Pigeons are amazing, and until recently, humans adored them. We kept them as pets, held pigeon beauty contests, raced them, used them to carry messages over battlefields, harvested their poop to fertilize crops—and cooked them in gourmet dishes. Readers can rediscover this wonder in "Pigeon Watching" by Rosemary Mosco.

Equal parts illustrated field guide and quirky history, it covers behavior: Why they coo; how they flock; how they preen, kiss, and mate (monogamously); and how they raise their young (on chunky pigeon milk). Anatomy and identification, birder issues,  and  all the things we’ve taught them, including Ping-Pong...  Pigeons reside all over the world, yet most of us treat them with indifference or disdain. So Rosemary Mosco, a bird-lover, science communicator, writer, and cartoonist gives the pigeon’s image a makeover, and to help city-dwellers get closer to nature by through pigeon-watching.

Paperback,  229 pages