The man who loved pigeons

Catching up on my Bruce Castle Museum local history mail outs and being particularly interested in the ones that relate to Natural History, the one called Catch the Pigeon caught my eye.

Not, as you might imagine, an essay on 70s TV but the story of naturalist and famed pigeon fancier, William Bernhardt Tegetmeier.

A green plaque  was put up on his Muswell Hill home in 2008 by Haringey Council after the campaign to get English Heritage to put up a blue one was unsuccessful. Before that William had lived in Tottenham and Wood Green before moving into St James' Lane

A prolific writer, an authority on poultry and the discoverer of how bees make hexagonal shaped cells in their hive, he had a close relationship with Charles Darwin and was invaluable through his work on poultry and bees in helping Darwin develop his theory of evolution for The Origin of Species

Another local connection was his role in bringing pigeon racing to Ally Pally, organising the first international pigeon race in 1871. 

You can read all about him in this article by Deborah Hedgecock on the council website [pdf] which includes lots of lovely pictures and links if you want to find out more.

Pigeons in Clissold Park

You can find out more about the human relationship with the pigeon which goes back to ancient times in this brilliant little programme about them from the Natural Histories series on BBC. I hope it will change your mind about them if you've always just thought of them as winged rats. You couldn't be more wrong.