An article in todays Daily Telegraph under the by-line of one Jon Swaine informs readers that wood pigeons visit gardens more than robins. I don't know about you but I could have told them that without the expense of a British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) survey.
The piece then goes on to claim that pigeons have been "driven from the countryside by intensive farming" and attracted to urban and suburban gardens by bird feeders. If only!
The probability is that the 16,500 people who contributed to the survey were sitting in urban gardens as they did their count; that few, if any, of them actually went beyond the city limits to see what was happening on farmers fields. They then concluded, eroneously, that the increased numbers they were seeing in their gardens were refugees from farming systems.
Not only is their assessment demonstrably inaccurate (come and see for yourselves if you don't believe me) but they have also used it to take yet another unjustified swipe at our industry.
If the BTO and other bird agencies would like more pigeons in their city gardens and can find a feed to place on their bird tables that would be more attractive to them than my rape, I would encourage them to spread it around as widely as possible. Sadly, I doubt if that feed exists. For out here in the countryside we too have millions more pigeons and I would dearly love to significantly reduce their numbers.