It’s one of those mysteries we’ve all wondered about at least once: you see thousands of pigeons in the city, but you never see a baby one. No tiny, fluffy chicks begging for crumbs — only full-grown adults. The explanation for why we never see baby pigeons in the city is actually rooted in clever biology and strategic nesting. The primary reason is because they belong to a category of birds known as altricial. Unlike precocial birds — such as ducks or geese, whose yellow ducklings follow their mother as soon as they hatch — pigeons are born completely helpless. While a common sparrow might leave the nest in under four weeks, a young pigeon (known as a squab) stays in the nest for about 35 days. During that time, they transform from blind, hairless hatchlings into birds that are nearly identical in size and plumage to their parents. By the time a pigeon finally decides to take its first flight into the city streets, it’s already an adolescent that looks like a fully-grown adult to the untrained eye. Even if you went looking for them, finding a pigeon nest is a challenge. Descended from wild rock doves that nested on steep cliffs, urban pigeons have adapted to use our architecture as a substitute for mountain peaks. Because they stay in these high-altitude fortresses until they're fully developed, they effectively bypass the “cute baby stage” in the eyes of the public.
