Pigeon Roost at Picture Canyon

Pigeon Roost at Picture Canyon - 17 May 2024, 7am, Picture Rock Canyon, Comanche National Grassland, near Campo, Colorado. Recorded by Lang Elliott. This is a binaural recording; please wear headphones. While exploring the Comanche National Grassland in southeastern Colorado, I visit Picture Canyon, known for its scenic vistas, unique sandstone rock formations, and prehistoric rock art. While I hoped to find something exotic to record, I instead stumble upon something mundane but welcome nonetheless. The high point is my discovery of a large communal roost of Rock Pigeons, nesting on ledges and in nooks and crannies along an extended sheer cliff rising about fifty feet above me. While this is the same species that is found in city parks around the world, I am thrilled by this rare opportunity to record their colony sounds, free of urban traffic noise and people talking. After spooking the birds, I hide in a clump of trees at the base of the cliff, and wait patiently for adults to return to their nesting site. Within a minute or two, several pigeons fly in, and before long the colony is alive with sounds. Pigeons coo while others arrive and depart in bursts of surprisingly loud wing claps and fluttering. It is satisfying to record these amazing sounds, much as they were heard thousands of years ago in rocky canyons and along oceanside cliffs across Southern Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia, long before the species was domesticated and eventually introduced to urban areas around the world.