From Couriers to City-Dwellers: The Changing Human–Pigeon Relationship Through Historic Pigeon Messaging, Urban Perceptions, and Training Practices

Mallory Peterson
Fri, 17 Apr 2026 10:15:00 PDT

Their coos echo off the walls of skyscrapers and their wings beat faster than the cadence of footsteps. Whether dodging cars or pecking at food scraps, pigeons are a constant character of urban environments. Their unique history has allowed them to raise their young under bridges and on windowsills. Pigeons and humans are inextricably intertwined, to the joy and dismay of many. Once celebrated as couriers, pigeons carried messages of war, love, and survival across vast distances, shaping human connection and history. Today, they are more often dismissed as pests, their presence flattened into the city noise.

This narrative piece explores the historical relationship between pigeons and humans with emphasis on the use of pigeons in U.S. war time communications and how shifting public perceptions have gradually soured a once positive relationship. Accompanying this timeline are personal accounts of the attempts to build a training relationship with Jupiter, a domesticated pigeon. While reflecting on shared history and working through the feats and frustrations of animal training, the piece invites readers to reconsider assumptions about urban wildlife and to imagine more compassionate, attentive modes of coexistence with the gray doves who share our sidewalks.