Rescued a pigeon in spring, hand-fed him for a few weeks, and he has been free in the spare room since. Lovely for months. In the last three weeks he coos at me, bows, turns in circles, and then pecks my hands hard and smacks me with a wing if I reach anywhere near the shelf he has claimed.
He does the courting thing and the attacking thing in the same five minutes, which is what I cannot make sense of. What is going on?
The shelf is doing work here as well. Pigeons get extremely protective of one specific spot, and if your attacks are happening in one place rather than everywhere, that place is the problem rather than you.
Take the nest-like quality out of it if he is not meant to be breeding: no nest material, no dark corner he can defend, and stay off the shelf unless you have a reason. Mine owns the top of a wardrobe and I have simply ceded it.
Do not smack back or shout. You are a rival and you have just accepted the challenge.
Three weeks of new behaviour in spring is hormones and imprinting, which is what the thread has said. The one alternative worth ruling out is pain: a bird that turns suddenly, particularly one that objects to being touched in a specific place, can be sore or unwell.
You would expect company: fluffed feathers, eating less, droppings changing, limping, going quiet. If none of that is there, treat it as behaviour, keep a long sleeve on, and reward him for being calm rather than for performing.
@hand_raised_him · last wk. · 3 replies
Courting you and then hitting you is not a contradiction, it is the whole diagnosis. You hand-fed him, so he has imprinted and you are not a person to him, you are another pigeon. Some of the time that makes you a mate and the rest of the time it makes you a rival.
The bowing, circling and cooing is courtship. The peck and the wing slap arrive when you fail to respond the way a pigeon would. Both are aimed at a bird, and the bird is you.
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@wing_slap_sunday · last wk.
Is that fixable or is it just what he is now?
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@hand_raised_him · last wk.
Manageable rather than reversible. Stop answering the courtship, keep handling calm and predictable, and seriously consider getting him a pigeon. A companion gives him somewhere to put all of that, and it is what has worked for most of the imprinted birds I have dealt with.
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