Venice - the Pigeons, and more

Last night we came back from a ten day visit with our daughters, who live in two towns in Tennessee, near Nashville and in Memphis.  I had planned to write a post on Venice pigeons before our departure but this did not happen.  I'll write posts on our visit to Tennessee soon, to take a break from Venice.  I remember seeing many pigeons in my vintage postcards of Piazza San Marco in Venice. (Click on collage twice to see better.)

As many people do when thinking about Venice, in my mind's eye I see canals with gondolas and Piazza San Marco with tourists and pigeons.

Famous people when touring Venice act just like all the other tourists, as can be seen below.  On 18 August 1937 John F. Kennedy wrote in his European trip diary (which is on view in the Presidential Library in Boston) that he had visited the Basilica of San Marco for mass and then had pictures taken with pigeons.  He also wrote that there were more canals than he had thought.  Claude Monet and his wife Alice went to Venice for a month in October 1908.  Monet painted 37 different views of Venice.  Alice wrote in a letter to her daughter "There were pigeons all over us and I was wincing a bit with fright.  But the picture was taken the moment they flew away."

After arriving by train on October 1, 1908, Claude Monet (French 1840-1926) said "It is too beautiful to be painted! It is untranslatable!" Below are two of Claude Monet's paintings of Venice.

If you take a picture of Piazza San Marco you cannot have a photograph without pigeons unless it is during night time.  They are everywhere.  People fee them, even though it has been banned since 2008.

Children run and play with them.

There are colonies of pigeons throughout the city of Venice, but especially in Piazza San Marco (a group of pigeons flying together is called a "kit.")  The population of Venice is now about 60,000 people but the pigeon number is more than twice that - from 120,000 to 150,000.  The pigeons' acidic droppings corrode the beautiful historic buildings and monuments in the city.  Since the law of 2008 City Officials can fine tourists up to $700 for feeding pigeons (but I think they are not enforcing this law strongly.)  A pair of pigeons can produce 12 chicks per year, so the population is constantly growing.  Some people like the birds and others, such as American author John Berendt (who wrote Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, and The City of Fallen Angels, about Venice - which I have in my library but have not read yet) think they are pests.  John Berendt says "Pigeons are disgusting, they're like flying rats."

 

I believe that when there are too many of them, pigeons can be a nuisance, but I still like pigeons.  I have taken their pictures many times.  Looking in my photo files, I quickly found several that I snapped in various places.

The reason I like pigeons is, perhaps, because that is the only wildlife I could see near our 6th floor apartment in Paris where I grew up.  The pigeons would fly to the roof tops where I could look at them and hear their soft cooing sounds.  Below are some Parisian pigeons.

Both the wild feral pigeons and domestic pigeons bred as pet or for show are descendants of the Rock Pigeon.  These birds have existed for millions of years - longer than humans.  I was surprised to find out that there are hundred of thousands of breeds of fancy pigeons!  Many pigeons are bred in several countries where they can be sold up to quite high prices.  These pigeons are presented in exhibitions and the largest pigeon show is held in Nuremberg, Germany, with 33,500 pigeons.  Below are several breeds.

Some of these birds are quite beautiful.  They are bred for their extensive feathering or color markings or for their "trumpeting" voices.

One breed that did not survive unfortunately is the Passenger Pigeon.  They were hunted to extinction.  The watercolor below is of Passenger Pigeons, Ectopistes migratorius, juvenile (left,) male (center,) female (right.)  (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.)

We live close to Kennesaw National Battlefield Park, a Civil War park.  One of the hills there is called "Pigeon Hill."  I researched it and found out that thousands of Passenger Pigeons once inhabited this hill.  Now Pigeon Hill is known for a fierce battle.  On June 27, 1864, Union soldiers and the Confederate Army fought there.  Just that day, the Union Army suffered 3,000 casualties out of their 130,000 troops and the Confederate casualties came up to 1,000 men out of their 65,000 troops.  When one walks up to Pigeon Hill there is no memory remaining of the birds or the troops, just the big rocks. The rocks are grey and look like large pigeons.

The Passenger Pigeon story is very sad.  These birds used to fly over the US in large kits.  I read that in 1832 a kit of 2.25 billion Passenger Pigeons had flown over one area in an afternoon.  There were so many of them that the American public thought they could hunt them, sell them and eat them without reserve.  By 1880 the Passenger pigeon population was beyond recovery point and they became extinct.  You can read "Extinction of the American Passenger Pigeon - The True Story" here.

Passenger Pigeons by Allan Brooks, Canadian 1869-1945

Feral pigeons have also been used during wartime. In the first and second World Wars, messenger pigeons saved hundreds of lives by carrying intelligence bulletins over enemy lines.  They carried vital information and some were decorated just like valiant soldiers.  A pigeon named "Cher Ami" received the Croix de Guerre.  Below is a picture from the National Archives showing Men of the 21st Signal Loft releasing pigeons in March 1943.

In Venice I took pictures of pigeons, of course.  If not pigeons, then I would have had to take pictures of tourists, since there are even more of them...

People have always liked to feed pigeons as can be seen in the two vintage postcards below - one in St. Petersburg, Florida, and the other in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

In Venice, in the olden days, postcards showing pigeons were sold

and local artists used them in their paintings, such as Antonio Ermolao Paoletti (1834-1912.)  As shown in the collage below he often used the same background and changed the models.

More recently Berlin-based Swiss artist Julian Charriere and German artist Julius von Bismark captured, airbrushed and released painted pigeons in St. Mark's Square for their project during the Venice Architecture Biennale.  Charriere told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Serra "Pigeons make up part of our urban landscape, but we view them as though they are an unrecognizable mass, whereas each one has its own identity."  Below are some of their special pigeons.  (I do not like the idea of painted pigeons - it's not good for the birds and they stand out for predators.)

"Pigeon Safari" by Julian Charriere and Julius von Bismark (Courtesy the artists.)

I thought that writing a post about Venice pigeons would be short and take just a page or less... was I wrong.  As usual I had to find our more about pigeons in general, and there is so much to learn about them.  Pigeons have been part of the San Marco picture for so long that it is hard to ignore them.

Piazza San Marco painted by Romolo Tessari, Italian 1868-1925

I'll finish with this sweet series of circa 1905 postcards of Venice pigeons - the last postcard shows kissing pigeons saying "ciao."