Something that I don't see noted within the comments is that the purpose wasn't to eat pigeon but to eat squab.
In culinary terminology, squab is an immature domestic pigeon, typically under four weeks old, or its meat. Some authors describe it as tasting like dark chicken.
Another note about pigeons: they feed their young milk produced from a gland inside the upper throat: crop milk.
Pigeon's milk begins to be produced a couple of days before the eggs are due to hatch. The parents may cease to eat at this point in order to be able to provide the squabs (baby pigeons and doves) with milk uncontaminated by seeds, which the very young squabs would be unable to digest. The baby squabs are fed on pure crop milk for the first week or so of life, or about 10-14 days. After this the parents begin to introduce a proportion of adult food, softened by spending time in the moist conditions of the adult crop, into the mix fed to the squabs, until by the end of the second week they are being fed entirely on softened adult food.
In culinary terminology, squab is an immature domestic pigeon, typically under four weeks old, or its meat. Some authors describe it as tasting like dark chicken.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squab
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Another note about pigeons: they feed their young milk produced from a gland inside the upper throat: crop milk.
Pigeon's milk begins to be produced a couple of days before the eggs are due to hatch. The parents may cease to eat at this point in order to be able to provide the squabs (baby pigeons and doves) with milk uncontaminated by seeds, which the very young squabs would be unable to digest. The baby squabs are fed on pure crop milk for the first week or so of life, or about 10-14 days. After this the parents begin to introduce a proportion of adult food, softened by spending time in the moist conditions of the adult crop, into the mix fed to the squabs, until by the end of the second week they are being fed entirely on softened adult food.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_milk