Seeing a pigeon
A pigeon on your ledge or balcony often has a nest close by, and pigeon parents share the work more evenly than most birds: both feed the young with milk made in the throat. Old beliefs read the visit in opposite ways.
What it may mean
Few birds split parenting as evenly as the pigeon. Both parents take turns on the eggs, and both make crop milk, a rich, cheesy secretion from the lining of the throat pouch that the chicks drink for their first days. In many birds some part of the job belongs to one parent only; in pigeons either one can do all of it, so either can feed the chicks while the other is away. Human households often run the other way. One person knows the school login, another is the only one who can calm the dog, a third keeps every birthday in their head. It works until that person is sick or away for a week. A pigeon cooing on your ledge may belong to one of the sturdiest partnerships in the city. Watching it, ask which jobs in your home live in only one person's head.
Depending on how you saw it
On a ledge or balcony
A pigeon that keeps landing on the same ledge has often found a nesting spot nearby. Old Indian lore read a pigeon on the house both ways: as a warning in Hindustan, as a blessing on the household elsewhere. How do you decide which reading of a visitor to believe?
Why you never see baby pigeons
Squabs grow for about a month out of sight before they leave the nest, by which time they look almost like adults. You meet them only when they are ready. Which stage of your own growing up happened where nobody saw it?
A pair bowing and cooing
A male pigeon courting puffs out his neck, fans his tail and turns in circles around the female, cooing all the while. She often walks away, and he follows. How do you show interest without crowding the other person?
Why it happens in nature
City pigeons descend from rock doves domesticated thousands of years ago, and many pairs nest on the same ledge or beam year after year. Both parents produce crop milk to feed their young and take turns on the eggs, and the chicks stay in the nest until they are nearly adult size, about four weeks or more.
What folk beliefs say
India
In India, a 1903 collection says, pigeons were thought fortunate; they were carefully reared in houses, which they were believed to keep from decay.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 621. View the page
India (Hindustan)
The same page says that in Hindustan, when a pigeon perched on the house, the owner took it as a forerunner of ill fortune.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 621. View the page
Newfoundland, Canada
In Newfoundland it was unlucky to meet a single tame pigeon, but two were a sign of joy and three a sign of a wedding.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 622. View the page
Chile
In Chile, domestic pigeons were thought unlucky birds to keep on an estate or farm, and country people said that owners who kept them would end up poor.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 623. View the page
To reflect on
Which job in your household could only one person do right now, and what would happen if they were away for a week?