TEXT
LE PIGEONNIER
SAMPLE CHAPTERS
A Word from Colin, the Author
I spotted my first pigeonnier within a week of settling in Occitanie. A couple of minutes’ walk from my home, an 18th-century château stood resplendent on a hill and looked down on the fields and farms of its neighbours. I was a humble newcomer, so I kept a respectful distance and admired the pale stone façade, the twin towers and the dark grey shutters. But then I caught a glimpse of something else, less grand but more intriguing. Half-hidden by oak trees to the left of the château was a windowless white cube mounted on four stone pillars. Its roof was tiled in the same dark slate as the château. I had no idea what it was. Before long, I discovered more and more of these mysterious buildings. The man who was fixing my roof had one by his sawmill, and the lady who sold me eggs had one behind her chicken coop.
‘What do you do with it?’ I asked her.
‘We keep our irrigation pipes inside.’
I tried again. ‘What was its original purpose?’
‘Oh, it’s a pigeonnier. It was where the pigeons lived and raised their young.’
Thousands of pigeonniers are dotted across the landscape of the south of France, particularly in Occitanie, sometimes in the most unlikely locations. In Montauban, a handsome brick-built pigeonnier towers over the prefabricated buildings of the hospital complex. Further north at a service station on the autoroute to Cahors, you can admire a splendid octagonal pigeonnier while you refuel or recharge your vehicle. But most often, they shine like jewelsin the gorgeous countryside of Occitanie where they are just as much a part of the architectural heritage as the abbeys and the bastides, or the churches and the châteaux.
The observant traveller will quickly realise that pigeonniers come in an astonishing variety of shapes, sizes and styles. Arguably, no creature has had more beautiful homes built for it than the pigeon. For the inquisitive traveller, this raises an obvious question: why did so many people go to so much trouble to house a bird? The pigeon’s secret is that it knew more than one way of earning its keep, and the pigeonnierhas had many roles. Most of them were intentional – living larder, fertiliser factory, medicine cabinet, innovative contraceptive – but in France there were unforeseen consequences too. The pigeonnier and its pigeons fuelled the discontent that led to social unrest, rebellion and the Revolution of 1789.
Geographically, in this book we focus on the region of France which boasts the greatest number of pigeonniers: Occitanie. Created in 2016 by the merger of Languedoc-Roussillon and Midi-Pyrénées, Occitanie holds centre stage in the south of France in terms of both physical size and geographic position, and it is home to 6,000 pigeonniers. This is the land of Cathars and troubadours, of pastel and Armagnac, of the Canal du Midi and the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes, a land whose defining characteristic before the 20th century was that most people spoke Occitan instead of French.
Colin Duncan Taylor
Saint-Sernin-les-Lavaur, 2022
A Word from Jon, the Photographer
Like Colin, I spotted my first pigeonnier within a week of settling in Occitanie. We were driving back to Cordes from Albi when we saw this odd-looking structure all on its own in the middle of a field. There were circular holes near its apex, and a narrow ledge ran around all four walls just below the roof. The building seemed to have been designed for humans…well sort of. But what was it, and for whom was it built, I wondered? Nearby was a grand château with a massive square tower that had certainly been part of its fortifications, but curiously, its upper parts had the same holes and protruding ledge as the structure in the field. Were they connected in some way?
Later, we learned that they were both pigeonniers. The larger tower was the oldest part of the Château de Livers-Cazelles (previous spread), and it had been converted to a pigeonnier once it had outlived its role as part of the outer defences of Cordes-sur-Ciel. From that point on I became fascinated – even obsessed – by these unusual structures. There was something about them that drew me in, and after spotting hundreds of them in various shapes and sizes, I started photographing pigeonniers in earnest.
I learned early on in my career as a travel photographer that the objective of an assignment is to visually flatter your subject by using the different qualities of light. In practice, this means working unsociable hours throughout the year, and at times, you will be roasting hot or bitterly cold. But the advantage is that you become intimately involved with your subject and see it in all its many moods. My preferred times to shoot are usually just after sunrise or just before sunset. But because a pigeonnier is static, I can use a time-exposure and shoot it at night with the sparkling firmament above. With this approach, there is no intention of showing details such as the type of stones or timbers that were used in its construction.
The photograph on the facing page was taken at Les Cabannes near Cordes, and it is a classic example of using the time of day to suggest an ambience. This sets the image apart and makes it much more than just a visual record of the structure. To me as a photographer, there is no reason to simply record an object, unless I need a reminder to help me prepare for a return visit when the light is right. When it came to recognising a pigeonnier for what it is, Colin may have had a head start because parts of the English countryside are also dotted with free-standing dovecotes. In my home country of New Zealand, we have no tradition of this at all. Nevertheless, I can think of three pigeon-related experiences which pre-date my obsession with pigeonniers.
First, the New Zealand native kererū, or wood pigeon, (right), is a monster of a bird that can grow to a length of 50 centimetres (20 inches). This is why they were an important source of food for the Māori who used to snare them. The noise the bird makes is like a demented helicopter crashing through the trees to alight on a sturdy branch just above your head. Kererū may seem unafraid of humans, but in fact they are intoxicated by the berries which ferment in their crops before they swallow them. My second memory comes from my early twenties when I suffered from frequent hangovers. I distinctly remember numerous occasions when I threatened to annihilate the pigeons who were cooing and flapping just outside my window. In my state, their actions seemed moronic, and there was something in those sounds that irritated every fibre of my body, but I never had a shotgun at hand!
The third experience was watching giant catfish stalking thirsty pigeons in the river Tarn in Albi. The birds were oblivious to the danger until a massive mouth vacuumed them up. I learned later that the Tarn catfish have grown so large, their normal food sources have become inadequate, so they have modified their diets.
For me, photographing pigeonniers has been a cultural as well as a visual awakening. It has truly been a journey of discovery.
Jon Davison
Cordes-sur-Ciel, 2022
Rebellion and Revolution
On 14 July 1789, a mob stormed the Bastille and the French Revolution began. Three weeks later, an extraordinary session of the National Assembly took place at Versailles. It began at eight o’clock in the evening of 4 August. Fired up by events on the streets of Paris, many of the deputies were determined to overthrow a whole raft of privileges enjoyed by the upper echelons of society. The heated debate went on until two in the morning. A week later, the fiery speeches were reduced to a more sober list of 19 articles. The first of these began with the words: ‘The National Assembly hereby abolishes the feudal regime.’ No doubt any peasant would have rejoiced at that, but the second article is truly astounding to modern eyes.
‘The exclusive right to maintain small dovecotes and pigeon towers is abolished. The pigeons shall be confined at times to be determined by the communes and during such periods they shall be regarded as game, and everyone shall have the right to kill them upon their own land.’
This article precedes 17 others which address emotive issues such as hunting rights, the tithe tax, and the powers of the nobility to administer sometimes rather arbitrary justice to their peasants. Only the overthrow of the feudal system in general was more important than the hated pigeonnier! The pigeon and its home had been causing trouble for at least a century. In 1675, there was a revolt in Brittany. Because of their red caps, the rebels were called Les Bonnets Rouges, and they came up with a list of 14 demands. Most of these were aimed at improving the relationship between peasant farmers and their landlords, but in Article 11, the rebels called for the outright destruction of every single pigeonnier and demanded the right to shoot the occupants. This rebellion was short-lived and the pigeonnier won a reprieve, but the same resentments resurfaced in the run up to the revolution of 1789. Between February and April of that year, each of the 60,000 parishes across France opened up a complaints book called a cahier des doléances in which the people were able to express their dissatisfactions with society.
The pigeonnier was a frequent cause of complaint, as this example from the commune of Le Rozel in Normandy demonstrates: ‘This parish is further afflicted by the voracious pigeons of three pigeonniers which seem to band together to devour every kind of seed. If we are unable to obtain the destruction of these pigeonniers, their owners should at least be forced by law to keep the pigeons locked up inside at harvest time and when we are sowing our fields.’
When it came to the long night of 4 August 1789, the deputies of the National Assembly did not have a personal grudge against the pigeon. They were merely reflecting a widespread resentment among the peasantry. In a later chapter, we will explore the causes of this hatred, but first, why did people want to keep pigeons in the first place?
The Observant Naturalist
Pliny the Elder was born in 23 CE, either in Como or Verona. Shortly before his death in 79 CE, he published his Historia Naturalis, a wide-ranging encyclopaedia of ancient knowledge and beliefs. This chapter is based on the numerous entries relating to pigeons. Many a man has a mania for pigeons. The reasons behind this obsession are manifold, commencing with the bird’s flesh. That great epicurean, Marcus Apicius, extols the exquisite flavour of roasted squabs with a sauce of pepper, lovage, coriander, carraway, shallots, mint, egg yolk, dates, honey, vinegar, broth, oil and wine.
Other men speak highly of the pigeon’s manure, prizing it above that of poultry or any of the quadrupeds. Using manure like this to enrich the land is an ancient practice which, according to tradition, Hercules brought from Greece to Italy. Life itself is nothing short of a punishment, unless it is free from pains and maladies. To treat these conditions, the medical art first looked to the many plants and shrubs which nature has endowed with medicinal properties, but there are many living creatures which provide us with still more remedies, including the pigeon.
The flesh of the bird, used fresh and minced, is a remedy for injuries inflicted by serpents. For bloodshot eyes, the blood of the male pigeon is the most effective treatment, and the blood is drawn by opening a vein beneath its wing. Pigeon dung, prepared in various ways using oil or vinegar or oatmeal, can be used to remove stigmata, cure ulcers on the feet, remove corns or carbuncles and soothe burns. Pigeon dung, grilled and taken in drink, will ease dysentery. Magicians say that pigeon dung taken with oil and wine will act as a love potion.
Another wonderful service done by pigeons is to act as messengers in times of strife. During the siege of Mutina [43 BCE], the townsfolk communicated with the camp of the consuls by means of messages fastened to pigeons’ feet. Despite their trenches and nets, Marc Antony and his army were powerless to prevent the winged messengers of Brutus reaching their destination. Thus we can see why men value the pigeon so highly, and why they build towns for them on the top of their roofs, and take pleasure in relating the pedigree and noble origin of each bird.
As for the pigeons themselves, there is reason to believe that they are well aware of the glorious colours of their plumage, and the various shades which it presents. Even their mode of flight courts our applause as they cleave the air in every direction. Among themselves, they have the art of winning one another over. Because of this, they frequently return to their own home accompanied by other pigeons which they have enticed away from elsewhere. Pigeons live for eight years, and an adult female can lay as many as ten times a year, and even during the month of the winter solstice if she is in Egypt. A pigeon always lays two eggs, one male and one female, the male first, the female the day after. Couples are monogamous and both sexes sit on the eggs, the male in the daytime, the female at night. While the female is sitting, the male pays her every attention to bring her solace and comfort. Once the eggs have hatched, both parents manifest an equal degree of affection for their offspring until, after 28 days, the squabs begin to stretch their wings and prepare to fly the nest.
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A Tasty Bird
Writing in his seminal work on agricultural science published in 1600, the French agronomist Olivier de Serres tells us: ‘He whose home is provided with a pigeon tower, a rabbit warren and a fishpond will never see his household short of food because these things will provide him with fresh meat as surely as a well-stocked larder…and being supplied with such foods, he will be able to feed his family nobly and offer a fine table to his friends without having to put his hand in his pocket.’
Before the advent of electricity and the invention of refrigeration, meat and fish could be preserved by drying, salting or smoking, but if you wanted fresh flesh throughout the year, keeping pigeons, rabbits or fish was a practical and economic solution. Apart from gourmet chefs and old country folk, we have largely forgotten the culinary importance of the pigeon. Today, the unfortunate bird is more likely to be persecuted as vermin than prized as a source of food, but between the dawn of human history and the early 20th century, pigeon was often roasting on the fire or simmering in the pot.
In 2014, excavations in Gorham’s Cave – a UNESCO World Heritage Site on Gibraltar – revealed that Neanderthals were eating roast pigeon 67,000 years ago! As for recorded history, the oldest known recipes are depicted in Mesopotamian tablets from 4,000 years ago, and they include one for pigeon stew. Pliny the Elder tells us that Roman gourmets were fond of pigeon, and by the time we reach the Middle Ages, pigeon meat regularly graced the highest tables in the kingdom of France.
During the reign of Charles V (1364-1380), the royal household consumed 400 pigeons, 60 chickens, 50 deer and 50 goslings PER DAY! That was in addition to other meats such as beef, lamb, pork and veal. On 19 June 1549, the city of Paris organised a banquet in honour of Catherine de’ Medici who had been crowned queen a few days earlier. The city fathers spared no expense, buying considerable quantities of wines, meats and pastries. The royal menu included 99 squabs for roasting, 99 turtle doves and 99 chickens in vinegar. More squabs were purchased to make eight giant dishes to feed those among the common people who were fortunate enough to participate in the festivities.
Squabs were also purchased regularly for the king’s table during the reigns of Catherine’s son-in-law, Henri IV, and the gluttonous Louis XIV.
To understand why squabs were eaten in preference to the adult birds, we shall consult the first French encyclopaedia, compiled by Diderot and d'Alembert and published in 1751. ‘Usually, one only eats the squabs; the meat of the adult bird is dry and tough.’ The encyclopaedists also tell us that if you eat a baby pigeon at 15 days when there is barely a sign of feathers, the flesh is sweet and almost like jelly. The best time to eat them is at 28 days when the bird is ready to fly and the flesh is still sweet but with better consistency.
Serving up king- or queen-size quantities of squabs required a regular and reliable supply, not something that could easily be achieved by the Neanderthal practice of taking baby pigeons from the wild. To this end, pigeons were not only eaten by the aristocracy; they were raised by them too. Over time, the pigeonnier evolved to become a highly-efficient means of mass-production and a symbol of noble status. By the mid-17th century, there were 42,000 pigeonniers in France, and they were concentrated in grain-growing areas such as Occitanie and Normandy. This was not a purely French phenomenon: at that time, England had around 26,000 dovecotes or pigeon towers, a startling figure when one considers that England’s human population was only a quarter of that of France (between five and six million compared with 20 to 25 million).
The Gentleman Farmer
During the dark years of the Wars of Religion, Olivier de Serres (1539-1619) devoted himself to managing his 100-hectare estate in the Ardèche to the west of Montélimar. He took a scientific approach to agriculture, trying out new techniques, testing new crops, and carefully observing the results. In time, his estate became something of a model farm, which you can still visit today, and in 1600 he shared his knowledge through an agricultural textbook. With the support of the king (Henri IV), this work was distributed widely in France, and it was still in print under Napoleon two centuries later. When Olivier explains how to make the pigeons comfortable and safe in their pigeonnier, his attention to detail is extraordinary. Once the head of the household has succeeded in making his arable land, vineyard and pasture fully productive, he should turn his attention to pigeons, rabbits and fish if he is to feed his family well.
To ensure a steady supply of pigeon, there are three essential ingredients for success: the pigeons themselves, their home and their management. Wherever you build your pigeonnier and in whatever style or size, you will always have pigeons as long as you breed them carefully and feed them well. But you will have them in far greater abundance if you choose the position of their home with care and make it spacious and comfortable.
It is best to site your pigeonnier in open countryside on high ground so that it is visible from afar, but it should not be exposed to violent winds. It should be away from other buildings so that noise does not disturb the birds, and so that there will be fewer rats nearby who might try to climb inside and kill the squabs. If your pigeonnier is in a vegetable garden or a vineyard, it will be safer from robbers. It should not be too close to trees because the noise of their branches might disturb the pigeons when it is windy, and birds of prey might perch there. A water source should be available at twice the range of an arquebus [a predecessor of the musket with a range of about 100 metres] so that when the fathers and mothers go to fetch water for their young, the water will be warm by the time the parents have flown back to the pigeonnier. Also, pigeons dislike the sound of running water too close to their home.
Although any shape will do, I personally prefer a round pigeonnier because rats find it harder to climb curved walls, and if you fit out the interior with a vertical ladder rotating on a central pivot, you will have easy access to all the nests. Nevertheless, if you prefer, you can make your pigeonnier octagonal, heptagonal, hexagonal, pentagonal or even square, although the smaller the angle between adjacent sides, the less useful a rotating ladder will be. The outside walls of a pigeonnier should always be painted white, using a mixture of lime, powdered glass and white sand from the river. This will result in a smooth surface which will be difficult for rats to climb, and its colour will help your pigeons find their way home and may also attract other pigeons to settle there. Next, you must populate your new pigeonnier. First, obtain some young pigeons of both sexes, perhaps from a neighbour. They must not be too young, or they will not survive without their parents, but they should be taken before the feathers on their wings are fully grown. Shut them inside their new home and feed them twice a day and give them water. Because the pigeons may be too young to know how to peck for their food, put a couple of large chickens inside the pigeonnier and the young pigeons will follow their example.
After about three weeks, choose a dull day and let the birds out late in the afternoon for their first flight. This will give them just enough time to explore their immediate surroundings before they fly home to roost. A few will not come back the first night, but usually they will return within a couple of days once they have realised that nowhere is more pleasant than your new pigeonnier.
Inside the Pigeonnier
However beautiful they may be, we should always remember that the pigeonnier was built to serve a practical purpose. In some ways, it could be viewed as an early example of intensive farming. Typically, somewhere between 800 and 8,000 birds were concentrated inside one building. But there was one important difference between a pigeonnier and a modern-day poultry farm: the adult pigeons enjoyed exactly the same freedom as wild birds. The key to success was making the pigeonnier so welcoming, the pigeons would never want to live anywhere else. According to Olivier de Serres, there were various ways of making a pigeonnier more attractive to the birds: coat the openings with scented oil, hang aromatic herbs inside, offer the pigeons coarse-grained salt and millet fried in honey. Best of all, give them a goat’s head, boiled in water with salt, cumin, hemp and urine.
Nest design was another critical feature. Each one had to be large enough for a pair of adults to raise a pair of squabs. Terracotta, stone or wood were the most common materials, although Olivier de Serres says the pigeon’s favourite is terracotta because it stays cool in summer and doesn’t get too cold in winter. The typical terracotta nest was shaped like a flat-bottomed pot with its base attached to the wall. Another popular style was the wicker basket suspended from an iron spike hammered into the wall, but unless they were cleaned regularly, they risked becoming a breeding ground for pests such as lice and mites. Some of the more noble pigeonniers contain true pigeonholes – niches built into the structure of the walls.
Most of the freestanding pigeonniers we see in the countryside today contained somewhere between 200 and 400 nests. If one of these was running at peak efficiency, its owner could enjoy somewhere between 60 and 120 squabs a week throughout the year. The pigeonnier at the Château d’Assier near Figeac contained 2,300 pigeonholes, which could have provided its owner with 100 squabs a day. During the first year of operating a new pigeonnier, it was rare to take squabs for the kitchen. Instead, all the birds were allowed to grow into adults and produce squabs of their own, and thereby establish a thriving population. Only in the second year would birds be taken for the table, and even then, around a third of the squabs were always allowed to grow into adults to replace natural losses caused by predators, disease or old age.
As well as holes for the pigeons to go in and out, all pigeonniers had an entrance for humans. Most common was a wooden door in one of the side walls. If a pigeonnier was mounted on stilts, another option was a trapdoor in the floor.
The most frequent visits were to collect squabs for dinner. Particularly in the larger pigeonniers, this presented a challenge because the squab collector had to be able to reach all the nests. The highest might be ten metres above the ground, and this would have been a hazardous climb for someone on a rickety ladder surrounded by frantically-flapping parents. This is why the grander pigeonniers were often fitted with a more convenient means of accessing the nests: one or two vertical ladders attached to horizontal wooden arms which were in turn attached to a central vertical pivot. The whole contraption span around and the squab catcher could work in relative security. As Olivier de Serres points out, this type of installation was at its most effective inside a round pigeonnier, but there is a square one at Villemur-sur-Tarn which has a rotating ladder too.
Despite the pigeon’s culinary value, the bird’s meat alone would not have justified such detailed analysis of its needs and preferences, so much thought for its welfare, or the expense of building such magnificent lodgings.