--- title: Pigeons: head bobbing, homing and city cliffs — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Pigeons: head bobbing, homing and city cliffs», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: The grey pigeons on every town square are the grandchildren of wild rock doves, birds that nest on sea cliffs, and to a pige --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/221-pigeons-head-bobbing-homing-and-city-cliffs/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/) / Pigeons: head bobbing, homing and city… # Pigeons: head bobbing, homing and city cliffs Lesson 221 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 15 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/biology/221-pigeons-head-bobbing-homing-and-city-cliffs/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/221-pigeons-head-bobbing-homing-and-city-cliffs/0/) — The grey pigeons on every town square are the grandchildren of wild rock doves, birds that nest on sea cliffs, and to a pigeon a tall building is simply a cliff with windows. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/221-pigeons-head-bobbing-homing-and-city-cliffs/1/) — Watch one walk across a station floor: its head seems to jerk back and forth, but really the head stays perfectly still for a moment while the body catches up, so the bird can see the world without blur. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/221-pigeons-head-bobbing-homing-and-city-cliffs/2/) — People have kept pigeons for thousands of years, for food, for racing and for carrying messages, because a homing pigeon taken far away will fly straight back to its own loft. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/221-pigeons-head-bobbing-homing-and-city-cliffs/3/) — Pigeons are smarter than they look: they can tell people's faces apart and remember who chased them and who fed them. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/221-pigeons-head-bobbing-homing-and-city-cliffs/4/) — So the next time someone calls them rats with wings, remember they are old partners of people, living in the cliffs we built. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/221-pigeons-head-bobbing-homing-and-city-cliffs/6/) — Homing pigeons can find their way back to their loft from hundreds of kilometres away; in the First World War a pigeon called Cher Ami carried a message that helped save nearly two hundred soldiers. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/221-pigeons-head-bobbing-homing-and-city-cliffs/7/) — City pigeons come from wild rock doves, which still nest on sea cliffs in places like Scotland and Ireland; buildings and ledges are their cliffs. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/221-pigeons-head-bobbing-homing-and-city-cliffs/8/) — A pigeon drinks by sucking water up as if through a straw, without tipping its head back like most birds, so it can drink fast and keep watch. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/221-pigeons-head-bobbing-homing-and-city-cliffs/9/) — Baby pigeons are rarely seen because the chicks stay hidden in the nest until they are almost grown; both parents feed them a special crop milk. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/221-pigeons-head-bobbing-homing-and-city-cliffs/10/) — City pigeons often get string or hair tangled round their toes, which can cut into the foot; wildlife rescuers carefully remove it. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/221-pigeons-head-bobbing-homing-and-city-cliffs/11/) — Pigeons can tell people apart by their faces, and in experiments they even learned to tell paintings by different artists apart. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/221-pigeons-head-bobbing-homing-and-city-cliffs/12/) — Calling pigeons rats with wings is unfair: they have lived alongside people for thousands of years, and people bred them on purpose. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/221-pigeons-head-bobbing-homing-and-city-cliffs/13/) — A male pigeon puffs out his neck, coos and turns in circles to show off to a female; his neck feathers shine green and purple in the light. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/221-pigeons-head-bobbing-homing-and-city-cliffs/14/) — Feeding huge crowds of pigeons with bread makes too many pigeons, and birds packed in crowds spread mess and illness more easily. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/221-pigeons-head-bobbing-homing-and-city-cliffs/15/) — Pigeons often clap their wings together loudly as they take off, and males also clap in display flights. - ← previous: [Spiders and other minibeasts under logs and stones](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/220-spiders-and-other-minibeasts-under-logs-and-stones/) - next →: [Rats and mice in the city, and the elephant and mouse myth](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/222-rats-and-mice-in-the-city-and-the-elephant-and-mouse-myth/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)