It rained pretty heavily here this morning, and though the rain has stopped now, there’s still a light sheen of water over the stone and grass at my sit spot. I’ve been appreciating the beauty of rainy days much more lately—the rain makes the cobblestones and spires glow, and at night the warm lamplight makes the whole city come alive. The air doesn’t have the distinct smell of rain, but the cool wind blowing makes everything feel clean and fresh. For some reason, there are a ton of people visiting Oxford today, and they’ve been walking past my sit spot in little rows of colorful umbrellas. Even though they tend to block up the narrow streets here, I really enjoy their excitement, and the infectious positive energy is helping to brighten this otherwise dreary day.

I noticed a round grey pigeon wandering near my sit spot (I think it wanted food from me…) that looks very different from the pigeons I’m familiar with at home. It was much larger than any other pigeon I’ve seen, with lavender feathers on its breast and a bluish-grey body. This pigeon’s head was almost comically small compared to its body and the shape of its eye made it look slightly surprised at all times, which I thought gave it a very silly yet distinguished appearance. Aside from a little band of white feathers at its neck, this pigeon seems to have a more muted appearance than the other pigeons I’ve seen, which tend to have striped wings and a large patch of iridescent feathers. It reminds me of the illustrations of pigeons and birds I’ve been studying in a course I’m taking here on medieval bestiaries, which are manuscripts of illustrated animals created during the Middle Ages. (A fun fact is that mailboxes at Oxford colleges are called “pigeonholes,” or a “pidge” for short!)

Enjoy a blurry picture of this silly guy:

Using iNaturalist, I discovered that my new friend was a wood pigeon, which is the largest and most common pigeon in the UK. They are found in gardens, parks, woodlands, and farmlands all across the country, and its call (which sounds like “take two cows Taffy,” according to this site) is a hallmark of the English countryside. I wonder how this country-dweller ended up in the heart of Oxford, and if it was drawn to the greenery at my sit-spot because of the similarities to its native habitat. I also wonder what accounts for the difference in appearance between the pigeons at home and the wood pigeon…Are there evolutionary benefits for the wood pigeon to be larger and more muted in color, or the city-dwelling pigeons at home to be smaller and more colorful?