A Pigeon’s Eye View

BirdNote^®

A Pigeon’s Eye View

Written by Mark Bramhill

This is BirdNote.

Seeing the earth from above, out of an airplane window or from the top of a skyscraper, has a sublime beauty. While today you can just load up Google Maps, in the early 20th century, almost no one had seen a birds-eye view of the world.

But in 1907, Dr. Julius Neubronner, a German pharmacist who used carrier pigeons to deliver medicine, invented the pigeon camera.

    [Group of Rock Pigeons cooing]

It was a small camera strapped to a pigeon’s breast — like a photographic baby-bjorn. A timer let the camera take multiple snapshots throughout the bird’s flight. This allowed for some of the earliest aerial photography, and even seemed promising for military reconnaissance.

But the pigeons’ photos are rather chaotic — haphazardly framed, sometimes partly obscured by their wings. And you can’t exactly tell a pigeon what you want a photo of.

    [Rock Pigeon quizzical coo]

With rapid advancements in airplanes, the pigeon camera faded away. 

Still, these photos have a haunting beauty. Looking at people the size of ants amid toy-like buildings, there’s a sense that we’re glimpsing something beyond what humans could have imagined. And no matter how many times we’ve seen a view like that, it can still take our breath away.

    [Group of Rock Pigeons cooing]

See some of these photos at our website, BirdNote.org. I’m Mark Bramhill.

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Senior Producer: John Kessler
Content Director: Allison Wilson
Producer: Mark Bramhill
Managing Producer: Conor Gearin
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Rock Pigeon ML144324561 recorded by Paul Marvin, and Rock Pigeon ML315571941 recorded by Annie Finch.
BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2022 BirdNote   December 2022         
Narrator: Mark Bramhill

ID# ROPI-08-2022-12-28    ROPI-08