A month or so ago, my partner and I went on a painfully short trip to northern Tasmania. Tucked away in a tiny cabin in the middle of nowhere, we lit fires, watched sunlight dip over the mountains; and, as avid birdwatchers, saw an abundance of avian life, nestled in the trees, awash with golden light.
So at first, returning to our home in Sydney, where we live in a flat on a major street, triangulated between three different vape shops, my overwhelming feeling was one of despair. Gone were the rolling hills, replaced by convenience stores selling AI-generated posters of monkeys smoking cigars. Suddenly, everything I observed about city life became evidence for a growing theory that the human race had gone terribly, unavoidably wrong.
Around this time, I stepped out on to the street and noticed a pigeon, nestled in the roof above my door. The green of the plumage around her neck glinted, a mossy river struck by a plume of light. She cooed, gently, and her partner fluttered up beside her, his beak filled with twigs, come to help build their nest, together.
If there is anything that defines modern life, it is how determinedly and constantly we are trained to not really see. We wake up and get to work ignoring things, like we’re being paid to do so. Human brains are naturally predisposed to ignoring the familiar, and focusing on the new, the different, the outrageous. Anything we’re surrounded by for too long grows invisible.
The humble pigeon is that ethos poured into a feathery, fragile little body. Pigeons are noticed only when they seem particularly foul, paid mind only when they annoy us. They are also victim of rampant animal welfare crimes: pelted with rocks, chased from dwellings, killed and maimed en mass.
Which is ironic, because, as it goes with so many problems we face, pigeons are a “problem” that we have caused. Feral pigeons are descendants of homing pigeons that we kept and domesticated. We loved them, once. We might not remember that, but pigeons do. They are naturally predisposed to want to be close to us. They gather where we gather. They thrive as a result of the particular way we have decided to live, rooting through our trash, taking shelter in our nests.
And if pigeons are dirty or disgusting, they are that way because we are dirty and disgusting. Forgive me for excessive anthropomorphism, but we live in a natural world that, rightfully, flinches from human touch. Pigeons are one of the few creatures that don’t. And for that, we punish them.
But if this makes it sound as though my burgeoning fascination with pigeons is guided by self-hatred, more despair, excessive fury at the way humans have decided to live, then I have miscommunicated. After noticing the nesting pigeons above my door, I began to actively look for them, everywhere. A few days later, walking home from work, I saw a flock of them huddled together, eating a discarded loaf of bread. Their overlapping cooing sounded like the movement of water. It was no northern Tasmania, but it was something.
A pigeon deep-dive on Wikipedia that day brought me to an article, published in 1995, which informed me that pigeons are able to differentiate between paintings by Monet and Picasso. And I was moved not only by the image of a little bird, wandering between impressionist and cubist masterpieces, but the gentle, beautiful curiosity of humans too: that we can be interested enough in pigeons to want to know what they think about the art that we make.
Another thing about human brains: we adore a binary. Human versus non-human. Nature versus the city. Regular versus exceptional. Just because we see something every day – just because it surrounds us – it doesn’t mean it’s any less remarkable for that. So often, we picture metropolises as places devoid of wildlife; even in our despair, we end up drawing arbitrary lines between us and the natural world. Humans are not alone. Somehow, even after all that we have done, we still have pigeons by our side, building their nests, quietly, heads down, as we build ours.
• Joseph Earp is a critic, painter and novelist. His latest book is Painting Portraits of Everyone I’ve Ever Dated
