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Homing Pigeon Eyes Diverged During Flight but Converged Toward the Perch During Landing

Feral pigeon in flight over red roofs
Research · Physiology

Homing pigeons (Columba livia domestica), domesticated rock doves, used markedly different eye movements during forward flight and landing. The study was conducted in Canada. A Current Biology study published online on 6 July 2026 found slow outward, or divergent, eye movements during free flight, but large inward, convergent movements toward the perch during landing.

The researchers built a miniature onboard system that recorded eye position while a second view captured the visual motion, or optic flow, generated as pigeons flew several kilometres back to their home loft. The eye camera recorded at 90 frames per second, while a small computer, battery and inertial sensor were carried on the bird in a backpack.

Eye movements followed the optic flow of forward flight

As a pigeon moves forward, features in the environment sweep across the retina. This pattern is called optic flow. During outdoor flight, the pigeons’ eyes made slow temporal movements, turning outward from one another. Both the direction and speed of these movements matched the optic flow measured along the horizon.

The authors interpret this as a divergent optokinetic response. Optokinetic eye movements act to reduce image slip across the retina, and the measured pattern was consistent with the pigeons stabilising the horizon within their lateral visual fields while continuing to move rapidly through the landscape.

A laboratory test reproduced the divergence

The researchers then tested pigeons with the head held stationary while computer-generated visual scenes simulated forward self-motion. The birds again made binocular divergent eye movements. Reproducing the response without real forward flight strengthened the conclusion that the divergence was driven by the visual motion associated with self-movement.

The study therefore links the free-flight eye movements directly to a known visual reflex rather than treating them as incidental movements of the eyes inside the head.

Landing reversed the pattern

During landing, the eye movements changed sharply. In both open-field and laboratory landing trials, pigeons made large convergent movements, rotating both eyes toward the perch. This brought the landing target into the binocular part of the visual field.

That geometry permits stereopsis: depth can be estimated by comparing the slightly different view reaching each eye. The strong convergence demonstrates that pigeons actively reconfigure their gaze as the visual task changes from forward travel to precise contact with a target.

Pigeon gaze changed with the demands of flight

The results show that pigeon eyes are not simply held in one fixed configuration once a bird is airborne. During forward flight, slow divergence matched the visual motion produced by self-movement and was consistent with horizon stabilisation. During landing, the same visual system shifted to strong convergence toward a specific object.

In the authors’ interpretation, both optokinetic and goal-directed convergent eye movements are important components of avian flight control. The researchers also suggest that the subtle drifting movements during forward flight may help pigeons resolve finer visual details or environmental features useful for navigation.

Sources and image credit

  1. Lapsansky, A. B., Wylie, D. R., & Altshuler, D. L. (2026). Pigeons make slow, divergent eye movements during flight and large, convergent eye movements when landing. Current Biology, 36(15), 3964–3973.e5.Primary peer-reviewed study first published online 6 July 2026. Onboard cameras separately tracked eye position and optic flow during free flight. Slow divergent movements matched optic flow along the horizon; head-restrained visual simulations reproduced binocular divergence; landing produced large convergence toward the perch that permitted stereopsis.
  2. Lapsansky, A., Wylie, D., & Altshuler, D. (2026). Data from: Pigeons make slow divergent eye movements during flight, and large convergent eye movements when landing.Primary dataset and README used to verify the outdoor, indoor and head-restrained eye-tracking data streams and the simultaneous measurement of eye position, optic flow and inertial motion.
  3. University of British Columbia (2026). How camera-equipped homing pigeons could improve robotic vision in flight.Researcher Q&A used only for the authors' proposed interpretation that subtle drifting eye movements may help resolve finer environmental detail; this interpretation is presented as a possibility rather than a demonstrated result.

Image: Arraja77 — feral/domestic Rock Dove in flight, photographed 7 August 2020; Wikimedia Commons; CC BY-SA 4.0. Representative image, not one of the homing pigeons used in the 2026 eye-movement study. · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source

About this content: This story was produced with AI assistance within an editorial workflow developed by Wildlife Vagabond. Editorial responsibility remains with Wildlife Vagabond.How AI is used

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