Norwich has known some beef in its time: from the Kett’s Rebellion against land enclosures in 1549, to the Great Blow during the English Civil War. Now there’s something new dividing the East Anglian city: pigeons. The ‘pooping menaces’ are pushing the council to ‘adopt extreme measures’, says the Guardian, The Times compared local scenes to those in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, while the Daily Telegraph’s intrepid David Wilkes has donned his tin hat to report from the ‘front line of Norwich’s pigeon feeding war’.

A society that reserves its compassion for the exotic or photogenic reveals its shallowness. The test of our moral seriousness lies in how we treat the ordinary and inconvenient

A society that reserves its compassion for the exotic or photogenic reveals its shallowness. The test of our moral seriousness lies in how we treat the ordinary and inconvenient

Norwich City Council is trying to keep the pigeon population down at the main market and war memorial following complaints from stall holders and shoppers. It paid £4,000 for a falconer to patrol the market for four weeks but the idea was scrapped. A proposal to feed contraceptives to the birds was rejected because the technique isn’t licensed in the UK. Then there’s thee pro-pigeon flock, who are reportedly feeding the pigeons industrial amounts of bird........

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