# What gender is our wood pigeon?



## PlumpChicken (Mar 8, 2015)

I know there is no true way of telling what a pigeons gender is, however, there are a few things that suggests that the woody is a female. For example, she never fluffs up her whole neck and bows down, instead she just jumps and fluffs up the back of her neck, she doesn't do the long coo but instead does short coos and when she's cooing, it's the only time any of us can pet her, otherwise she pecks quite hard, eventhough she's very attached to my daughter, she still doesn't let her pet her on the back


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## John_D (Jan 24, 2002)

I have a couple of adult (disabled) woodies and still not sure. There is a theory that the female has a smaller white patch and not quite such bright iridescence on the neck, but one would have to see a definite male and female together to test it out I think. Another we know is a boy, as he is now bowing and doing a throaty 'come hither' call at one of our feral rescues, without much response


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## PlumpChicken (Mar 8, 2015)

Our woodie is also disabled, since her feet are folded up to the side so she can't hold onto things properly, which is a pain since she always flies onto our heads (mainly my daughters) and ends up sliding off. She seems to have a thing with feet, whenever you tap your feet her pupils go small, she fluffs up her neck and jumps (sometimes she makes a weird duck noise whilst jumping). Can pigeons recognise themselves in mirrors? Because whenever we put the mirror in front of her, she doesn't react.


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## John_D (Jan 24, 2002)

The perpetual mirror problem 

One of mine did not, for sure. I propped up a mirror on the carpet and he looked at it, walked to and fro in front of it, then went round behind it. Not having found the 'other pigeon' he ignored the mirror thereafter.


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## PlumpChicken (Mar 8, 2015)

That's very cute our pigeon simply just looks, I've looked online and apparently, they can be trained to recognise themselves. However other forums have suggested putting a mirror in front of the pigeon, if it doesn't react it's a female, and if it does the puffy neck/stomach thing its a male


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## John_D (Jan 24, 2002)

Yeah, well ... the males are always more pompous


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## John_D (Jan 24, 2002)

Do you rescue birds usually, or is your woodie a one-off?


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## PlumpChicken (Mar 8, 2015)

She/he is a one off, my 13 year old daughter did the rescuing she was away at my brothers in Wales, when she found the little thing, she said it was only about 4 days old


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## PlumpChicken (Mar 8, 2015)

Olivia's been going on about wanting to rescue more birds, but she's too young to volunteer at bird rescues


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## John_D (Jan 24, 2002)

There's a saying that some people are bird magnets, so who knows


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## RockPigeon<3er (Aug 2, 2012)

PlumpChicken said:


> Olivia's been going on about wanting to rescue more birds, but she's too young to volunteer at bird rescues


Hate that. She won't really be able to do much of anything until she's 14-15, and then you have to be 18 to do a lot more stuff. 

If you have a bird banding station by y'all, you might call them. They let people volunteer, and it think for volunteering (at least here) you have to be like 9 at least.


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## PlumpChicken (Mar 8, 2015)

She might indeed be a bird magnet! one day she comes home to me, in tears because she found a young woodie that was paralyzed, it kept having fits, she phoned the RSPCA and they said that she should just leave the bird since it's going to die anyway. So she came back 3 days later with me, and it was still alive:/ we had to phone another rescue to put the poor birdie down


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## PlumpChicken (Mar 8, 2015)

She's turning 14 in June, but I'm sure she won't be allowed to actually rescue birds till she's 18, I guess the only volunteer work she could do when she turns 14 is pass out flyers or something like that?


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## John_D (Jan 24, 2002)

Yes, I would expect that whatever regulations apply to youngsters working anywhere (local corner shop, delivering newspapers or whatever) might apply to anything 'official'.

Avoid the RSPCA like the plague, I say.


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## PlumpChicken (Mar 8, 2015)

Yes they are awful, every time she has taken a pigeon there, they used to just put it down, even if it was just in shock (we used to live in Basingstoke, I didn't know whether there was any other rescues so I always told her to just take them to the RSPCA). There's a car tunnel that is filled with feral pigeons, a lot get ran over, or babies fall out and die, that's how she used to always find pigeons


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