tl;dr garbage can is an undomesticated, tame, most likely post-PPMV australian crested pigeon. i had him given to me to rehabilitate and release in 2020 and several times a day i’d medicate him and monitor his weight, but unfortunately once he’d recovered his strength i discovered that he has several issues that make him unreleasable, despite being a happy and (well, relatively) healthy bird.
to get into details, he’s unable to fly due to neurological damage meaning he has specific needs regarding perches and shelves to safely move around; he was initially quite underweight and showed signs of failure to thrive such as minor physical deformities, poor posture, and a wing droop which he still has to a much smaller extent, usually only when he’s stressed. he also would stargaze and walk in circles in the first month or so due to the stress of medicating him which confirmed neurological damage.
i honestly didn’t expect him to survive the night when he was given to me and euthanasia was at the forefront of my mind for several days, but despite all this, after a couple vet visits and a few weeks of thrice-daily medication and weighing sessions, he recovered shockingly well. he perked up, his posture became more upright, he gained weight, stopped stargazing, and started showing natural, normal behaviour for his species. he’s still small for his species and has some quirks such as poor eyesight and inability to safely fly but he was no longer showing any signs of discomfort and quickly adapted to his situation.
since he obviously had several things going on with him when he was given to me to rehabilitate, releasing him would have not only killed him but potentially could have spread disease to other native pigeons. my options realistically became to either keep him permanently or to euthanise him. (i found out later that there was a PPMV outbreak where i live from an avian vet who also happened to have a rescue crested pigeon and it’s very likely that garbage can is post-PPMV due to his symptoms and the time frame lining up.)
at this point he had recovered a surprising amount and was getting strong and healthy despite everything, so i started to weigh my options. wildlife sanctuaries in australia don’t have the resources to take care of an incredibly common species of pigeon and surrendering him would have pretty much 100% resulted in euthanasia; even if the people decided to keep him alive, he is a young special needs bird and would require pretty constant care for the rest of his life (people disagree on the average lifespan of a crested pigeon but this could potentially be 15-20 years although due to his health it’s probably on the lower end), thus taking up conservation attention that - to put it bluntly - more vulnerable species need. due to responding very well to his situation and the fact that i’ve been rehabbing birds for a large portion of my life at this point and feel comfortable in my abilities, i hesitantly decided that i would take him in as an unreleasable rescue and began to build him a proper cage and tame him.
before this point i was treating him as a catch and release and was only allowing him to see me when i was medicating so that he wouldn’t lose his fear of humans so i wasn’t sure how he would react, but within a few months he was responding very well to taming and had adjusted well to living in a large cage.
with regards to his care, i’ve got him in a large, customised cage to suit his needs with several flat shelves and branches of various sizes for him to jump around without needing to fly very far. i mix his food with wild grains that i harvest, soluble and insoluble grit, ground insects, minerals, etc. to ensure the right nutritional benefits and eat with him several times a day (including daily handfeeding) as his species enjoys social feeding (i go into his dietary needs in the “feed” section of this blog). i sit next to him and talk to him for the majority of my day to ensure he doesn’t get lonely. he gets enrichment from sticks with and without gumnuts and safe leaves to peck at and move around and toilet paper (he’s just always loved toilet paper. without fail always drags it into the water bowl and makes a wet mess for me to clean up), among other things. he gets showers every weekend. he has a UV lamp for vitamin D due to living inside and his eyesight isn’t the best due to his neurological issues and occasionally it’ll take a minute or two for him to process what he’s seeing.
i hope that this explains the effort that’s been put in to keeping a crested pigeon as an unreleasable rescue. i cannot emphasise enough the amount of effort that goes into keeping garbage can as a healthy and happy bird, from vet visits to taming to enrichment. i would never recommend a crested pigeon as a pet. they are undomesticated animals (like parrots, but that’s another issue altogether). they can show incredible inter- and intra-species hostility between birds, going as far as attacking and sometimes killing other birds during feeding time. they should never be taken from the wild and god forbid should never be bought from a breeder. they’re charming birds, which i would like to show as they have a bad rep here in australia, and can be incredibly gregarious with humans, but they are wild animals and require an incredible amount of work to keep happy and stimulated. no amount of backyard taming will change this.
i have been rehabilitating undomesticated birds for years and working as an assistant for rehabbers for even longer (around a decade) and am comfortable in my knowledge and abilities. i am also figuring out my finances so that i can apply to study for an accredited certificate in bird care, anatomy, and rehabilitation. if he was healthy enough to release, i would have released him as soon as he was healthy. if he was in pain or disabled enough to affect his quality of life negatively, i would have euthanised him quickly. my situation is not ideal and i cannot possibly make it clear enough that you should not go out and tame an undomesticated pigeon, or any bird for that matter. wild birds belong in the wild.
and finally, rock pigeons have been domesticated for milennia and are actually the world’s oldest domesticated birds! if you’re interested in owning a pigeon, please please consider adopting a rock pigeon. feral city pigeons are domesticated animals and make wonderful companions for many years.
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