When officials first voted to outlaw pigeon feeding 11 years ago, the area of St Marks was exempted.
All it takes is a handful of birdseed to transform any tourist visiting Venice’s historic St Mark’s Square into a human perch for a fluttering mass of pushy pigeons.
But a Venetian pigeon’s life may now be for the birds: A municipal ordinance has banned people from feeding them in the square from May 1.
Especially ruffled are the 19 vendors licensed to sell birdseed in the square, who are out of a job. “It’s a tradition,” said one vendor who, like most others, declined to give his name.
When officials first voted to outlaw pigeon feeding 11 years ago, the area of St Mark’s was exempted because of the iconic status of the birds and their feeders. But it ultimately became clear that for any real reduction in the bird population, an important food supply — St Mark’s official birdseed hawkers — had to be cut off.
The vendors fear the city’s decision puts an end to a century-old tradition.
Like other metropolises with a significant pigeon population, including New York and London, Venice has long been concerned with the potential hazards the birds pose to human health, not to mention the damage caused by their guano and taste for marble. Previous efforts to control their numbers — nets, spikes and electronic contraptions to deter perching — have been mostly unsuccessful.
What has made the situation particularly drastic in Venice is the spiralling number of tourists, which has triggered a whole new law of nature: More tourists equals more birdseed sold and more garbage produced. That equals more pigeons and more damage to the historic buildings in the square, including the delicate mosaics on the facade of St Mark’s Basilica.
Sergio Lafisca, the Venice health expert responsible for the Department of Prevention, estimates that there are now about 1,30,000 pigeons living in Venice’s historic centre, about 40 times the number that he said international studies propose as the optimal concentration per square kilometre. Tests on the birds have also determined that many carry one pathogen or another.
And pigeons, like chickens, seek calcium carbonate for their eggs.
“They peck at the most exposed parts of the marble,” as well as the stucco that restorers use in their work, said Renata Codello, the state art official charged with preserving the square.
In the end, only one strategy has ever really worked to keep the pigeon population down in Venice. “Until the 1950s they used to eat them. I’m told they’re very tasty,” Lafisca said. But he would not advocate eating pigeon meat today because the birds are too sickly and small. Nor would he allow his son to pose for photos with pigeons on his head.
The vendors, for their part, want City Hall to back down and are circulating a petition among tourists that they say already has hundreds of signatures. Venetians are less likely to sign. The locals tend to see pigeons much as Woody Allen once described them — as “rats with wings”.
For some vendors, the writing is on the wall.
“I’m afraid it’s over,” said Rosanna Ribul, a vendor whose grandfather was given one of the first licenses 90 years ago. She spoke of dozens of people who regularly sought her out bearing photographs taken long ago when they were children, or on their honeymoon, and she’d sold them birdseed. “They ask me, do you remember? But I never do.”
