History of Domestic and Feral Pigeons (Columba Livia) in Finland Before 1900 A.D
Ornis Fennica 78:119-126 . 2001 History of Domestic and Feral Pigeons (Columba livia) in Finland before 1900 A.D . Timo Vuorisalo, Esa Lehikoinen & Rauno Lahtinen Vuorisalo, T., Lehikoinen, E. & Lahtinen, R., Section of Ecology, Department of Biology, University ofTurku, FIN-20014 Turku, Finland Received 7 November 2000, accepted 20 December 2000 The oldest certain evidence for domestic pigeons (Columba livia) in Finland dates back to 1557, when pigeons were kept at the Iso-Heikkilä royal estate near Turku. For the period 1600-1800 evidence is extremely scarce . In the 19th century both domestic and feral pigeons were well-known in Finland, although rarely mentioned in ornitho- logical literature. In Helsinki there were feral pigeons in 1831-1847, and by around 1880 they were established in several cities in southern and central Finland. Although pigeons were sometimes kept in Finnish manor houses in the 19th century (e.g. in Haminalahti), this was probably not common . U. Godenhjelm, the local postmaster in Mariehamn (Aland Islands), was granted permission to build a dovecote in 1894, and was mentioned as the first trainer ofmessengers in Finland. Besides messengers, in the late 19th century pigeons were experimentally used as decoy birds in hawk-traps . There is no evidence for organized persecution of urban feral pigeons before 1900. 1. Introduction by the 1880's. Feral pigeons now breed commonly in built-up environments in southern and central Domestic and feral pigeons are globally wide- Finland, and even in Lapland (Huhta 1987, spread descendants of the Rock Dove (Columba Väisänen et al. 1998). The total population is es- livia), which are either actively taken care of by timated to be about 40 000 breeding pairs (Väisä- human beings (domestic pigeons) or which live nen et al.
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