Tumbling is a fancy breed phenotype in domestic pigeons maintained by selective breeding, and it may take different in different sub-breeds. Roughly, it can be defined as the backward somersaults where the pigeon rotates around its neck-to-tail axis during flight. During development following flight onset, they spontaneously start manifesting tumbling, and over time, the tumbling phenotype gets consolidated in such a way that functional losses can emerge such as loss of flight. With its spontaneous early developmental appearance, and pronounced nature with aging, we proposed a corollary between motor stereotypies and tumbling in pigeons. As the basal ganglia and the dopaminergic system are heavily implicated in motor stereotypies, we investigated the substantia nigra dopaminergic system in three developmental stages in tumbling south-eastern Anatolian “Mardin” pigeons (n=8): prior-to-flight onset, flight/tumbling onset, tumbling consolidation; and in age-matched homing pigeons (n=7). Tyrosine-hydroxylase staining was done on coronal sections. The analysis showed no significant difference in the dopaminergic cell counts. The dopaminergic neuron fusiformity index was consistently high in the tumbling group whereas it showed a developmental change in the control brains. Furthermore, dopamine cell area increased with age in the tumbling group while it showed an age-dependent decline in the controls. These findings show that dopaminergic system development differs in tumbling pigeons and the morphological changes we have detected in terms of soma area and fusiformity may underly functional changes that differ between these pigeon breeds.