I think you're playing with words without realizing it.

I mean "smart" in a the ordinarily understood, general way. To claim without qualification that pigeons are smarter than people (as some have claimed) is to use the word in a most inclusive sense. Ask a stratified random sample of a million native speakers of English whether pigeons, as a matter of fact, are smarter than people (yes or no), and you'll get nearly a million noes. Plus, quite as significantly, much laughter at the silliness of the question.

Those respondents would not be ill-informed. Nor would they be unfamiliar with the ordinary meaning of "smart." Say flatly, "Pigeons are smarter than people" and some would undoubtedly say, "Yes, in some ways," because there are certain human attitudes and practices they don't think very highly of. But I'm not speaking of "some ways." I'm speaking of general intelligence.

Pigeons are more efficient at learning to choose doors by trial and error in a setup like "Let's Make a Deal!" They're also better at finding their way home and at flying by flapping. Those abilities don't make them smarter than people, unless, like Humpty Dumpty, you wish to stipulate a special definition of "smart" (for example, "able to outperform people in certain non-intellectual tasks").