PIGEON: cruelty of a perverted mind ended many lives

IF a foreign tourist was asked to name a typical British bird after visiting London they would in all likelihood plump for the pigeon.

I doubt that British people themselves would make such a choice.

But pigeons have become so synonymous with London that for many tourists a trip to the capital would seem incomplete without a "me-with-pigeons-in-Trafalgar-Square" snapshot.

I suppose the pigeons themselves are happy with this arrangement.

I haven't been to Trafalgar Square to see how many remain following recent attempts to scale down their numbers.

But I would imagine there are still a fair few around.

Even when I was there last time, dishing out my own pot of tourist bird seed, I couldn't help feeling a little depressed.

Several birds looked diseased or, at least, distinctly ill.

Urban pigeons actually have an impressive background and are descended from the rock dove, one of the hardiest of birds, whose offspring have also evolved into the modern racing pigeon.

Wild rock doves still eek out a precarious existence on remote coastal cliffs where the biggest danger is not being stepped on by a fat foreign tourist but being gobbled up by a hawk.

We've become so used to seeing pigeons flapping round our rail stations and town centres that we often overlook how handsome they are.

Although mostly grey, black and white, a pigeon's neck boasts a startlingly attractive multi-coloured sheen.

Urban pigeons generally lay two white eggs in a rough nest high up on a building.

But compare this to the habits of their bigger, more colourful cousin, the woodpigeon.

This often builds its nest deep in woodland and is a bit warier of man - probably a wise move as thousands are shot each year as game.

Other birds which are wilder than urban pigeons but part of the same family are the turtle dove, stock dove, and my own favourite, the collared dove - slimmer, pinker, and more delicate looking than the rest.

I was lucky enough to see a couple of these in the garden the other day and it's little wonder doves are associated with peace.

Just observing them made me feel, well, strangely peaceful.

As a student, I used to work in factories during the summer months to earn some cash and one of these ghastly places will forever be associated with pigeons in my mind - but hardly for peaceful reasons.

At this hell-hole, I came across one of the cruellest people I have ever known, a lumbering lunatic sporting an ill-fitting wig.

This was in a section of the factory where various pieces of machinery were lowered on chains into a huge vat of industrial acid for cleaning.

So deadly was this stuff that jets of air were arranged around the lip of the vat to blow back fumes.

A small flight of steps brought you to the edge of this bubbling cauldron and I was tentatively gazing down on my first day when someone whacked me between the shoulder blades.

"You wouldn't last long in there," chortled wig-head, leering.

Most people with a bad reputation rarely live up to it.

This character did.

Apparently, he'd done time for a heinous crime and had various unpleasant habits.

Above everything, however, he hated the pigeons that fluttered harmlessly around the factory and conducted a private, bloody war against them.

His favourite trick was to switch off the big extractor fan high up on the wall at night.

In the morning, he would check to see if any pigeons had flown between its blades to roost in the chamber behind.

If they had, he would immediately switch the fan on without giving them prior warning.

Some pigeons made it through the blades before they picked up speed. Others were horribly killed.

By the end of the summer I could have happily tipped this joker wig-first into that vat of acid and skipped out of the factory with a song in my heart.