Bert famously keeps a pigeon named Bernice as his pet.
Bernice reflects Bert’s unusual, highly specific interests. While Ernie is associated with playful songs and his Rubber Duckie, Bert is portrayed as more serious and old-fashioned, with a fondness for pigeons, bottle caps, paper clips, and other seemingly ordinary objects. His affection for Bernice is one of the character’s recurring comic details.
Bert’s pigeon obsession also appears in the song “Doin’ the Pigeon,” in which he performs a deliberately awkward dance inspired by the bird. The joke works because Bert treats pigeon appreciation with great seriousness, even though the subject seems comically mundane beside Sesame Street’s more fantastical characters.
Bernice is sometimes confused with Big Bird because both are bird characters connected to Sesame Street. They are very different: Big Bird is a central Muppet character who interacts with the neighborhood, while Bernice is Bert’s pet pigeon. Bernice also appears in related animated adventures featuring Bert and Ernie, reinforcing her place in Bert’s fictional world.