Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!unmvax!nmt.edu!john
From: john@nmt.edu (John Shipman)
Newsgroups: rec.birds
Subject: Re: Lost Homing Pigeon
Summary: Why they call them Rock Doves
Message-ID: <1990Sep6.224033.10637@nmt.edu>
Date: 6 Sep 90 22:40:33 GMT
References: <2227@lectroid.sw.stratus.com> <1990Sep6.140149.18599@granite.cr.bull.com>
Organization: Zoological Data Processing
Lines: 28

John Horvath (horvath@granite.cr.bull.com) writes:
+--
| Speaking of misnomers, why do they call them rock doves too.
| I think this is a campaign by the pidgeon people to vindicate
| these creatures.  I have never seen one of these things out
| in the wild unless they were flying from one urban blight to
| the next. Seriously, has anyone ever seen them in any habitat
| that resembled their typical concrete domiciles, something
| like canyon floors?
+--

The southern side of Pigeon Point, between Santa Cruz and
Half Moon Bay on the California coast, is made up of tall
rocky cliffs with flat tops.  I have often seen groups of
twenty or so Rock Doves sitting on these cliff tops, far
from urban blight.

I will never forget the first day I found them here in their
original habitat.  Just after I arrived, a Peregrine Falcon
came screaming up one of the rocky chutes and scattered them
as if someone had thrown a grenade.  It was my first
peregrine.  My pictures of this splendid bird showed that it
was a Peale's Falcon (_Falco peregrinus pealei_), a
distinctly dark race of peregrine that ranges along the
coasts of the Pacific Northwest.
-- 
John Shipman/Zoological Data Processing/Socorro, NM/john@jupiter.nmt.edu
``Let's go outside and commiserate with nature.''  --Dave Farber