The global pigeon - Colin Jerolmack

The pigeon is the quintessential city bird. Domesticated thousands
of years ago as a messenger and a source of food, its presence on our
sidewalks is so common that people consider the bird a nuisance-if they
notice it at all. Yet pigeons are also kept for pleasure, sport, and
profit by people all over the world, from the "pigeon wars" waged by
breeding enthusiasts in the skies over Brooklyn to the Million Dollar
Pigeon Race held every year in South Africa.

Drawing on more than three years of fieldwork across three
continents, Colin Jerolmack traces our complex and often contradictory
relationship with these versatile animals in public spaces such as
Venice's Piazza San Marco and London's Trafalgar Square and in
working-class and immigrant communities of pigeon breeders in New York
and Berlin. By exploring what he calls "the social experience of
animals," Jerolmack shows how our interactions with pigeons offer
surprising insights into city life, community, culture, and politics.
Theoretically understated and accessible to interested readers of all
stripes, The Global Pigeon is one of the best and most original ethnographies to be published in decades.