Trail Cam Footage Shows World’s Dumbest Pigeon Walking Into Falcon’s Nest

If you’re a pigeon, there is one bird you really want to avoid: falcons. Why? Because an urban falcon’s diet almost entirely consists of pigeons.

But pigeons, bless their hearts, are curious, loving creatures. Case in point is this remarkable trail camera video showing a dopy wood pigeon casually strolling into a falcon’s nest.

The video has been lighting up Reddit this week, and while the falcon is initially stunned at the sheer audacity of the pigeon walking into her home, the pigeon does receive a beating but miraculously escapes with its life — just not with all of its feathers.

After some digging, it turns out the video was captured back in 2023 by a series of cameras trained on the nesting box at the Church of Illerich-Graffenstaden near Strasbourg, France. The video was uploaded to YouTube with the title (translated from French): “Extensive preening of a wood pigeon’s feathers.”

The YouTube channel the video came from is called Peregrine Falcons Illkirch, or Faucons Pèlerins Illkirch, and it has a live feed of the falcon’s nest, which has over the years produced some incredible footage, such as the pigeon taking a beating from the bird of prey.

Redditors were bemused and tickled by the footage.

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But this is why trail cameras are so great: they record moments that are almost impossible to capture otherwise. The remote cameras can also exonerate animals accused of eating crops, too. Like in Honduras recently, where the Indigenous Miskitu community believed that Baird’s tapir (Tapirus bairdii), an endangered species and the largest land mammal in Central America, was responsible for the damage and losses of their crop — but it wasn’t the tapir.

As for the pigeons in Strasbourg, it seems they still haven’t learned their lesson. The latest video on the Peregrine Falcons IllKirch YouTube page? A pigeon once again perched on the predator’s platform.

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