Talk:Homing pigeon/Archive 1

Lifting Capacity

The article doesnt mention how much weight a homing pigeon can lift? Have they been used for anything besides letters?

They are fairly light birds, I doubt they would be able to carry anything significant in weight in flight, and can't think of anything other than messages that would be useful to have them carry. --86.148.74.49 16:39, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Cher Ami's sex

The Cher Ami article refers to the heroic bird as "she," but this article uses a male pronoun. Anyone know for sure? -- Coneslayer 20:48, 2005 Mar 31 (UTC)

The sexes of pigeons are easy to tell after they've mated. Otherwise it may be hard to tell. I have no ideaa about this particular bird. "Dear Friend" is gender neutral as far as I know. P0M 03:39, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well, whilst "Cher Ami" could be neutral it would usually refer to a male subject, thus it is much more likely that had the bird been female it would have been named "Chère Amie" (the feminine version, which still translates to "Dear Friend" in English) Me gustas tu 20:39, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Here in the U.S. we have male Lassies. Cher Ami was an American bird, and may have been named before s/he was sexually mature. It is possible to sex young birds as you would sex young chicks, I suppose. I have never heard of anybody bothering to sex pigeons. I've looked at several site on the WWW that might be more likely to be accurate and the consensus seems to be "male." There is some degree of sexual dimorphism in pigeons, so the larger males may make better birds to use when carry-weight (and perhaps speed) are important. There must be reliable documentation somewhere. P0M 03:02, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Not a racer myself, but my father was, and as far as I am aware both male and female are raced equally and there isn't a strong correlation between sex and speed. The males are slightly larger, although not by a huge amount (5-10% maybe?), so while they might be preferred I doubt it would be considered essential. --86.148.74.49 16:43, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Note that the War pigeon refers to Cher Ami as a cock, or male, pigeon. Doesnt have a reference either, so just more places to update if someone gets a definitive answer. --86.148.74.49 16:46, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I still don't understand

Any clues on how the message goes the other way? I mean the pigeon will fly back to its home, ok. But surely this is only useful as a message service if the pigeon would also fly a message back. I don't see how that would work.

It only works one way; you have to ship the pigeons back to the other end, I believe. yEvb0 20:06, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

The system surely works either way! Pigeons need to have a nest(box) on one end of the 'message-line' and has te get its feed on the other end. That's the clou

citation

following removed pending needs proper formatting. OP?

Meaning what? OP is not meaning NOP? P0M 23:54, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Re: Taliban banned homing pigeons: http://www.bolshevik.org/TB/tb8_1_2.html http://www.magnificentfrigatebird.com/category/pigeons/ -- refers to a Washington Post story that may be authoritative.

yEvb0 20:06, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

should be fairly obvious, you have a mated pair of pigeons owned by one party and a mated pair of pigeons owned by another party, you exchange mates with the person you are communicating with, then replys can be sent using the other pigeon... you wouldn't use the same pigeon.

and what is this pigeon bang crap, I can't find any verifiable sources.

Bang?

Please sign your postings.P0M 02:19, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Uh...yeah. I just noticed that too. I'm no scientist but I'm pretty sure that pidgeon's can't break the sound barrier. I'll change it. Theonlyedge 03:43, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Aviculture WikiProject proposal

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals#Aviculture. The purpose of this project is to help increase the amount and quality of content related to aviculture on wikipedia, and to maintain and organise articles relating to the subject, eventually bringing as many as possible up to good- or featured-article status. Snowman 16:52, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Dilly dally?

The history says these were used as early as dilly dally baghdad. Is this vandalism or what?--Santahul 20:20, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Why does it work?

I don't understand the motivation of the pigeon. Why does it want to go home? Why can't it just find some tree or something to live in? What's the success rate? --Seans Potato Business 19:41, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Pigeons seem to have evolved as dwellers on cliffs, frequently near oceans. They fly great distances looking for food. They also just like to fly. But their babies would not last long without both parents to food them. So the adult birds have to know where home is and be inclined to go home. They live in flocks and many times you will notice a flock drop in on a farm field to glean the seeds that were dropped on the ground by the harvesting machinery. When the flock goes home it would not work well if flock members did not keep to their own nesting spots. A careless neighbor could knock an egg off the edge. So the birds are territorial with regard to their own nests. Defending their territory against flock mates, protecting their babies whenever they have them in the nest, keeping a good nesting spot (where their mate can come back to also), etc. all make them want to come back. They mate for life. If a pigeon found a mate, laid an egg, and then didn't come home the next day, the mate couldn't very well sit on the egg all the time. If the egg hatched, the mate couldn't very well feed both chicks. (They generally lay two egs in rapid succession and raise two babies until they are old enough to fly and get feed for themselves.) So the birds that would not come home would not have many offspring survive.

That means that pigeons can easily fly fifty miles or so just cruising around looking for the current hot spot for fallen grain. They can easily get caught by a big storm and driven a long distance away too. So just about any pigeon can get back home from fairly considerable distances.

When people discovered they could use the homing instinct to get "return mail" over distances that it would take a man on horseback several days to travel, they started pushing the distances. If they could get a message back from somewhere 50 miles away, why not try for 100 miles. At some distance part of the pigeons would not come home, but they kept the ones that did come home and bred them. After a few hundred years of selective breeding for message transmission (and for racing), they have developed extremely reliable birds. If a homing pigeon is lost I believe it is generally either because they raced the bird at the extreme range for successful returns, because a storm killed or injured the bird (making it unable to fly for so long that it learned to regard a new place as home), or because a hawk or human hunter got it. The limit on the return range probably depends a lot on how far a pigeon can travel on stored fat. When they are away from home they tend to go all-out for home. They stop at night, and they stop for water, but if they get so hungry that they have to forage for food they might start to forget their original home. Eating a pigeon-sized dinner is a major undertaking. They can fill their crop up with about a cubic inch of grain, and finding and eating a cubic inch of grain can take quite a while. Carrying that much food packed around your neck can slow you down, too. But once the pigeon has exhausted its fat, it can't fly without eating fairly frequently. That need slows the whole process down and increases the possibility that the pigeon forgets that it was trying to get home, increases the possibility that it will find an attractive mate, increases the chances that it will get killed by some predator, etc.

Over a range of 100 miles or so, I believe the return rate is mainly determined by predation. Beyond a range of 1000 miles I suspect the return rate is mainly dependent on good luck -- favorable factors like nice weather, a good tail wind, etc. (Pigeons can soar very well.)

It would be interesting to know how far ordinary barn pigeons will dependably return home. I would guess that most would make it back from up to 50 miles away, simply because that is about the range that a bird might ordinarily fly in. That gives the bird 7850 square miles or so in which to scout for food. I doubt that there would be any gain from searching at greater distances. At 50 mph or so they could make it home within an hour from anywhere in that range. P0M 09:12, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I have a homing pigeon in my yard that has a band on his ankle. He has been here for two weeks, he acts confused and unusually tame. Is it possible that this bird is having a problem continuing his journey? Should I attempt to catch him. Sometimes he tries to come in the house through the back door. I am not sure if this is the correct website for this question, it is the first one I have been able to enter a question on.

The bird you have found sounds like a good guy/gal. :-) May this bird has been injured or perhaps it got driven far from home by a storm and is utterly exhausted. It probably would appreciate some cracked corn, wheat, sorghum (some of the larger seeds in the mixtures sold in bags for bird feeders would do) and some clean water. If you had a large (small TV, etc.) carton you could cut a closable door at the bottom, put some feed and water inside, put a screen cover on top so it would be light inside, and leave it by your back door. A branch stuck through two walls midway up would give the bird a place to rest comfortably. (They're fine resting on flat surfaces too.) You could probably get the bird to accept the box as its home. You could try closing the door at night. I think the bird would not be alarmed since you say he is tame. Then you could give the bird feed and water by reaching in through the top. He should get used to your doing that within a week or two. As soon as you can catch him without creating a big struggle or causing him to flee the cage, you could gently pick him up (be prepared, the claws are a little sharp so if the bird struggles it might hurt a little even though you won't get cut). Take a look at the band on his leg. It should have a number. A local pigeon fancier, or maybe a local or state homing pigeon society member could help you locate the owner.

When I was a kid, I caught an injured pigeon that had been totally wild. I put him in a big breeding cage for canaries my mom had. Within a couple weeks he had grown to regard it as his home and whenever I put my hand in to get his water bowl he would grab the skin on the back of my hand like it was the neck feathers of another male pigeon and give it a good shaking. It didn't really hurt. It did show that he wasn't in the least afraid of me. I could easily pick him up and hold him. After he could fly again I put him in a pen in our barn and bought a mate for him. A year or two later he and his mate were stolen, but months later they got away from the thieves and flew back to me. They are intensely territorial birds, both with regard to their home loft, which they may share with other pairs of pigeons, and their own nests, which they chase their flock members away from. As long as they like where they are living, they will want to come back from wherever storms or thieves carry them. P0M 09:12, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

People who find lost homing pigeons can call the American Racing Pigeon Union directly at 405-478-2240. The ARPU's database of pigeon owners can be found on the web at www.pigeon.org.)P0M 09:46, 5 April 2007 (UTC)