Meet the Wood Pigeon
The big grey bird... everywhere!
In every park and garden, under the feeder or in the bird bath, there’s a large grey bird. Sometimes spotted canoodling in pairs in low hanging branches, or trying to bash each other off of a fence, they’re full of character.
Perhaps most endearing of all their traits is the way they flap up into the air and then swoop downwards, starting again at the bottom of the arc – seemingly just for fun.
Of course, it’s a Wood Pigeon – our largest and most common pigeon.
ID features
The Wood Pigeon is not just the largest of all our pigeon species, it is much rounder than the rest, too. Their beaks start out greyish and weirdly bulbous as chicks, but turn candy yellow and red as they mature. Their eyes also change as they become adults, from dark grey to yellow with a black pupil that has a characteristic ‘smudge’ at the bottom.
Their necks feature a white patch on either side, with iridescent green just above. To the front of this white patch is a purple hue that stretches down the breast. The rest of the bird is grey, with black accents on the wings and tail.
In flight, you can see a characteristic white stripe running from half way along the front edge of the wing to the back of it, separating the long primary feathers (resembling fingers) from the more solid section of wing. You can just about make it out in the stock photo below.
They have a cheerful, slightly vacant expression on their faces. Their song – a low, rumbly yet charmingly tuneful ‘hooohooo hoo, hoo-hoo’ can be heard in treetops and from fences and telephone wires through spring, summer and autumn.
Feeding behaviour
Wood Pigeons seemingly never stop eating. They have a very varied diet, ranging from the usual seeds and berries that you’d expect, through to crop plants like cabbages and grains. They also eat young buds and shoots from trees, nuts and whatever they can scavenge in parks and towns.
Clowns of the bird world
In my recent Wild This Week, I wrote about some of their sillier behaviour:
They make truly terrible nests, often just a few twigs balanced on a branch or some other non-flat surface. When they do, by some miracle, hatch some chicks, it’s kinda up to chance whether or not they look after them.
They nest pretty much year round, and the young ‘fledge’ well before they can actually fly. This makes them a regular feature on local Facebook pages, when concerned folk find the young pottering uselessly around in the garden, often provoking pet cats and dogs.
They also make a relatively easy target for Sparrowhawks, although a large adult pigeon would be a tough kill for the smaller male Sparrowhawks – the females have no such issues.
If you have a bird bath in your garden and you’ve seen an oily, dusty residue on the water’s surface, that was probably left by a Woodie. They love a bath, and their feathers are coated with oils and dust to keep them in good condition.
Where to spot a Wood Pigeon
There are five million breeding pairs here in summer, with more joining us in winter from the continent. You can find them in any woodland; listen for its lovely call and the ‘clapping’ sound their wings make when they take off. They can be seen on the ground, in bushes that are far too small to take their weight, and trees. In towns, they hang about in parks and gardens.
Easily confused with
All of our pigeons seem to get new birders in a tizzy. The most similar looking, in my opinion, is the Rock Dove.
This is the ancestor of all domestic pigeons. It is therefore often lumped in with ‘feral’ town pigeons. This is because it’s impossible to tell a true ‘Rock Dove’ apart from a feral pigeon that has the same colouration. Rock Doves typically only live on coastal areas in north Scotland and Ireland.
The two in the photo above are the typical colouration you’d expect to see when someone mentions a Rock Dove. They have no white collar on their neck, but they have many similarities with Wood Pigeons apart from that: the grey colour, black wing and tail accents, iridescent green neck and often purpley colours on their chest.
However, as people often use ‘Rock Dove’ to mean ‘Town Pigeons’, the variation in colours is wide. They can be anything from white through to brown and very dark grey, with all kinds of patterns.
Rock Dove’s eyes are usually red or orange, and have a round pupil – unlike the Wood Pigeons weird blurred almost-circle in a yellow-grey eye. They are also smaller than a Wood Pigeon.
But not quite as small as the next bird – the lovely Stock Dove. This is a very small and shy bird with beautiful pure black eyes that give it a very ‘cute’ look. It has a small, neat beak, but does share the Wood Pigeon’s green and purple neck colours. Again, though, it has no white collar. It is often seen in woodland, arable land and near the sea.
The third bird people get mixed up with Wood Pigeons is smaller still – the Collared Dove. As you might expect, it does have a collar!
Fortunately, it has a black collar, and is a pale grey all over, so it’s easier to tell apart from the Wood Pigeon than the other species. It hangs out in gardens and parks, often alongside Woodies, giving the opportunity to compare and contrast.
Bonus Wood Pigeon facts
The words in the Latin name, Columba palumbus, mean ‘dove’ and ‘wood pigeon’, respectively.
While wild Wood Pigeons rarely live beyond three years, the oldest recorded was more than 17 years old.
They have lots of nicknames, such as woody (which I use) and culver, cushat, cushy-do, quist, zoozoo. They may also be called ‘pigs’ (from ‘pigeon’). Their offspring are called ‘squabs’.
Wood Pigeons are widespread, but have (somehow) not reached the Americas. Well… except for one, in 2019, who was sighted in Canada.
In folklore, Wood Pigeons symbolise peace, tranquility and freedom. They also seem to symbolise nostalgia, especially in rural communities.
Both the male and female Wood Pigeon can produce ‘crop milk’, an extremely rich substance on which their chicks feed exclusively at first. This is unique to pigeons and a very small number of other species, including some flamingos and penguins.
While most birds fill their beak with water then tip their head back to swallow, pigeons can actually ‘suck’ by creating a vacuum (like we do). Perhaps to help the young consume that crop milk?
Have you seen a Wood Pigeon this week? Did you know they can suck? (I didn’t – that little nugget of gold came from
. Give her a follow if you need more nature writing in your life).
Great read. Woodies are a daily feature at Burhinus HQ, feeding, drinking, bathing, loving and fighting. In fact everything you noted. Currently we have one singing right outside our bedroom window at about 5 in the morning.
I once watched one eat 17 acorns in one feeding session. That was quite a crop full!
I once heard wood pigeons’ song described as “My toe hurts, Betty” and now that’s all I can hear whenever they’re around. Which is a lot.