Deathly storytelling in the ecological city: how pigeons became falcon food in Baltimore, Maryland

Abstract

ABSTRACT Cities are important sites of accumulation within capitalism, but also home for many humans and non-humans. Rock pigeons (Columba livia) are ubiquitous, but not always welcome, and are thus subjected to a variety of exclusionary tactics – including killing. On the other hand, charismatic non-humans like peregrine falcons (Falco perigrinus) are often encouraged to occupy prominent urban spaces by local government, conservation groups, businesses, and media. This paper explores how the presence of pigeons and falcons came to be valued differently within the urban context of Baltimore, Maryland, USA. I examine how the stories being told about falcons and pigeons play an important role in defining their value, in particular in relation to the city’s role as a site of capitalist accumulation. Baltimore specific stories which posit pigeons as an ecologically important food source for falcons, and credit falcons with reducing urban pigeon populations imbue both species of non-humans with particular values in relation to one another. My analysis reveals that new values are placed on non-human death in the city through storytelling, and, in an imagined triumph of capitalism, the city is redeemed as a space of human and non-human flourishing in the face of anthropogenic environmental contamination.