War memorials to pigeons

Monument to pigeon solders - Lille, France

War memorial to pigeon  - Brussels

How to Raise A Baby Pigeon

Louis Bastille

We found this baby pigeon on July 14th while on our way to watch fireworks for the Bastille day celebrations, thus we named him/her Louis Bastille.  You can't know at the sex of a pigeon until it is full grown.

 For the first few days I carried Louis in a sling to hold him close to my heart, which calmed him down.

  

He also liked to ride on my shoulder.  

I figured that Louis was 2-3 weeks old when we found him.  Here he is after about a week with us.

 Feeding a baby pigeon

Getting food prepared and beginning to feed a baby bird right away is of utmost importance for keeping the bird alive.  Different birds eat different things.  Pigeons eat seeds, so this is lots easier than rescuing a bird that eats bugs.

Get ahold of some bird seed, ideally seed for pigeons or doves, and grind it into a powder.  I use my coffee grinder.  Mix some water with it to make a paste.  Cook an egg and mix the yoke to the paste.

Take a plastic bag and put the mix in the corner and tie it off.  Then cut the corner and use this like a pastry bag to squeeze the food into the beak.

Wrap the bird in a cloth so you can hold it while you feed it.  With one hand pry the beak open and stick a finger in it to keep it open.  With the other hand squeeze the food into the side of the beak as far down its throat as possible.  

Louis Bastille is playing hid and seek while still wrapped in a cloth I used for keeping it from squirming while I fed it. 

In the beginning you will need to feed your baby bird every 2-3 hours. It is not necessary to feed it at night, just be sure to feed it a lot before you put it to bed and again in the morning.  Don't worry about feeding it too much - it has a crop where it holds the food and you can see or feel how much there is.  

It's important that the baby pigeon has other pigeons around so it knows that it is a pigeon.

After a while, once your pigeon can fly a little, it will want to perch on a stick during the day.  

A basket with a handle works well for a portable perch - since you can put a napkin in the basket to catch the poops. 

In this photo Louis is sitting in his water bowl.

Eventually your bird will begin to peck at seeds and drink water.  Louis began drinking water and pecking at seeds after a couple weeks.  I ground the seeds so they were smaller pieces.  At first he just pecked, but didn't pick any seeds up.  Once your bird can eat on its own, you will still need to continue to feed your bird for another week, as it will not get enough nutrients.  

When I saw Louis sitting in his water bowl, I figured he wanted to take a both, so I put a dish of water out and he did take a bath.  

Once Louis could fly better, he chose our coffee machine as his new home.  Pigeons are cliff dwellers, which is one reason they like to live in cities: lots of ledges.  

Louis started venturing out into the big world before he had tail feathers.  He had a hard time flying and we were very worried about him because of the cats in town.  We had to rescue him twice when he flew to a ledge but didn't quite make it.  

He spent his first outing flying to and sitting in a gutter behind our house.  At least we could still see him.   Once your bird is flying you can only hope and pray it will find it's way to a flock and live the life of a free and wild pigeon.  

After a month, Louis Bastille is still an adolescent bird, but living in the wild. He comes every day and sometimes stays for several hours. I still can hold him to my chest and he is very content to stay there. 

It is a great pleasure to save a baby birds life.  I hope that this inspires you to take the necessary steps to save a baby pigeon if you ever you find one.  They are the perfect pet - free to live in nature and also able to return and visit, giving you many years of happiness.   The average age of a pigeon living in the wild is about 12 years.  

Returning to France, and our pigeons, for the summer

That is Jim with Pierre, the pigeon we raised, on the left and Snap Dude on the right.

We returned to our home in France this May and within an hour, Pierre and Snap Dude were on our terrace to greet us.  Maurice, Pierre's wonderful partner for the past five years, never showed up. We assume Maurice didn't make it though the winter, and we wondered if Pierre had already chosen a new partner or if perhaps she and Snap Dude, Maurice's competition for top pigeon, would get together.  

For one week we enjoyed Pierre's company, then we took off for a week trip to the Camargue and when we returned, she was no longer around.  We assume that she left the flock to find a new partner.   

In the mean time, one of Pierre and Maurice's progeny, Henry has taken to eating out of our hands, and competing with Snap Dude for top billing.  

Life goes on,  but I can't but hope that Pierre comes back someday for a brief visit, if not to stay.  And if we don't ever see Pierre again, we at least have Henry and Snap Dude to continue to entertain us.  This is a picture of Henry:

Pigeon Portraits from around the world

Sorry I haven't blogged lately. There are many birds here in Bodega Bay, home of Hitchcock's famous film, The Birds, but not many pigeons. Besides I'm working on my children's book about Pierre the baby pigeon and life in France.

My friend, Susan Dorf, just sent me these photos of Pigeons San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. And this has prompted me to add a new blog that I will add to with my photos or others photos of pigeons around the world.






And here are some more pigeons photos from around the world:

Amsterdam

France

On our terrace in France

The Pigeonhole Principle

 

The inspiration for the name of this mathematical principle: pigeons in holes.  

Here n = 10 and m = 9 so we can conclude that some hole has more than one pigeon.  

Also known as Dirichlet's box (or drawer) principle, states that, given two natural numbers n and m with n> m, if n items are put into m pigeonholes, then at least one pigeonhole must contain more than one item.

Pigeons return to scene of Mumbai siege

Mumbai, Dec. 6 2008 (AFP) - 

Thousands of pigeons that flew the coop as Islamist militants and Indian security forces battled for almost three days at Mumbai landmarks last week have begun returning.  

Pigeons that were a constant presence around the Jai Mahal and Trident/Oberoi hotels and Mumbais's main railway terminus disappeared for more than a week after the November 26 attacks that turned the city's southern peninsula into a battleground.  

To the delight of bird lovers and tourists, many of whom feed the birds, the pigeons have begun to return, the Mumbai Mirror said.  The Mirror quoted Yuraj Kaginkar, the hospital manager for the Bombay Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, saying the he had found some pigeons with injuries that must have been sustained during the siege.  

Traveling with his ambulance to sites taken by the militants, he found "a lot of pigeons with injuries to their head, wings, feet and some fractures," he said.  

Constant blasts had forced pigeons that roosted in the hotels to keep circling, unable to eat, for three days, he said.

The times of India said 15,000 pigeons were fed daily opposite the Taj, and quoted an animal activist saying grain had been put down to attract the birds back.  

Many of India's 1.1 billion people are animal lovers, believing animals, like humans, possess souls.

Friends and Pigeon Blog followers:
This article was brought to my attention by a friend. If you find any interesting pigeon stories or facts, please pass them on.

RICHARD TOPUS, WWII PIGEON TRAINER

This obituary was sent to me via my friend Cal.  Thanks Cal!  

Richard Topus WWII Pigeon Trainer

In January 1942, barely a month after Pearl Harbor, the US War Department sounded a call to enlist.  It wasn't men they wanted.  The Army was looking for Pigeons.  

To the thousands of American men and boys who raced homing pigeons, a popular sport in the early 20th century and afterward, the government's message was clear:  Uncle Sam Wants your Birds.

Richard Topus was one of those Boys.  He had no birds of his own to give, but he had another unassailable asset:  He was from Brooklyn, where pigeon racing had long held the status of a secular religon.  His already vast experience with pigeons- long ardent hours spent tending and racing them after school and on weekends qualified him, when he was still a teenager, to train American Spies and other military personnel in the swift, silent use of the birds in wartime. 

World War II saw the last wide-scale use of pigeons as agents of combat intelligence. 

Topus, just 18 when he enlisted in the Army, was among the last of the several thousand pieoneers, as military handlers of the birds were known, who served the United States in the war.

A lifelong pigeon enthusiast who became a sucessful executive in the food industry, Topus died Dec. 5 in Scottsdale, Arizona, at the age of 84.  

Pigeons have been used as wartime messengers at least since antiquity.  Before the advent of radio communications, the birds were routinely used as airborn couriers, carrying messages in tiny capsules strapped to their legs. A homing pigeon can find its way back to its loft from nearly a thousand miles away.  Over short distances, they can fly a mile a minute.

(Actually the longest recorded flight took 55 days to fly from South Africa to England) 

In World War I, pigeons proved their continued usefulness in times of enforced radio silence. After the United States entered WWII, the Army put out the call for birds to racing clubs nationwide.  In all, more than 50,000 pigeons served the United States in the war.  

Topus enlisted in early 1942 and was assigned to the Army Signal Corps, which included the Pigeon service.  

Though the Army phased out pigeons in the late 1950s, Topus raced them avidley till nearly the end of his life.  He left a covert, enduring legacy of his hobby at Friendship Food Products, for which he oversaw the design of the highly recognizable company logo, a graceful bird in flight, in the early 1960s.

- New York Times

Pigeons in Paris

There is no better place on earth to commence my pigeon blog than Paris. I wonder, am I the first person ever, in the history of the world, to go to Paris in search for photographs of historic sights featuring the most ubiquitous and least appreciated residents of this great city, pigeons? Perhaps.

Pigeon fact: Pigeons have played an important role in the history of Europe, and Paris in particular. During the Siege of Paris, lasting from September 19, 1870 to January 28, 1871 (which brought about French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War and led to the establishment of the German Empire) pigeons were the only source of communications for those trapped in Paris. Pigeons were regularly taken out of Paris by balloon then taken to their bases, first at Tours (200 km from Paris) and later Poitiers (300 km). After their arrival from Paris and when they had been fed and tested, they were ready for their return journey. During the four months of the siege, 150,000 official and 1 million private communications were carried to Paris by the pigeons.

If you love pigeons, like I do, where ever you go it feels like you are among friends. Paris is filled with pigeons, and most people despise them. I have to admit they aren't as good looking as pigeons here in the South of France. But then they are eating french fries and bread, not grain, as they should be. None the less, I did find a few fellow pigeon lovers and had to take their picture too.

When I heard that the Pope was going to be in Paris the same time I was, I decided I'd like to try to get a picture of the Pope, in Paris, with a pigeon. In the end I did, with the help of large public screens located all around the city showing the news of the event.

My little friends were everywhere I went - they even came to see me off at the train station.

Pigeon with Pope ( small blue screen