Baby Pigeons: What They Look Like and How They Grow

This page follows the baby feral pigeon, the young of the town pigeon (a Rock Dove), from the egg to its first flight, with photos of each stage, and says what to do if you find one. For the Woodpigeon, the big pigeon with white neck patches, see Woodpigeon nesting; for the adults, see the feral pigeon.

A squab. Welfare and scientific sources alike use the word for a pigeon nestling.^{1, 2} Once it has left the nest a young pigeon is a fledgling, and then a juvenile until it moults into adult plumage.

Because they stay in the nest until they are nearly grown. Pigeons nest on ledges under cover, on buildings, under bridges and in barns, and the young stay in the nest for about a month.³ By the time they come out they often weigh about 350 g, about as much as an adult,² and look much like their parents, which is why people think they never see baby pigeons.¹

A pigeon lays two white eggs, the second about 40 hours after the first,² and both parents sit on them for 16-19 days.⁴ Incubation usually starts with the second egg, so the two often hatch at the same time. Hatching takes about a day from the first crack in the shell, and a parent then removes the empty shells.²

A newly hatched squab is about 5 cm long and weighs about 15 g. Its eyes are closed, its feet pink or slate-coloured, and it has only a sparse coat of yellowish or whitish down. It cannot keep itself warm: at an air temperature of 10°C its body temperature can fall by 15°C in ten minutes. So a parent broods it almost all the time, the female through the night and the male from about 9 am to 5 pm. Its eyes open at 4-5 days, and by then it pushes at its parents to be fed. In mild conditions it can keep itself warm from about a week old; in colder weather it takes a few days longer.²

For its first four days a squab lives on crop milk, which both parents make. It is not milk in the mammal sense but a cheesy mass of cells, rich in fat and protein,² shed from the lining of the parent's crop (the food pouch in its throat) and brought up to feed the squab.⁵ The hormone prolactin drives it, along with the parents' bigger appetite and their urge to sit and feed.⁶ The first feed comes within two hours of hatching. From day 4 the parents mix seeds into the milk, and after about day 9 they bring adult food.²

Squabs fail to thrive without crop milk.⁷ In an experiment that fed pigeon milk to chickens, the chickens grew faster, with more immune-gene activity in the gut and more varied gut bacteria.⁸

Squabs grow fast: 4-8 g a day at first, then about 20 g a day after the first week, reaching 270-350 g by a month old. Feather tips break through the down at 4-6 days and every feather tract is growing by day 9; by two weeks a squab is well feathered. Feeds drop from three or four a day to two after the first week, and from then the young beg persistently. At 8-10 days old they are vigorous enough to hiss and snap their bills at an intruder.²

At about a month old. Birds of the World's authors found that squabs walked well at 18 days, tried their wings at 25-28 days and could fly at 30-32 days, and that they left the nest at 25-32 days in summer and as late as 45 days in midwinter.² Audubon gives about 25-32 days, later in cold weather;³ the BTO's figure for fledging is 35-37 days.⁴

For their first two to four days out, fledglings usually leave the nest at midday and come back to roost at night, and some parents end up driving a reluctant youngster away. Fledglings stay near home for a week or two, and those that can fly find food for themselves within a few days. A few leave about two weeks before they can fly, and these can starve or fall.²

A young pigeon looks much like an adult but duller and washed with brown, with pale fringes to the wing feathers that give a scaly look, and dull feet. The surest clue is the eye: brown or greyish-brown until about 6-8 months old, when it turns orange. Some young males already show a little sheen on the neck. Young pigeons can breed within their first year (in a small Kansas sample, females bred at 7-12 months and males at 5.5-12 months), though in many populations a shortage of nest sites keeps most young birds from breeding.²

Many do not. In North American studies, 52-69% of eggs hatched (three studies) and 20-45% produced a fledgling (four). In a Kansas life table of eggs and young, 83% were still alive at 10 days, 71% at 20, 56% at 30 and 43% at 50. Developmental problems, perhaps disease, kill 16% of eggs and 4% of squabs.² Pigeons make up for it by breeding again and again: Kansas pairs averaged 6.5 nests a year.

Look before you act. A fully feathered young pigeon on the ground is usually a fledgling with its parents nearby: leave it, moving it only a short distance if it is in immediate danger, and check again after an hour or so. If it is still there with no parent, contact a vet. A squab that is not yet fully feathered should still be in its nest: the RSPCA advises taking it to a vet rather than trying to put it back in the nest, which could disturb other young; the law also protects nests in use. Wear thick gloves and eye protection and keep handling to a minimum. In England and Wales the RSPCA's advice line is 0300 123 8960.⁹

Each April to July the RSPCA is handed as many as 20,000 fledglings of all kinds by people who think they have been abandoned; in most cases the parents were nearby.

1. RSPCA. Pigeons in the UK: facts, behaviour and common myths. RSPCA Advice and welfare. Accessed 26 October 2026. Source
2. Lowther, P. E., Johnston, R. F. (2020). Rock Pigeon (Columba livia), version 1.0. Birds of the World (S. M. Billerman, editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology. doi:10.2173/bow.rocpig.01
3. National Audubon Society. Rock Pigeon. Audubon Guide to North American Birds (text adapted from Kaufman, Lives of North American Birds, 1996). Accessed 26 October 2026. Source
4. BTO. Rock Dove (Columba livia). BTO BirdFacts. Accessed 26 October 2026. Source
5. Gillespie, M. J., Crowley, T. M., Haring, V. R., Wilson, S. L. et al. (2013). Transcriptome analysis of pigeon milk production - role of cornification and triglyceride synthesis genes. BMC Genomics 14: 169. doi:10.1186/1471-2164-14-169
6. Horseman, N. D., Buntin, J. D. (1995). Regulation of pigeon cropmilk secretion and parental behaviors by prolactin. Annual Review of Nutrition 15: 213-238. doi:10.1146/annurev.nu.15.070195.001241
7. Gillespie, M. J., Haring, V. R., McColl, K. A., Monaghan, P. et al. (2011). Histological and global gene expression analysis of the 'lactating' pigeon crop. BMC Genomics 12: 452. doi:10.1186/1471-2164-12-452
8. Gillespie, M. J., Stanley, D., Chen, H., Donald, J. A. et al. (2012). Functional similarities between pigeon 'milk' and mammalian milk: induction of immune gene expression and modification of the microbiota. PLoS ONE 7: e48363. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0048363
9. RSPCA. Found a sick or injured pigeon. RSPCA Advice and welfare. Accessed 26 October 2026. Source