# How far do feral city pigeons travel?



## TitanicWreck

Pigeons can travel over great distances-But with city feral pigeons, where food and shelter is within reach, I suspect they don't travel far....

For example, under a nearby bridge, readily recognizable individuals sleep in the same corner of the rafters every night. Sometimes in the day i'll see the same ones under the same bridge-a local person pours bags of birdseed there every day, so they need not travel for food.. 
Is it possible a city pigeon might live its life in just a block radius-or do they sometimes 'stretch their wings' and travel for miles?


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## Matt D.

oh yeah they usually fly for 10 mile trips (min.) when they are young both wild and racing birds... they have to fly it is who they are... just like we have to walk... we dont sit in our houses our whole lives... jez that would suck.... =)


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## John_D

Ferals (and wild Rock Pigeons) travel only as far as they have a good pigeon reason to. That's their nature. They don't migrate. Like Matt says, young birds may fly a few miles - because they are young and it's all new to them - but they will usually come back to their home ground.

Once youngsters can fly, it's normal for them to follow the male parent around for a week or two while he shows them where there are feeding places. Then they are on their own, but generally stay around the area they know. They are 'social' birds and stick with the flock.

In and around my home town, there are a few distinctive flocks. Certainly some of them have been in pretty much the same places, numbers staying about the same, ever since I was a little kid rather a lot of years ago now 

I doubt any of my local crowd, who meet up to lounge on the roof across the street and - if they're lucky - eat at my balcony 'diner', have ever been outside of a couple of square miles.

John


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## Maggie-NC

We have a huge feral flock within 1/4 mile of our house. They have the best of all worlds, several ponds to drink from, some shelter and ample feed from large fields with cattle. However, we believe that many of these pigeons only come to this location to feed and travel back to their home base to roost at a local Home Depot because we sometimes see many flying back in that direction late in the afternoon. I would estimate they travel from 8 - 10 miles.

This is an ideal place to release pigeons - however, we can't, because they usually beat us back home so we have given up.


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## Charis

Lady Tarheel said:


> We have a huge feral flock within 1/4 mile of our house. They have the best of all worlds, several ponds to drink from, some shelter and ample feed from large fields with cattle. However, we believe that many of these pigeons only come to this location to feed and travel back to their home base to roost at a local Home Depot because we sometimes see many flying back in that direction late in the afternoon. I would estimate they travel from 8 - 10 miles.
> 
> This is an ideal place to release pigeons - however, we can't, because they usually beat us back home so we have given up.


LOL. I agree about the traveling and I've had similar experience with pigeons beating me back home.
I gave some ferals away, most of them escaped and they traveled 60 miles back to my [their] house in not much time at all. Within several weeks...they were all back.


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