Pooping menaces or ‘flying puppies’? How pigeons are dividing a UK city

Early one Saturday, shutters at Norwich market were still down while a crowd gathered in the nearby Memorial Gardens to feed the market’s pigeons. Jenny Coupland, founder of the avian welfare group Peck Savers, arrived with a backpack of seed; the birds descended and their iridescent feathers caught the sun.

She says they’re ‘a bit jumpy today’ and, after a decade of feeding, calls the situation ‘a tinderbox’. The flock has swelled to about 300, prompting complaints from shoppers and traders. Eddie Graci called them ‘a damned nuisance’, citing birds on picnic tables, trying to pinch chips and leaving droppings.

The council has tested measures such as flying a Harris’s hawk over the market and exploring contraceptives, but the latter is not licensed in the UK and the hawk pilot was put on hold. Councillor Carli Harper accused some people of inflaming the issue with ‘industrial amounts of birdfeed’ and said the council is considering legal avenues to tackle the ‘irresponsible … selfish few who do not see reason’.

United Kingdom, Norwich

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