General Chat

as far as I can recall, darn sarf, the birds are trained to fly home.............southwards

oop norf, they are trained in the other direction......

others are trained to fly home from Le continent!!

Bob

Someone was asking about how they found their way home.......I am sure I read somewhere, ages ago about birds and migration and it being something to do with the world and magnetism.....just off to google to check for myself....

My OH said we should have called it TomTom,Bob!!

thats probably Ok, Helen.........they have to learn their way home.

lets hope he's learned a lesson...........LOL

should we equip him? with a Tom tom?

I used to take a Basket of young birds out on training runs(Flights) when I lived in London.......most times they got home before I did!! LOL.

Bob,this the first flight for this pigeon has done.The owner is prepared to pay to have him returned so I think he will have a 2nd chance.
I had to laugh when I found out that it started it's race only 1mile away from me,and it took over 24hours to get here.!!

Sadly , once a racer has " Lost its way" its of no use to the owner...........

thats why a tired bird should be rested and watered.
and...
sorry,......... but kicked out...........


Many years ago a flour mill in Millwall was fumigated every summer...........unfortunately there were many birds caught in the gas as the windows were unsealed, and opened afterwards..........

Bob

Off topic, but about a pigeon......last week my son and dil came home to their recently decorated house to find the light coloured living room covered with soot smuts.....furniture, rugs walls and ceiling......

....a pigeon had come down the chimney and they let it out by the window......but it left an awful mess behind.....

I had to laugh Helen......no, you are not the only one......up at the local farm where I used to go daily there were always homing pigeons in amongst the wild ones.....coming to feed on the grain......the pigeons are so fat where I live, that they look like ducks, and take ages to flap off the ground because they are so heavy.....lol....

A lady on the yard would go to great lengths to try and locate the owners......once they arrived at a good food source, they did not want to leave....

.....sorry, I mean the birds did not want to leave - not the owners....

City pigeons are often reffered to as flying rats and they do make such a mess on buildings.

However i've always been interested in the racing variety and have recently read an article about racers flying in an American canyon.

In the past photographers taking snaps of tourists had to wait a few days for film to get from the viewing platform to studio and then onto customers,resulting in loss of sales.
Someone had the idea of sending film strapped to pigeon's back and within hours the bird had landed in studio and film was developed ready for customers when they returned back to base.

They are incredible birds and sometimes meet danger ...Eagles etc.... but they keep on going to deliver their 'mail' How do they do it?? Respect! :O)

Hi Helen, I found a racing pigeon in our garden a couple of years back - it seemed injured so I popped it into an empty chicken ark (handy to have these lying around the garden!!)and made it comfy. It had a number on its leg-ring so I looked it up on the internet, found a phone number and rang a pigeon-person. It was an answer machine and no-one ever called back and poor Percy pegged it shortly afterwards. :((( Well I loved him if no-one else did.

A few years ago on a very hot summers day a pigeon landed on my window sill it stayed there for up to 2 hours tried to get it to fly away but it didnt budge gave it some water didnt want it so I thought I would give the RSPCA a ring, nearest one was an hour away, looked in the local phone book nothing, by this time I thought the thing was going to die. So I gave Tenby police station a ring not 999 they said they would try and sort something out went back into the room stood there looking at this poor thing when I heard sierens I thought pleases dont let that be for me next thing I know two fire engines pulled up I said to them its only a pigeon but the men climbed up the stairs leaned out of the window and you guessed it the thing FLEW away, never been so embarrased in my life.
Thats not the end a few days later on another hot day opened all the windows wide took my daughter to school came back and in my lounge sitting on my coffee table was the pigeon but this time it flew away out of the window, never seen it again.

dont know about now, but years ago I know that racing pigeons had the club/owner details on the inside of their wings..........advice then was...DONT feed it, but give it water.........

Bob

I wonder if pigeons put little signs near 'good' houses, like tramps used to do!!

Ahhh,it's gone now.A nice chap has just taken it,and he will feed it up and rest it for a few days before a courier will take it back to sheffield.I managed to give it a good stroke while it was being held,and told him not to send his friends here.!!!

Well done Helen :o)
I couldn't get near a pigeon - I hate them.
However I do rescue sloworms.
The cats rummage in the flower borders, then emerge with a Sammy sloworm in their mouth.
sometimes they even bring them indors for me!! Fortunately, so far they haven't killed one, but I have to take it off the cat and put it under one of the 'sloworm sanctuaries' in the garden - clay pots that have split in half lengthways - the cats can't get in there so Sammy's safe for a while.

maggie

Thank goodness for people like you, Helen, also the others on this thread.
(((HUG)))
x

*doesn't tell the others about rehoming worms if she finds one on a concrete path, lost*

I would not like to be married to a pigeon fanatic.My marriage would probably last 2 minutes!!!!!!!!As lovely as they are(not the hubbies)!!

My dad had racing pigeons in a loft in our back garden in the 1950-1970.s Mum used to get so uptight with him on a Sunday when the roast dinner was ready and he didn't come in to eat in a reasonable time. She threatened on more than one occasion to put his dinner outside the loft when his birds were having there daily fly.
Race days were hell cos no one was allowed out in the garden whilst he scanned the skies for his birds to come home and he managed to get them in the loft and take off their racing band from their leg and put into the racing clock to record the time.
He and Mums Bro who lived next door were fanatics with the racing pigeons. I just thought they made a load of crap and needed too much cleaning out!!

We fairly live near a wildlife rescue centre. Over the years we've had to make mercy dashes with various creatures. The kids named every one!

Among the many there was Alan the Sparrow (who didn't survive) but a little long eared bat (whose name I forget!) was kept at the sanctuary for a week until he'd recovered then we had to fetch him and release him where he'd been found. He was sweet.

When I was in my early teens I lived by the sea and we had to bring in some sea creatures to study in biology. My sister and I collected a few rockpool animals in a big jar. I was not happy that some of my class poked their animals with compass points. That evening all my animals went back to the beach and were put back in a pool.

I'm not so kind to land snails though!!

Sue
x

I want him as my pet!!!!!!!!!!!!