A pigeon which made its nest among the poppies in the main site for commemorating the dead at the Australian War Memorial has now given birth to a squab.

The memorial announced the birth: "Earlier in the month we shared a story of a pigeon that had been busy preparing for new life in a place that commemorates death, sacrifice and renewal. Today we are pleased to share a photo of the baby pigeon."

The original pigeon, presumably the mother of the newcomer, had set up home in the memorial's Hall of Memory. It had taken poppies from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to make its nest right up against a stained glass window of a wounded Australian soldier.

It was a good place for a bird's nest because the hall covered in mosaic was a haven of silence.

A war memorial spokesman said at the time that the nest would be cleared away once the pigeon had finished using it. With a pigeon family now there, that clearance now seems further away.

The bird was not being fed by staff because it seemed quite capable of finding food unaided. And anyway, pigeons are not always welcome.

But the memorial saw a significance in the nest. It said the wounded soldier in the stained glass window by the nest symbolised the quality of "endurance", and the nest of poppies nearby was a "reminder of the powerful bond between man and beast on the battlefield".

There is an aptness to the nesting of a pigeon in the War Memorial because pigeons played a big part in the First World War and perhaps in other wars before the advent of electricity and wire communication.

Historian Dr Meleah Hampton said they had been used in both war and civilian life for centuries.

"Whenever we talk about animals in war, they are fulfilling a purpose or performing a task that people can't do easily on their own," she said.

"So we use horses for transporting people or pulling guns, and we use pigeons as an answer to our problems with communication.

"Particularly in the early wars, communication is really difficult. Wireless is in its absolute infancy in the First World War and telephone wires get broken apart in the shellfire on the Western Front.

"So pigeons are particularly of use in warfare when you've got a couple of men trying to get a message from where they are back to the backline; a pigeon can get that through sometimes when nothing else can."

Pigeons came back into use in the Second World War, a conflict that at face value appeared to involve only modern technology.

"We've got our trucks instead of horses, and wireless radio, and sophisticated radar signals, and all those sorts of things," Dr Hampton said.

"But particularly in the Pacific, the mountains and the humidity meant that the wireless radios didn't work very well," she said.

Pigeons were the most effective way of getting messages up and over ranges, and throughout the islands.

The Australian Corps of Signals Pigeon Service was established, and thousands of birds were used to help solve the military's problems with communication.

Between 1942 and 1943, pigeon fanciers across the nation gave 13,500 trained pigeons to the army to use for signals purposes.

"That civilian effort is, I think, this little magnificent under story of the war," Dr Hampton said.

Early next year, National War Animals Day is marked. The memorial's pigeons may play a part.