Picture the scene: you’re strolling down the high street, Greggs bag in hand, the unmistakable scent of sausage roll lingering in the air. You take one bite, then another, before—plop—a rogue bit of pastry escapes your grasp and tumbles to the pavement. Before you even have time to react, they appear. The pigeons.
Where did they come from? No one knows. But there they are, in their usual formation—one bold leader, a few hesitant onlookers, and at least one who looks like he’s seen things. Within seconds, the pastry is gone, and the birds disperse, mission complete. But this raises a very important question: did that pigeon actually prefer your Greggs sausage roll? Or was it just any old scrap to them? And, if given the choice, would they have waited for something else?
Do pigeons have taste, or are they just indiscriminate food vacuums?
This, dear reader, is what we must investigate.
The Greggs vs. Cooplands Debate
Now, it would be foolish to assume that pigeons don’t have opinions. They live in our towns and cities, they watch our habits, and they are—as any chip-stealing victim will confirm—strategic masterminds. It stands to reason that pigeons, like humans, might prefer one bakery over another.
Consider Greggs. A powerhouse of high street pastry, famous for its flaky sausage rolls and alarming ability to produce a hot steak bake that could power the National Grid. Greggs pigeons are bold. They know their territory, they have perfected the art of hovering near an unsuspecting customer, and they will not hesitate to take what is theirs (and, frankly, what isn’t).
Cooplands pigeons, on the other hand, operate at a slightly slower pace. Perhaps it’s the puff pastry—less aerodynamic, more effort to snatch mid-air. Cooplands caters more to the careful, calculated pigeon, the one who waits for an entire pasty to be abandoned rather than scrambling for a single flake.
There is, however, one universal truth: pigeons will always congregate near whichever bakery has the highest percentage of clumsy eaters. And for that reason, Greggs wins purely on volume.
The Suspicious Absence of Pigeons Outside Pret
Have you ever noticed that pigeons rarely seem to hang around outside Pret? This is, in itself, deeply suspicious.
One theory is that pigeons are fundamentally pastry birds, and Pret—despite its many virtues—has simply too many seeds in its offerings. Pigeons may be urban scavengers, but even they draw the line at a £4.50 ‘Super Green Artisan Croissant with Activated Chia’. They are not interested in a smashed avocado wrap. They want grease. They want crumbs. They want something they can fight over without looking ridiculous.
Or perhaps Pret pigeons exist, but they are simply a different breed—more refined, less visible. The posh pigeons of the bakery world, lurking unseen, waiting for someone to abandon a croissant with a name so long it sounds like a medieval curse.
The Mystery of the One Pigeon That Gets an Entire Sausage Roll
Every town has that pigeon. The one who, somehow, always manages to get an entire sausage roll while the rest fight over a single flake of crust. Who is this bird? How did he rise to such power?
There are several possibilities. He could be a seasoned strategist, carefully assessing the most generous humans before striking. Or perhaps he has simply perfected the “look at me, I’m starving” routine, knowing full well that some kind-hearted pensioner will inevitably drop a full steak bake at his feet.
Or—and this is the most worrying theory—perhaps there is no chosen pigeon, and it’s just one of them every time, swapping roles in some sort of avian food syndicate. A shadowy pastry cartel operating under our very noses.
Do Pigeons Prefer Hot or Cold Food?
This is a topic that remains woefully under-researched, possibly because it involves feeding pigeons dangerously hot pasties and seeing what happens. However, observational evidence suggests that while pigeons will happily eat a lukewarm sausage roll, they struggle with fresh-out-the-oven food.
Many a pigeon has been seen grabbing a rogue pasty scrap only to immediately regret its life choices. The panic, the wing flaps, the realisation that it has just scorched the inside of its beak—it’s all there. But does this deter them? No. Because pigeons live on the edge. They take risks. They know that in the world of high street bakery scavenging, hesitation equals hunger.
The Pastry Connoisseurs We’ll Never Understand
So, do pigeons have a favourite bakery? The answer, like all great mysteries, remains frustratingly unclear. There is no pigeon TripAdvisor, no underground feathered ranking system we can access. But what is clear is that pigeons are not simply mindless snack machines. They are watching. They are learning. And they may—may—even be judging.
The next time you drop a pastry crumb, take note. Which pigeon gets there first? Do they hesitate? Do they turn their beak up at a slightly burnt crust? Are they choosing?
And if they are, what does that mean for us?
Dwight Warner is the quintessential oddball Brit, with a weirdly American-sounding name, who has a knack for turning the mundane into the extraordinary. Hailing originally from London, now living in the sleepy depths of Lincolnshire but claiming an allegiance to the absurd, Dwight has perfected the art of finding the surreal in real life. Whether it’s a spirited rant about the philosophical implications of queueing or a deep dive into why tea tastes better in a mug older than you, his blogs blur the line between the abstract and the everyday.
With an irreverent wit and a penchant for tangents that somehow come full circle, Dwight Warner doesn’t just write; he performs on the page. His humour is both sharp and delightfully nonsensical, like Monty Python met your nosiest neighbour and they decided to co-write a diary.
Known for being gregarious, Dwight is the life of any (real or metaphorical) party, whether he’s deconstructing the existential crisis of mismatched socks or sharing his inexplicable theories about why pigeons are secretly running the economy.
A larger-than-life personality with a laugh as loud as his opinions, Dwight Warner invites readers to step into a world where everything’s slightly askew—and that’s exactly how he likes it.
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