Photo: Cathal McNaughton/PA
Cities will go to some length to relieve themselves of pigeons. The two Harris hawks Kevin Livingstone introduced to Trafalgar Square are estimated to be dispersing his "rats with wings" at a cost of £90 per bird, while the Scottish parliament was reported to be looking at a rate of £250 a pigeon to remove a nesting pair from Holyrood.
No one ever thought about pelicans. Largely because it is almost unheard of for them to eat birds, so this pigeon-munching specimen snapped in St James's Park, London, has peculiar tastes. Pelicans are supposed to dine on fish.
But eating them, or otherwise culling, will not do the trick - especially if urban humans are too queasy to see urban pigeons shot or poisoned. The New York Times had a great piece on pigeon control a few weeks ago that suggested the trick is to forget about the birds and concentrate on tracking down the marginal city dwellers whose interests in life do not extend beyond feeding pigeons. The difficulty is that these people - "often the lonely seniors we presume them to be" - have to be convinced that it is in the birds' best interests that they do not feed them. It takes more than one wayward pelican, or even two hawks, to manage a pigeon population.
Update: For those troubled by how this might happen, Nojj in the comments posts a link to an earlier video of pelican eating a pigeon.
