Hi,
I recently found a wood pigeon wondering around the front of my house. It looked like it was diseased, couldn’t fly and kept hiding under the car so I decided to take care of it.
I encouraged it to walk into my back garden and I’ve been looking after it ever since. It has plumped up a lot and been attempting to fly but just can’t get the height.
I noticed today he/she has little holes all over the inside of his/her wings.
Does anyone know what this could be?
This is the pigeon in question aka Tiggles (my daughter named him/her)
Il try and get some photos of his/her wing tomorrow but he/she sits puffed up like this most of the time
Morning Sam, well done inserting the photo. At least this juvenile (takes about 4 months for them to get the full white ring around their collar) looks to be a decent size although when they fluff up a little its hard to judge the overall body size and weight as they are generally quite heavy birds. Judging by the photo is seems not too bad but if the wing/s have a serious injury and it can't fly to gain height then it may need professional wildlife help so I would use the HelpWildlife link. The tail feathers look a bit ragged so maybe it could have been caught by a cat or other predator at some stage, possibly even attacked by an adult of its own kind - hard to know and I am not an expert on these things so can only offer an opinion. If you can offer it some seed and water that would be helpful if it can't fly but if there are cats in the area be watchful. If it remains on the ground all day then I would try get assistance for it if you can't see any sign of adult woodpigeons in the area and it remains alone unable to take off. Good luck, let us know how you get on.