Paris is full of pigeons. Especially in the districts away from the central areas, where cars and people are fewer. They hop about the streets, pecking away at the dust on the pavements, desperate for something to eat: the search for food seemingly their sole purpose in life. There are so many of them, I fell, that they must dies in their droves, through hunger if nothing else. SO where do they go? Out in the country there are wild animals to devour the dead bodies, but what happens in the big cities? Or are there millions of dead pigeons lying about on unvisited flat roof-tops and in guttering and what not. They can't all head for the Seine when they're about to die, surely? Or is this one of life's unexplained mysteries?

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Originally posted by Colin, Paris, France:
Paris is full of pigeons. They can't all head for the Seine when they're about to die, surely?

Only if they are mentally ill, and so die in Seine ! (If they dove in )

The straight answer is that they are consumed by rats, birds such as jackdaws and other carrion eaters, dogs and insects. They rot too. There are many beetles and flies that devour corpses directly or by laying eggs which become maggots. A corpse will be gone within weeks. Furthermore old and sick birds take themselves off to hide, in an attempt to evade predators, so they are not often found lying around in the open.

Does Paris have any hawks? Manhattan has a growing population of hawks, and I am sure that pigeons are on their menu. While there are not nearly enough hawks to account for all the missing bodies, they could account for some. Are owls large enough to eat pigeons?

Fred, your puns are worse than mine. Shame on you.

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Originally posted by DorianGreyed:
Does Paris have any hawks?

Language difficulty ! When Americans speak of hawk they mean a buzzard, so the answer is 'just possibly'. The European buzzard buteo buteo was once quite rare in England. It was persecuted by gamekeepers. Amazingly, it is now our commonest bird of prey,outnumbering the ubiquitous kestrel.It is not a bird which, historically, would be seen in cities, though. The habitat it prefers is high hills and moorlands but it is turning up in London now and we have breeding pairs right in the City of London itself. It has decided that a tall building makes a passable cliff or rock face.Not only that but the feral pigeon is descended from doves that are found on cliffs; they long ago decided that any tallish building was as good as a cliff; so the buzzard is well set for a food supply. (London now has clusters of 'skyscraper' blocks,like Manhattan, which it never had pre- 1960 because of the nature of the ground ).

Paris does not have such groups of tall buildings in or near the centre so it does not provide such a good habitat for a buzzard: it doesn't appear that the bird is found there.

Paris has sparrowhawks in its parks. These can just take pigeons but they much prefer sparrows and other small birds.Kestrels, the smalest hawk we have, may be seen in Paris; there are pairs found near Notre Dame; they are not really up to catching a pigeon though, so they present no real threat to 'the flying rats' as London's Mayor, Ken Livingstone, calls them .

No owl that is found in Northern France or England is big enough to take a pigeon. This week we did have an owl attacking small dogs in England. This however turned out to be an Eagle Owl that had escaped from an aviary .

The bird I was refering to is specifically a red-tailed hawk, named Pale Male. He lives (or lived) across the street from New York's Central Park. Peregrine falcons also live in New York.

I have also just read that NYC has at least one Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus). It was discovered in Central Park last year. both the owls and the red-tailed hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) feeding, I am sure that old pigeons don't have much of a chance to die peacefully.

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Originally posted by DorianGreyed:
The bird I was refering to is specifically a red-tailed hawk.

Red-tailed hawk : buteo jamaicensis
Buzzard : buteo buteo

So it is a buzzard .

We do have peregrines in London. There was great excitement for the 'twitchers' when the first pair nested on a tower block in the City. Others have nested since. As yet there are none in Paris. In 2004,there was an attempt to get a campaign going, with a proposal to put nest boxes on the roof of the Mitterrand Library,but it came to naught.

The London ones treat the pigeons like a pizza delivery. Of the nest shown on BBC, every so often the female would dive down and catch one passing below, hardly drawing breath to do it. (The BBC Naturewatch team had a rooftop camera covering this nest, inter alia. Every year they set up nature watch cameras all over Britain in Spring and broadcast the results both live and with edited highlights each evening )

Sounds as though your pigeons are indeed in danger .

Dear o dear. Every pigeon I see now makes me think of hawks and buzzards and falcons and maggots and rats. C'est beau, Paris ...