameter of 4.5mm. For me it was a surprise that they didn’t use more of these branches.

Walter Stettler CH Binningen www.flugtippler.ch

     »close window«