From top to bottom/ left to right: Jungle Crow, Thumbler, Frillback, Rock and Homey
Real Pigeons is an Australian children’s book series written by Andrew McDonald and illustrated by Ben Wood.
It follows a group of crime-fighting city pigeons: Rock, Grandpouter, Homey, Frillback and Tumbler — all member of the Real Pigeons World Wild network. Each book is divided into three parts that all build up to the main story, and each story has different antagonists.
The books currently released include:
- Real Pigeons Fight Crime (2018)
- Real Pigeons Eat Danger (2018)
- Real Pigeons Nest Hard (2019)
- Real Pigeons Splash Back (2019
- Real Pigeons Peck Punches (2019)
- Real Pigeons Get Bready (2020)
- Real Pigeons Flex Feathers (2020)
- Real Pigeons Spy High (2021)
- Real Pigeons Duck Trouble (2021)
- Real Pigeons Stay Coo (2022)
- Real Pigeons Flap Out (2022)
Real Pigeons provide examples of:
- Affably Evil: Jungle Crow and Megabat are arrogant and troublesome, but they can be very polite and friendly at times.
- Animals Not to Scale: Megabat, despite what his name would suggest (and the fact that his species’ wings can stretch up to 2 meters), is actually around the size of a pigeon.
- Animal Talk: It’s established that the animal characters can understand each other (even if they’re different species) and humans, but humans can’t understand them.
- Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Tumbler has shades of this in the later books.
- Badass Normal: Grandpouter has no pigeon power, but he is the organiser and leader of the Real Pigeons Squad. And according to Squab, Grandpouter is ‘very wise’.
- Brilliant, but Lazy: Homey is an excellent navigator, but tends to be more of a layabout than the other pigeons.
- Cats Are Mean: The majority of cats (with the exception of Tabasco) are enemies to the pigeons and often portrayed as bullies. This is justified as cats are natural predators of birds such as pigeons.
- Cain and Abel: Grandpouter and Silvercrop.
- Contortionist: Tumbler’s power.
- Cunning Like a Fox: Red Fox knows the easy way of reaching high even into the mountains (by sneaking on the Real Pigeons’ nest plane)
- A Dog Named "Dog": The majority of characters either fit into this, or A Lizard Named "Liz" (Rock, Frillback, Jungle Crow, Homey, Ermine etc.). The few animal characters who don’t got into this trope include: Dabbler (duck), Tabasco (cat), Silvercrop and Venombeak (pouter pigeons; the latter was Grandpouter’s former name), Roller (parlour pigeon) etc.
- Distaff Counterpart: The True Frogs to the Real Pigeons.
- Does
- Given Name Reveal: While the Real Pigeons are usually referred to by the species name, some have actual full names: Homestead Butterworth (Homey), Tumbleweed (Tumbler) and Venombeak (Grandpouter).
- It's All About Me: Megabat is always self-centred anddesperate for attention, he’s willing to sabotage and steal stuff from others just to get it.
- A Lizard Named "Liz": See above.
- Long-Lost Relative: Homey’s family.
- Master of Disguise: Rock’s trademark power.
- Super-Strength: Frillback’s power.
- Trademark Favourite Food:
- All pigeons love bread, but especially Homey.
- For Frillback, it’s sausages.
- For Jungle Crow, it’s bread with chilli (pigeons can’t tolerate chilli; only crows)
- Wicked Weasel: Ermine is an antagonist whose out to eat Kakapo.
- You Dirty Rat!: Subverted: Rattus leads a pack of underground rats and tries to win the humans’ love. However, humans are always afraid of rats and run away the moment they see them.
