Plan A Pigeon Event

One of the best ways to learn about kindness and respect for every creature is to meet some of the beings that people either feel deserve little or no respect or are truly ignorant about. That would be pigeons! Pigeons are amazing creatures, who have been domesticated since the dawn of humankind and have lived in unison with us for millennia. At other times in our human history, pigeons were worshipped as fertility goddesses, representations of the Holy Ghost and symbols of peace. They were given many noble tasks to do in both world wars, and many were rewarded with high honors. Pigeons have inspired many great thinkers. They have been charged with carrying critical information – results of the Olympics, the winners and losers of key battles, election results, stock trades – and have successfully done so. For three centuries, even pigeon poop was revered!

Today, pigeons of all stripes (feral and domesticated) are on the bottom of the list of beings people find noble or interesting; yet, pigeons have not changed. Sadly, it is people who have. Steve and I are happy to open our large, outdoor aviary in beautiful Jacksonville, Oregon, to anyone who wants to learn about these birds. Many of the pigeons can also be held, as they are gentle and truly incapable of hurting even the youngest person with a “wing slap” or mild peck. Homeschoolers, school groups or anyone may visit by simply making arrangements with me or Steve at: sindyspigeonservice@gmail.com.

14 Excellent Reasons to Meet My Flock

1. Pigeons Are Likely The First Domesticated Bird

The common city pigeon (Columba livia), also known as the rock pigeon, is likely the first bird people ever domesticated. Pigeons and humans have lived in close proximity for thousands of years. The first recordings of pigeons in art date back to Mesopotamis (modern Iraq), in 3000 BCE.

The first biblical reference to the white pigeon (called a “dove”) was in the Old Testament of the Bible in the first millennium AC and was the story of Noah and the Arc. Later, in the New Testament, the pigeon was first mentioned during the baptism of Christ where the “dove” descended as the Holy Spirit, an image now used extensively in Christian art.

2. Pigeons Won Over Many Great Minds From Charles Darwin To Nikola Tesla

Charles Darwin relied heavily on pigeons to support his theory of evolution. Darwin himself owned a diverse flock, joined London pigeon clubs, and hobnobbed with famous pigeons breeders. Darwin’s passion for the birds influenced his 1868 book, The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, which has not one but two chapters about pigeons.

Nikola Tesla, another great mind, also enjoyed pigeons. He cared for injured wild pigeons in his New York City hotel room. Hands down, Tesla’s favorite pigeon was a white female—about whom he once said, “I loved that pigeon, I loved her as a man loves a woman and she loved me. When she was ill, I knew and understood; she came to my room and I stayed beside her for days. I nursed her back to health. That pigeon was the joy of my life. If she needed me, nothing else mattered. As long as I had her, there was a purpose in my life.” Reportedly, he was inconsolable after she died.

3. Pigeons are Athletes of the Highest Caliber

While racehorses receive all the glory, with their 35 mph sprints around a one-mile racetrack, homing pigeons – a mere pound of flesh and feathers – routinely fly over 500 miles in a single day at 60 mph, finding their way home from a place they have never been before, and without stopping for food or water. Pigeons can fly at an altitude up to and beyond 6,000 feet. A pigeon’s average speed is 77.6 mph. The fastest recorded speed is 92.5 mph.

Big Bubba Dutch and Sandy

4. Pigeons Are Loving Partners And Co-Equal Parents

Pigeons mate for life and live happily as a couple. They have two eggs, which ordinarily hatch at the same time. Both male and female pigeons share equally in the nesting duty, dividing the responsibility of incubating the eggs to give the other a chance to eat and rest. Once the young (squab) are born, both the male and female take turns feeding the two squab. Both male and female pigeons make crop milk. The milk is produced in a section of the esophagus designed to store food temporarily. Like the milk of mammals, the creation of crop milk is regulated by the hormone prolactin. Newly-hatched pigeons drink crop milk until they’re weaned off it after four weeks or so.

Because pigeons mate for life, when one is lost or killed, the other may never mate again. Pigeons grieve. Pigeons are lonely without their mates.

5. Pigeons Can Find Their Way Back To Their Mate And Nest From 1300 Miles Away

Pigeons can be taken over a thousand miles away from their home and will return, even if they are transported in isolation — with no visual, olfactory, or magnetic clues. These remarkable navigational skills to find home have been exploited by people since at least 3000 BCE, when ancient mariners would set caged pigeons free and follow them to nearby land.

Their navigational skills make pigeons great long distance messengers. It was a pigeon that delivered the results of the First Olympics in 776 BCE, and a pigeon that first brought news of Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo over 2500 years later. Further East, Genghis Khan stayed in touch with his allies and enemies alike through a pigeon-based postal network.

6. PIGEONS SAVES THOUSANDS OF HUMAN LIVES DURING WORLD WAR I AND II

Pigeons’ homing talents continued to shape history during the 20th century. In both world wars, rival nations had huge flocks of pigeon messengers. The United States alone had 200,000 at its disposal in WWII. By delivering critical updates to saved thousands of soldiers in the field and to the resistance living in occupied countries. One pigeon named, Cher Ami, completed a mission that led to the rescue of 194 stranded U.S. soldiers, on October 4, 1918.

7. Pigeons Are One Of The Few Species In The World That Can Self-Identify

Pigeons are one of a very few species in the world which can pass the “mirror test” – a test of self-recognition. Only humans, dolphins, elephants, chimpanzees, magpies and pigeons all show the ability to recognize their own reflections.

8. Pigeons Can Do Math

Pigeons have shown that they can learn abstract rules about numbers, an ability people thought belonged only to in primates. In the 1990’s, scientists trained rhesus monkeys to look at groups of items on a screen and to rank them from lowest number of items to highest. Rhesus monkeys learned to rank groups of one, two and three items in various sizes and shapes. When tested, they were able to do the task even when unfamiliar numbers of things were introduced. In other words, having learned that two was more than one and three was more than two, they could also figure out that five was more than two, or eight was more than six.

The same experiment was done with pigeons. The journal Science reported on the experiment’s conclusion: pigeons did just as well as the rhesus monkeys. The pigeons quickly learned the abstract rule: peck images on a screen in order, lower number to higher. And, not only could pigeons rank groups of one, two or three items in various sizes and shapes, pigeons could also put groups of items in order up to nine.

No testing has been done with numbers greater than nine, so whether a pigeon can count larger numbers is still open to investigation.

9. Pigeons Can Identify Words

In a 2016 study, scientists showed that pigeons can differentiate between strings of letters (gibberish) and actual words. Some of the pigeons in the study learned to identify between 26 and 58 written English words and could tell them apart. They were even able to distinguish correctly spelled words from those that were misspelled.

10. Pigeons Can Appreciate Art

Japanese psychologist, Shigeru Watanabe, and two of his colleagues, trained pigeons in a lab setting to recognize the paintings of Claude Monet and Pablo Picasso and to distinguish between the painters. The pigeons were even able to use their knowledge of impressionism and cubism to identify paintings of other artists in those movements.

11. Pigeons Are Likely Related To The Dodo

There are 308 living species of pigeons and doves. Together, they make up an order of birds known as the columbiformes. The extinct dodo belonged to this group as well.

Flightless and somewhat docile, dodos once inhabited Mauritius, an island near Madagascar. The species had no natural predators, but when human sailors arrived with rats, dogs, cats and pigs, the species began to die out. Before the 17th century came to a close, the dodo had vanished altogether. DNA testing has confirmed that pigeons are closely related to the dodo.

12. At One Point, More Than One-Quarter Of All The Birds Living In The U.S. May Have Been Passenger Pigeons

Wild/feral rock pigeons reside in all 50 states. Originally native to Eurasia and northern Africa, rock pigeons were most likely introduced to North America by French settlers, in the early 1600’s. At the time, a different kind of columbiform—this one indigenous—was already thriving here: the passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius). As many as 5 billion passenger pigeons were living in America when England, Spain, and France first started colonizing, and they may have once represented anywhere from 25 to 40 percent of the total U.S. bird population. By the early 20th century, they had become a rare sight, thanks to overhunting and habitat loss. The last known passenger pigeon—a captive female, named Martha—died on September 1, 1914 in the Cincinnati Zoo.

13. Pigeons Are Better At Multi-Tasking Than People

According to one study, pigeons are more efficient multitaskers than people are. Scientists at Ruhr-Universitat Bochum put together a test group of 15 humans and 12 pigeons and trained all of them to complete two simple jobs (like pressing a keyboard once a light bulb came on). They were also put in situations where they would need to stop working on one job and switch over to another. In some trials, the participants had to make the change immediately. During these test runs, humans and pigeons switched between jobs at the same speed.

But in other trials, the test subjects were allowed to complete one assignment and then had to wait 300 milliseconds before moving on to the next job. Interestingly, the pigeons were quicker to get started on that second task after the period ended. In the avian brain, nerve cells are more densely packed, which might enable our feathered friends to process information faster than we can under the same circumstances.

14. Pigeon Poop Is The Best Fertilizer In The World

While pigeon poop is seen as a major problem for property owners in the 21st century, it was considered an invaluable resource in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries in Europe. For 300 years, pigeon poop was a highly prized fertilizer and considered to contain more nutrients than any other type of farm yard manure. Plus, it is odorless! Pigeon poop was so prized during these centuries that armed guards were often stationed at the entrance to dove coats (pigeon houses or lofts) to stop thieves from stealing it! In addition, in England in the 16th century, pigeon poop was the only known source of saltpeter, an essential ingredient in gunpowder.