Pidgeons are my second favourite bird. Wonderful creatures. Not so hot on pidgeon males, though. They're douchebags.
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It's usually because they forage in the trash (anti-feeding ordinances are partly to blame for that).
They get their legs tangled in wire. Blood flow cuts off. Necrosis. Toe/leg falls off.
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They are here too. But the pigeons are usually clever enough to avoid them. It's the necrosis that gets their legs, 90% of the time.
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Yeah. Anything that is not going to come off with some vigorous shaking, and that tangles, is liable to amputate a limb.
We were feeding a one-legged pigeon for months. She didn't survive the winter. Without her other leg, she couldn't properly preen herself, so she lost heat.
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It really does. It's relatively benign by animal dropping standards, but it does stink.
Yeah, it fell below 30 degrees Celsius some days here. That's when she disappeared.
Other birds shun cripples, so she probably had no radiant heat to help her either.
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Dunno. Ours came to our windowsill. Just saw her sitting there one day and decided to feed her when we saw she was crippled. Then she kept returning.