This is the amusing moment several confused pigeons try to eat the seed on a mobile phone video.

The pigeon owner, named Ms Lin from the city of Jieyang in the Chinese province of Guangdong, shared the footage on her TikTok account on 19th October.

Ms Lin said that she keeps over 20 pigeons in a loft at her home, and that she was watching videos on her mobile phone when she came across an old clip of her feeding seed to a bird.

She said she was surprised when several pigeons came running over and started pecking at her phone, apparently trying to get at the birdseed seen in the footage.

Ms Lin added that she was concerned the birds’ pecking would damage her phone so she had to stop the video after a while and give them a proper feed.

In the footage, a pigeon is seen eating a pile of seed on the ground on the owner’s phone.

Meanwhile, around a dozen cooing pigeons gather around Ms Lin’s phone to peck at the colourful seed on the screen.

At the end of the clip, one feisty speckled pigeon is seen barging another out of the way before then attacking it to gain a prime position at the ‘feeding table’.

Pigeon breeding in China is an incredibly popular sport, with hundreds of thousands of people across the country carrying out the sport.

That was underlined by the price paid for a Belgian racing pigeon named Armando that sold to a Chinese bidder for USD 1.4 million.

But there are also thousands of amateurs who carry out the sport that first began in the country towards the end of the Ming dynasty with people gambling on the birds for money.

It took off again in modern times and in particular, became popular with the introduction of European pigeons, surviving even restrictions introduced at the start of the last century when it was thought that people attending pigeon races might be plotting to bring down the government.

However, the restrictions were short-lived and is now once again hugely popular, with only small fees needed to enter races with the potential of large returns.