‘He's like the Batman of pigeons’: On the road with London's bird rescuers

It is Sunday afternoon on a tiny patch of grass in Angel, pouring with rain, and I could really be anywhere else. I could be at the cinema, I think wistfully, or maybe there’s still time to go out for a nice pub lunch. Instead, I’m watching a bedraggled troop of pigeon enthusiasts coax a flock of birds from a tree to inspect their feet. Paul Themis, AKA Paul Leous Pigeon, the leader of the group, opens a tub of seeds and scatters some on the ground. 

As the birds descend, the volunteers peer down with hands on their knees to look for any hobblers. “That one!” says David, excitedly. Wearing a green plastic bag around his head to keep his durag dry, the 22-year-old is by all accounts the finest pigeon catcher in our group. He creeps towards his target, keeping his head and torso steady, before slowly splaying out his arms like a praying mantis. The pigeon is in his hands and upside down before the rest of the flock around him have left the ground.

It is, I’m told, a classic case of stringfoot. When pigeons stride about our glorious capital, they must wade through the hair and string and muck that we discard. It gums up their feet. Sometimes the detritus knots around their slim toes so badly they get a clubfoot. Other times, the string catches in the scaly grooves of their pink, dinosaur-like feet, and slices into their flesh to cut off the blood supply altogether. But for this handsome guy, no more. 

David passes the pigeon over to Lisa, another regular, who is stationed ready with a baby pink manicure set. With the focus of a watchmaker, she selects a pair of nail scissors and starts snipping. She gently unwinds the string wrapped tightly around the bird’s toes, and cuts the thread which has shackled his legs together like some kind of medieval prisoner. 

The group is a mix of stalwarts like Lisa and David, curious first-timers like the young couple who politely make their excuses after 15 minutes of driving rain (wimps), and the occasional members of London’s wildlife rescue scene. One of these is an abseiler called Frank, whose friend describes him as “the Batman of pigeons” and whose skills mean that he’s called upon at all hours to conduct the more daring animal rescues.

“Sometimes they call you late at night, being like ‘oh, we’ve got a pigeon!’”, Frank huffs. “That’s the worst. Once in a while I sacrifice my sleep, just to go and try to do something.”

Every city has its icons and villains in the animal world. New York recently appointed a Rat Czar, the latest in a long line of failed generals in the city’s unending murine crusade. But in London it’s the pigeon which feels most central to the iconography of the city, capable of stirring up love and vitriol in equal measure. It was a pigeon that delivered news of Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, and throughout the 19th and 20th centuries the capital was spotted with breeding and racing clubs. A few still remain, like the Ashridge Pigeon Racing Club in Mitcham, South London. But despite the heroism of decorated war pigeons in world war two — where life-saving messages earned the birds official laureates and esteemed titles such as William of Orange and Commando — pigeon ownership has steadily declined since the early 1900s. In 1948, the UK military stated that messenger pigeons were of no further use. 

When I told people I was writing about pigeons, friend after friend regaled me with their encounters: stories of revulsion at the birds colonising their gardens and spattering them with guano, of spending park-bench lunch breaks in childlike wonder at their elaborate mating rituals, and of horror at witnessing suicidal birds fly headfirst into traffic. 

I found myself pondering where the city stands vis-a-vis pigeons. Do we want what they have: the freedom of the skies, to mate with blissful abandon before feasting upon a dinner of takeaways? Do we admire the delicacy of their beauty, seeing something of ourselves in their overlooked charms? Or are we jealous of them, spiteful that any life form, even one as downtrodden as the city pigeon, has found a way to live in central London rent-free?

The only London mayor to treat pigeons with any real animus was Ken Livingstone. Upon his arrival as mayor in 2000, he declared holy war on the flocks at Trafalgar Square, announcing that pigeons “should all be shot” and that it was about time to stop “that bloody pigeon-feed seller. It is the heart of one of the great cities and there is nothing in it except pigeon shit.”

That bloody pigeon-feed seller was Bernard Rayner, whose family fed pigeons in Trafalgar Square for over 50 years, before he was paid off for an undisclosed sum as part of Livingstone’s drive to clean up the city. A hawk named Emu was brought in to patrol the square each day. Pigeon feeding became outlawed in the historic plaza, sparking outrage among the city’s ornithophiles. Paris Hilton claimed to visit the flock at Trafalgar Square each day when in the city, squeezing in visits between fashion shoots and nightclubs. When she was eventually fined for pigeon feeding in 2006, she said “but I love feeding the pigeons at Trafalgar Square… I even prefer it to going shopping!”

It was in these febrile times that Paul first picked up a pigeon. He’d never really paid them much attention before; just thought they were funny-looking, in a good way. But walking home from work one day in the mid-2000s, he came across a bird with a broken wing. “I just felt really sorry for him,” Paul tells me, crouched down with a bird-box in hand as people bring pigeons over for his inspection. “He was just wandering around trying to find some food, trying to survive. And it was almost like no one cared. He just looked really pitiful.”

Concerned Londoners have been setting stringfoot pigeons free on their own for decades. But by forming the London Pigeon Stringfoot and Rescue Group around seven years ago, Paul united the city’s pigeon rescuers under a common umbrella. The group meets every Sunday; a chance to connect, and for Paul to educate the city’s residents in the art of the pigeon rescue. 

“I’m not here for the people. I’m here for the pigeons,” retorts David, when I ask if he enjoys the social side of things too. His care for the birds came from seeing his grandparents in the Caribbean keep racing pigeons. He began rescuing city pigeons when he was 12, despite what his mates thought, and reckons he’s freed over 2,000 birds. “People my age would be saying, ‘You’re a weirdo, you’re touching them dirty animals.’ I’m like, you eat battery farmed chickens that have never seen daylight! The hell you mean these animals are dirty?”

When I first came across the group, I imagined it as a stable troop of do-gooders, meeting up for a nice day out of rescues. But after spending a few hours on the ground, I soon realise it’s more akin to boot camp. Pigeons don’t abide by our inane systems of days and weeks, and nor does the string which binds them. The group gives people the confidence to liberate pigeons on the go, after which many will leave Paul’s nest and only return sporadically. Hundreds of messages will pour into the Whatsapp chat in the days after I’m added, as members spot birds for rescue and dispatch somebody to save them. 

As for whether London is becoming kinder to pigeons as a result, David isn’t convinced. “Hell no!” he shouts, when I ask if the city is now a good place to be a pigeon. “Everyone wants to kill you. No one wants you around. Having your feet ripped off, going hungry, being shooed around and then living off little handouts when these animals were originally meant to be pets and messengers. That’s no quality of life.”

Maybe so, I think. But if I was a pigeon, I’d be happy he was here.