Wings and Shutter Clicks
The bond between humans and pigeons dates back millennia. These grey birds, originally cliff-dwellers from coastal regions of Southern Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia, were among humanity's first avian companions, domesticated roughly 5,000 years ago. Throughout history, we've enlisted pigeons for countless purposes: as messengers in ancient Egypt, religious symbols, food sources, racing competitors, and wartime couriers. Their story exemplifies our tendency to reshape other species to serve human needs.
In the early twentieth century, aerial photography presented a fascinating challenge. Long before drone photography became commonplace, photographers faced limited and expensive options for aerial photography.
Enter Dr. Julius G. Neubronner, an apothecary with a fondness for pigeons. Dr Neubronner would, in 1907, invent a pigeon-mounted camera. A seemingly silly invention, that was actually an impressive innovation.
Dr. Neubronner had started using pigeons to transport prescriptions and urgent medications. This was going surprisingly well. However, when one of his feathered couriers disappeared during a delivery, only to return four weeks later unharmed, Neubronner was puzzled. Being a curious-minded individual, he had the idea to create lightweight cameras that could document the birds' mysterious journeys.
His designs featured remarkable innovation: pneumatic timing mechanisms to trigger the shutter at precise intervals, and comfortable leather harnesses to hold the little cameras on the pigeons. Neubronner would release his aerial photographers up to 60 miles from home, knowing their natural instinct would drive them to take the most direct route back.
While his innovations were technological and his motives likely capitalistic, I find it hard to ignore the possibility that he was also somewhat motivated by a desire for greater understanding of these urban animals. This is a desire we all share today, as evidenced by online videos, such as those showing footage from cameras attached to domestic cats, giving us glimpses into the lives they lead when out of sight of their human owners.
His invention quickly gained international recognition at expositions. Visitors to the Dresden exhibition could witness the camera-equipped pigeons returning from their missions, with their photos immediately developed and sold as postcards.
The resulting images possessed a distinctive quality – spontaneous, random-seeming framing that captured a raw authenticity completely novel for their time. These photographic perspective must have shocked people in their day. And yet today, they seem strangely familiar thanks to photos and footage from drones, except maybe a little wonkier than we’re used to seeing. In some photos, the wings of the birds can be seen, which personally I think only adds to their charm. The German military even tested pigeon cameras on the Western Front battlefields. However, as airplane reconnaissance rapidly advanced, Neubronner's birds eventually returned to their traditional message-carrying duties.
The symbiotic relationship between humans and pigeons represents one of history's most enduring interspecies partnerships. Beyond their roles as messengers and photographers, pigeons served as navigational aids for sailors, carried critical medical supplies during sieges, delivered newspapers in early Paris, and were even trained for search and rescue operations. As we've molded them to our purposes, we've simultaneously altered their habitats and evolutionary trajectory. The rock doves that once nestled in Mediterranean cliff faces now roost on skyscrapers and under bridges, their wildness gradually domesticated into urban adaptability.
I sometimes wonder if pigeons experience any sense of displacement or longing. As they perch on concrete ledges that mimic their ancestral cliff homes, do they feel an inexplicable pull toward something they've never known? When they soar above our cities, does some ancient genetic memory stir within them? A faint recollection of coastal winds rather than updrafts between buildings? Of course, I recognise that this anthropomorphising likely stems from my own sense of disconnection from nature. Yet I can't help but see parallels between their adaptation to human-crafted environments and our own increasing distance from the natural world that shaped us.
By 2023, the United Nations reported that 57% of the global population lived in urban areas, with projections suggesting this figure will approach 70% by 2050. In developed nations like the United Kingdom, urbanisation exceeds 84%. Much like the domesticated pigeon that now thrives mainly in human-built environments far from its ancestral cliff dwellings, we've largely separated ourselves from the natural landscapes that shaped our evolution, creating artificial habitats of concrete and steel that bear little resemblance to our species' original context.
I find myself staring at these city pigeons, wondering if they feel as displaced as I do. In my recent short story, "A View From Above" I used these urban birds as an allegory for our own growing disconnection from nature. The protagonist, like me, observes how pigeons have adapted to life among our artificial structures, their ancestral memories of coastal cliffs fading with each generation. Through their journey, I explored my own sense of loss, and the homesickness for natural spaces I've rarely experienced but somehow still crave.
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Nicolle’s allegorical story can be read here.