Interview in USA Today
Posted in superdove, pigeons on August 21st, 2008An interview with me is in today’s USA Today, complete with photo of me and pigeons (I will never stop being “pigeon girl,” will I?).
Archive for August, 2008
More Superdove on the radio….
Posted in superdove, pigeons on August 19th, 2008I had a brief appearance on WNYC’s Leonard Lopate show while I was in New York. Lots of questions about squab!
Pigeons as ice-breaker
Posted in superdove, pigeons on August 19th, 2008
This post was originally written for the Gather.com community.
“Oh, you’re writing a book! What’s it about?”
“Well, it’s about…..pigeons.”
I’ve reenacted this exchange in countless cocktail party conversations since I began writing this book a couple of years ago (and even before then, when I was busily working on the idea and proposal for the book). I had to explain to many, many people—friends, family, co-workers, in-laws, strangers—that I was working on a book about a bird that many people consider to be mere vermin, if they’ve considered it at all.
Reactions varied greatly. Some people laughed. Others nodded and smiled vaguely and changed the subject. One or two seemed as impressed as if I’d said I was writing about Abraham Lincoln. An elderly gentleman told me I didn’t look like a pigeon writer, which I took as a compliment. Most people were politely skeptical but also curious. The more I repeated this exchange, the more I began to find a perverse pleasure in seeing how people would react. The pigeon book became a sort of litmus test of my social interactions.
What surprised me is that, after giving it a little thought, most people had many things to say about pigeons—and a lot to ask. Even those who were skeptical at first might end up peppering me with questions after I explained a little more about the project. Pigeons aren’t a subject that most people devote time to thinking about. But we’ve all seen them, so we all have impressions, overlooked memories, and back-of-the-mind thoughts about them.
Watching people gradually unearth these hidden ideas and opinions is one of the pleasures of writing a book about a commonplace animal. I heard about the pigeons that plagued people’s apartment buildings, the homing pigeons their father kept when they were kids, the time they were frightened by a mass of pigeons in Venice, the bird with the broken wing they saw and worried about. People have many different associations with pigeons—as birds, as pests, as pets, as food—and seeing these played out in party conversations was instructive. And now that I’ve finished the book, I’m starting to realize how much I’ve grown to depend on pigeons as my own personal ice-breaker.
Reassessing the Pigeon on NPR’s On Point
Posted in superdove, pigeons on August 13th, 2008I had a great time talking with Jane Clayson on this morning’s On Point; we had some fun caller stories!
Superdove in Scientific American
Posted in superdove, pigeons on August 13th, 2008Steve Mirsky of Scientific American interviewed me for his weekly podcast, Science Talk. He also recounts the strange tale of B.F. Skinner’s Project Pigeon in the August issue.
Interview in the Boston Metro
Posted in superdove, pigeons on August 12th, 2008A Q&A with me about pigeons appeared in today’s Metro.
Courtney on NECN
Posted in superdove, pigeons on August 12th, 2008A brief appearance on New England Cable News’ morning show.
New York Post reviews Superdove
Posted in superdove, pigeons on August 11th, 2008A nice little review of Superdove in the New York Post. I like how the author picked up on the contradictory ways we view pigeons.
Superdove in Boston Magazine
Posted in superdove, pigeons on August 9th, 2008This month’s issue of Boston Magazine has a cute article on pigeons in the city, based on material from Superdove.
The puzzle of pigeons
Posted in superdove, pigeons on August 7th, 2008
This post was originally written for the Gather.com community.
I can’t say that this book came out of a long fascination with pigeons. I had never been a birder or raised pigeons as pets or had more than the usual city-dweller’s interactions with them. Instead, it began with a pretty casual observation: when I did some traveling abroad in my early 20s I noticed that every city I visited seemed to have pigeons. They all looked basically the same to me. Later, I read Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species for a class, I was struck by its long opening section detailing the shapes and sizes of domestic pigeons. Somehow, those two observations lodged themselves in the back of my mind.
When I was in a grad program in science writing at MIT, I was given an assignment to write a long article. The catch: the topic couldn’t be something newsworthy. While my usual instinct as a science writer is to track the latest trend or discovery or innovation, instead I had come up with something that I wanted to write about simply because it was interesting. As I was trolling through my brain for topics, those two observations about pigeons surfaced. I didn’t know how they were connected—how those homogeneous urban birds had anything to do with Darwin and evolution—but it was enough to try to find out.
So the topic of pigeons began as a puzzle I wanted to solve. With a little research, I uncovered loads of fascinating stuff about these birds—their history as domestic animals, the breeding of bizarre fancy pigeons and Darwin’s interest in them, B.F. Skinner’s plans to create a pigeon-guided missile. And of course, the ability of pigeons to live in so many places in the world and thrive in the seemingly inhospitable environment of an inner city. Pigeons turned out to be much more interesting than I thought.
After I uncovered this material, I started spending a lot of time looking at pigeons in Boston where I live. I see pigeons literally every day; they are all around my neighborhood. So this research was not difficult! I watched them hunt for food, build nests, mate, care for and raise their young.
Over time, I began to appreciate pigeons as more than an intellectual puzzle. You see, I grew up in a city but had ready access to mountains and nature all around me; in comparison, I’ve often felt confined and exiled from nature in Boston. Watching pigeons in my neighborhood revealed a whole world under my nose that I was blind to. The gloomy maze of concrete and brick (as I sometimes saw it) became a habitat for wildlife.
I can understand why some people find pigeons to be a nuisance—my car gets crapped on just like everyone else’s. But I can honestly say that I enjoy seeing pigeons everyday, and my world would be a diminished place without them.