The first separate edition of a story originally penned in 1907 for the Warne children, rediscovered in 1918 by Fruing Warne, who expressed a preference for this title over the author's preferred Tale of Jenny Crow; ‘Beatrix jibbed at the “rather namby pamby” pigeons, since they left little scope for pictorial variety - “it is too much pigeon, over & over” - and she had never been good at birds’ (Taylor, Whalley, Hobbs, Battrick).

Unfortunately the author could not be convinced to provide illustrations for this work, and Warne were not keen on using another illustrator that she recommended, and as a result the work was not published until 1955, followed by an edition illustrated by Marie Angel in 1970.