A Technical University of Munich study of 75 nests found that male feral pigeons step up incubation when food is scarce, keeping eggs covered while females forage, and raises welfare questions about feeding bans.
Few animals are as familiar, or as unloved, as the city pigeon. They crowd squares and railway stations, nest on ledges and under bridges, and are the target of feeding bans in cities around the world. Yet their private lives, including how a pair shares the work of raising young, have received surprisingly little attention.
A new study from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) suggests those lives are more flexible than they might appear. Writing in Royal Society Open Science, researchers report that when food is scarce, male pigeons take on a bigger share of incubation, freeing females to search for food and keeping overall care of the eggs almost unchanged.
“Our study highlights how food limitation affects pigeons,” said lead author Brandon Mak, a research associate at TUM’s Chair of Terrestrial Ecology. “Even under averse conditions, pigeons are able to successfully hatch their offspring.”
Two parents, unequal shares
Feral pigeons are descendants of the rock dove, Columba livia, a cliff-nesting bird that people domesticated thousands of years ago and later bred for food, racing and carrying messages. Escaped and abandoned birds founded the feral populations now found in cities on every inhabited continent. Ledges on buildings stand in for the cliffs their ancestors once nested on.
Pigeons are biparental. Both parents incubate the eggs, typically a clutch of two, and both later feed the chicks on crop milk, a nutrient-rich secretion produced in the lining of the crop, an expandable pouch in the throat. Pigeons are among the few birds that make such a substance, along with flamingos and some penguins.
The work is not divided equally. In the TUM study, females did most of the incubating regardless of how much food was available. With abundant food, females spent 81 percent of their time on the nest and males 17 percent. The researchers suggest that females’ share is limited by their energy reserves.
Shifting the load
When food was scarce, the balance shifted. Females’ time on the nest fell to 75 percent, while males’ rose to 22 percent. Because the father picked up much of the slack, the eggs remained covered almost as much of the time as before.
That flexibility matters because eggs left uncovered can cool, and developing embryos need steady warmth. A parent that leaves the nest to feed risks the clutch, while one that stays risks running down its own reserves. By adjusting how they share the job, the pairs appear to manage both.
Pigeon pairs typically follow a daily schedule, with the male sitting on the eggs for a long stretch in the middle of the day and the female covering the rest of the day and the night. Incubation lasts about two and a half weeks. The study suggests that this routine is not fixed, and that males can extend their shifts when their partners need more time to feed.
Weighing the evidence
The researchers studied 75 nests in three cities that have feeding bans. One group of pigeons lived in managed lofts, where they received reliable food. The other nested freely on buildings and had to find food on their own.
Managed pigeon lofts are used in a number of European cities, including several in Germany, as a way of concentrating birds in one place and controlling their numbers. Inside, caretakers can feed the birds, clean up after them and replace their eggs with dummies.
To track incubation and body condition without disturbing the birds, the team placed weight sensors under the nests. The sensors recorded when a bird was sitting on the eggs, and the weight of the bird doing so.
The weight data revealed who was paying the cost of scarce food. Females with adequate food weighed about 35 grams, or 10 percent, more than females without supplemental food, a difference the researchers interpret as a sign of differing energy reserves. Males showed no meaningful weight differences between the two groups. Feeding bans, in other words, appeared to affect mainly the females.
What feeding bans may do
The findings could inform one of the most contentious questions in urban wildlife management. Many cities ban or restrict the feeding of pigeons, in the hope that less food will mean fewer birds. Venice, for example, banned the sale of pigeon feed in St. Mark’s Square in 2008.
The TUM study suggests that pigeons can still hatch chicks under harsh conditions, so feeding bans may not stop them from breeding. According to the release, the trouble may come later, when young birds struggle to find food and many may die of starvation.
Mak suggests that “measures that act earlier in the reproductive cycle such as regularly replacing eggs with dummy eggs” are “a more welfare-friendly way of keeping pigeon populations under control.”
Egg replacement works by letting pairs incubate as normal while preventing chicks from hatching, so populations decline over time without birds starving.
A case for understanding behavior
Wolfgang Weisser, professor of terrestrial ecology at TUM, sees a broader lesson. “Living with urban animals requires a deeper understanding of their nuanced behavior,” he said, “regardless of how we feel about them.”
Weisser argues that the problem is less whether pigeons are managed than how. “Pigeon management is controversial because of how it is done,” he said. In his view, people’s interactions with animals, including changes to their environments, “should be done reflexively” and “include more effective species-specific measures.”
The study measured incubation and adult body condition, not the fate of the chicks after hatching, so the release’s concerns about later starvation are an inference rather than a direct result. The release also does not give the names of the three cities. The research was funded by Wild Animal Initiative, and the authors declare no competing interests.
Notes
- Mak, B., et al. “When the going gets tough, the dove gets going: feral pigeons maintain nest attendance rates during food shortages with asymmetrical biparental care.” Royal Society Open Science, 30 September 2026. DOI: 10.1098/rsos.261123.
- Technical University of Munich. “Pigeon fathers take on more responsibility when times get tough.” EurekAlert!, 30 September 2026. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1146038.
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