Pigeons
This reading profile brings together 6 source-linked articles that reference pigeons.
Explore Fauna’s source-checked field guides and research articles covering pigeons, or search the species catalog below for individual species profiles.Source-linked reading
- Field guideBird tracks and toe patternsBird footprints are easiest to read as a trail, not a single stamp. Start with toe geometry, then use webbing, stride, size, and habitat to build a cautious identification.
- Field guideThe IUCN Red List: categories explainedThe IUCN Red List is the global standard for extinction risk. It sorts each assessed species into one of nine categories — every one a dated, evidence-based verdict in a stated geographic scope.
- Field guideHow birds flyA flying bird redirects air with a wing whose camber, angle, area, and motion continually change. The resulting aerodynamic force can be oriented upward for weight support or forward for propulsion; muscles, joints, feathers, tail, and sensory feedback tune each wingbeat.
- Field guideHow birds navigate during migrationMigration requires both a heading and a way to relate the bird's current position to a destination. Different birds combine inherited programs, learned landmarks, and several sensory cues, with no single mechanism explaining every journey.
- Field guideWhy birds form flocksA flock gives each member more eyes and ears and can transform many local reactions into coordinated group motion. The same crowd also brings competition, disease, conspicuousness, and unequal positions, so birds join, leave, and rearrange flocks as risks and resources change.
- Field guideWhy birds have air sacsBird lungs do not inflate and collapse like mammalian lungs. Expanding air sacs shift air through branching bronchi and parabronchi; in the best-known pathway, fresh flow continues across gas-exchange tissue during both inhalation and exhalation, while the sacs themselves exchange little gas.