The evolution of the crop gland has been of vital importance to the pigeons. This bilobed diverticulum (a blind pouch) of the esophagus, located just posterior to the buccal cavity, serves as a storage organ for food. Subsisting for the most part on seeds, buds, leaves, and fruits, foods of low protein content and nutritive value, pigeons must consume large quantities during each feeding day. The rate of food intake can be higher than the digestion rate would otherwise allow, the surplus food accumulating in the crop to be digested after the birds have gone to roost. The ability to store food has enabled some pigeons to be represented among the small list of birds—geese and certain galliform birds are other examples—that can live as efficient grazers, occupying a leaf-eating niche in wooded country, either in the tree canopy or on the forest floor. Some, such as the wood pigeon (Columba palumbus), have secondarily adapted to more-open country to exploit the food supplies created by agricultural expansion. This pigeon is typical of the many that obtain their food partly in trees and partly on the ground. In midwinter it can subsist entirely on clover leaves and spends 95 percent of the day collecting the leaf fragments at 60–100 pecks per minute. By such intensive feeding, a single bird can collect 35,000 clover leaf fragments (45 grams, dry weight) per day. In spring this diet is supplemented with tree buds and flowers and also pasture weed seeds; in summer the diet is chiefly cereal grain; in autumn declining corn stocks on the stubbles are supplemented with tree foods such as acorns and beech mast.
The mourning dove (Zenaidura macroura) of North America and the turtledove (Streptopelia turtur) and stock dove (C. oenas) of Europe rarely take green vegetation, do not feed in trees, and so are examples of the trend toward complete ground feeding. These doves subsist almost entirely on seeds collected from low herbage or the ground. In winter such food sources become unproductive, so the turtledove and the mourning dove, in the northern part of their respective ranges, migrate southward. Turtledoves migrate from northern Europe to winter in central Africa. The ancients were well aware of this movement: “They shall hasten as a bird out of Egypt, and as a dove out of the land of Assyria” (Hosea 11:11).
Adaptation to ground feeding has progressed much further in various tropical genera, though the ecology of the species involved barely has been studied. In the New World a series can be traced from the typical Zenaida pigeons, through the ground doves (Columbina, Claravis, Metriopelia and Scardafella), which are mostly compact with short tails, and the Leptotila doves of South America, with longer legs suitable for running over the ground, to the New World quail doves (Geotrygon and Starnoenas). The last are relatively long-legged and partridgelike, spending most of their time on the forest floor. In the Australasian region there is a similar series, from scrub-country doves resembling Zenaida and Streptopelia—here represented by Geopelia—through the emerald doves and bronzewings (Chalcophaps and Phaps), to the Old World quail doves (Gallicolumba and various derivatives). Most of these quail doves live on the forest floor, collecting fallen seeds and fruits and seeds from low herbage, but in Australia a few are found in open country. Some aberrant species have evolved even further toward ground living, an extreme case being the pheasant pigeon (Otidiphaps nobilis) of New Guinea and adjacent islands, which resembles a pheasant. Evolution toward ground-living forms in Australasia and South America may have been helped by a paucity of mammalian carnivores that would normally be predatory on ground-living birds, which may partly explain why the extreme development of such forms has not occurred in Africa.
The radiation of pigeons into fully arboreal, fruit-eating types also is most apparent in Australasia, with the brown fruit doves (Phapitreron), green pigeons (Treron), and the fruit doves (Ptilinopus and Ducula). Within these genera there are a large number of sympatric (coexisting) species differing by a wide variety of species-specific colour patterns that serve for mate recognition and, hence, species isolation. Nevertheless, the predominant colour of most fruit pigeons is green, which ensures effective camouflage when the birds are, as usually, among tree foliage. The success of fruit pigeons in this region may have resulted from the absence of competition from monkeys—important fruit eaters in Africa and South America. Fruit pigeons are adept at perching on slender branches and have large mouths that allow them to swallow large fruit. In tropical forests, appropriate trees with ripe fruit tend to occur sporadically, so most of the fruit pigeons move through large areas of country in flocks to seek out their food.
When feeding on the ground, a pigeon must be looking downward for much of the time and therefore is vulnerable to predators such as foxes. The widespread habit of feeding in flocks has probably not evolved as an antipredator device but rather to help the birds to locate their food. Many species possess signal marks that become prominent in sudden flight, just as some rabbits display the white underparts of the tail. The wood pigeon has white wing bars that flash on takeoff, the Nicobar pigeon (Caloenas nicobarica) a white tip to the tail.
A consequence of feeding in a flock is that differences in individual attributes are more readily manifested, and this finds expression in a strongly developed social hierarchy (peck order). In competitive situations submissive individuals are frequently supplanted by more dominant individuals, and efforts to avoid conflict result in their getting less food. During times of shortage they are the first to die, other flock members remaining perfectly healthy. There is no evidence that social behaviour has evolved as a mechanism whereby populations can achieve self-regulation of their numbers, as has sometimes been suggested.
In most pigeons, a male in reproductive condition acquires a territory, which it proclaims with an advertisement call, usually a variant of the typical pigeon “coo” sound. Intrusion from other pigeons is prevented, at first by threat displays involving sleeking the plumage, stretching the head forward, and partially raising the wings. If these displays of aggressiveness are ineffective, the male then attacks the intruder, pecking at the opponent and delivering sharp blows with the carpal joint of the wing. Females behaving submissively are gradually tolerated, particularly by unpaired males, enabling pair formation to proceed. In pigeons that build their own nests in scrub and open woodland, territories may be large, but in some hole- and cavity-nesting species, such as the rock dove, only the area around the actual nest site is defended. A shortage of suitable sites forces the latter to be semicolonial. Many male pigeons perform display flights in and near the territory to attract unmated females. Such displays frequently involve exaggerated movements, slow wing beating, and, in some, loud clapping noises produced by the wings. The underparts of the tail, and sometimes other areas of the plumage, may have contrasting light and dark patterns that are displayed during flight.
Pair formation has been well studied in the rock dove and Barbary dove. A sexually mature male typically approaches a submissive member of the same species with the bowing display (in most pigeons this occurs within a previously acquired territory, but not invariably). Bowing is primarily an aggressive display, involving tendencies to advance and attack and to mount and copulate. It is usually accompanied by vocalization—the bow call. Females normally retreat from the bowing display and exhibit submissive postures but if receptive sink to the ground with lowered wings and tail. This may result in the male mounting immediately; if not, he gradually becomes less aggressive and commences the nest demonstration display. Being a submissive display, this reduces any female fear and attracts her closer, leading to a state where the pair now accept each other’s presence. Displays that cement the pair bond involve mutual nibbling of each other’s feathers, particularly those of the head and neck. At this early stage of the cycle, the female exhibits juvenile behaviour, begging food from the male who in turn feeds her. This is the normal stage at which the female solicits and copulation occurs, interspersed with displacement preening. The female gradually assumes a more assertive role as she ceases to fear her partner and will attempt to push him off the nest site and occupy it herself. The male is now stimulated to search for nest material, which he brings back to the sitting female, and one or both incorporate the material into a nest.
The specific acts of seeing her mate build a nest and of being involved herself stimulate the female’s neuroendocrine system so that estrogen secretion rises, causing the oviduct to develop about five days before eggs will be laid. Seeing and incubating eggs, or seeing another bird doing so, stimulates prolactin secretion causing the crop gland to become secretory, so that “pigeon milk” is available when the eggs hatch. From this time onward the crop gland gradually regresses, so that the young, by the time they are ready to leave the nest, are fed almost entirely on environmental supplies. The production of a highly proteinaceous milk enables these seed- and fruit-eating birds to be independent of animal food when the young need maximum nutrition. The limitations of crop milk production also have doubtlessly set the limit to the maximum number of young that can be reared, so that no pigeon ever lays more than two eggs and many fruit eaters lay only one.
Most pigeons are multibrooded and have long breeding seasons, timed to correspond with the period of high food availability for both adults and young. Temperate-zone pigeons, like other temperate-zone birds, use proximate (immediate) environmental signals to insure attaining reproductive maturity at the appropriate time, one of the major signals being the seasonal changes of day length. The neuro-endocrine apparatus of British wood pigeons is stimulated by the day lengths of March; the gonads become active at that time and remain in breeding condition until September, when day lengths once more fall below the stimulatory threshold. This period of activity is appropriate to the season during which actual reproduction is feasible. The turtledove is stimulated into breeding condition in April during its migration north and lays its first eggs in late April and early May. The gonads spontaneously regress in August, inhibiting further activity, even though environmental conditions are good and breeding success is at a peak. The onset of reduced breeding activity in the presence of day lengths that were stimulatory in April is a safety mechanism; by reducing the physical strains associated with breeding, it enables the adults to accumulate the energy reserves needed to replace the flight feathers (vital for successful long-distance migration) and to lay down fat reserves for migration. Many pigeons, however, molt throughout the breeding season.
Most pigeons build their own nests, simple flat platforms of twigs, in scrub or woodland. Some tree-nesting species occasionally nest on the ground; others regularly do so. White eggs are particularly attractive to predators, so, presumably to reduce these risks, some of the ground-nesting pigeons (e.g., Old and New World quail doves) lay brown or cream-coloured eggs. In many pigeons, once the eggs are laid, both members of the pair share the duties of incubation, changing over on or near the nest site, so that the eggs are normally not left uncovered.
A few pigeons have adapted to nesting in crevices and holes, reducing the risks of egg predation but increasing the chances that the adult will be cornered on the nest by a predator. Almost invariably, the clutch contains only one or two eggs. The newly hatched young are at first continuously brooded but later are left for long periods while the parents seek food. The larger pigeons usually visit the nest only twice a day, bringing a crop full of food if feeding conditions are suitable. The young, called squabs, beg for food by pushing at the parent’s breast, at the same time emitting a squeaky hunger note. They insert their bills in corners of the parent’s mouth and are then fed by regurgitation. Although a pigeon is capable of rearing an artificial brood of three young, only two squabs can be fed at a time, and natural broods of three are extremely rare. In several species so far studied, when the nestlings are about three-quarters grown, the parents begin a new cycle, building a new nest nearby and laying eggs.
Unguarded young are less subject to predation than are eggs. This is the case partly because of the squabs’ more cryptic colouring, but primarily it is because they are capable of making a marked threat display. At the approach of danger, they inflate their crops with air, causing them to become much bigger, and thrust their heads towards the enemy, at the same time hissing and snapping the mandibles together.