THE HOMING PIGEON THE KING OF BIRDS
One day when the poor little squeaker, in attempting to fly, got one
leg over the perch and could go neither forward nor backward, and hung
with flapping wings, the father flew to his relief and helped him over.
No one knows until he has carefully observed birds, what untiring labor
is required in bringing up young ones. The parents do nothing else
but feed and watch their nestlings. Every bird seems to have the firm
conviction that he is in the world for the purpose of raising healthy
young ones, and as many as possible. He makes his nest, raises a brood,
pushes them off in the world, makes another nest, raises another
brood, and so on, until he is removed to bird paradise.
If human beings gave as much attention to the raising of their young,
we should have an almost perfect race. However, we would scarcely lift
sick young ones out of the nest to die. In that respect we are ahead
of our bird friends. We might imitate them in one respect, and that is
in the way they seem to prevent sick and delicate birds from becoming
heads of families. I have noticed that ailing birds in my aviary, in
some way or other, do not wish, or are not allowed to have mates.
One handsome but delicate canary never seeks a mate, but all day long
flies by his father’s side. He is quite an old bird, but he never
leaves this little yellow father, night nor day. The father makes
nests, raises young ones, and flies about, always with his devoted
trailer.
While my buff pigeons grew and prospered, and raised other young ones,
I got another pair in rather a peculiar way. Being in town one morning
I stepped into an auctioneer’s room, and there, in a cage, saw a pair
of homing pigeons looking very disconsolate. I inquired what their
history might be, and the auctioneer said that a passenger on a steamer
that had lately come into our fine harbor from England, had brought the
birds with him, and on leaving the train for Northwestern Canada, had
left the birds behind him.
“What a strange thing to do,” I remarked, as I looked at the
traveling-cage and the pretty little drinking dish. Why did he suppose
a man would undergo the expense of bringing birds on a long voyage from
England and then drop them half-way to his destination?
The auctioneer said he would give it up, and then I further remarked
that the cake crumbs in the box were not proper food for pigeons.
He said he knew it, and he wished I would buy them.
I asked him how much he wanted for them, and he said he had no idea
how much they were worth, but I might have them for one dollar and
seventy-five cents.
I had begun to read and inquire about pigeons, and knew there were many
fancy breeds--fantails, pouters with long necks and globular crops,
jacobins with their big hoods, snake-like magpies, short-faced tumblers
and long-faced tumblers, tipplers, dragoons, swallows, owls, and many
other kinds, but I did not know what the prices ought to be.
If these birds were trained homers, or working homers, as they are
called, they would be worth more than one dollar and seventy-five
cents. However, the auctioneer could not assure me of this, so I paid
him the money, and sent the birds home.
It was touching to see the pleasure they took in getting out of their
cage. They ate and drank and bathed and ran their pink tongues over
the lumps of rock-salt I kept about. Nearly every bird I had, even
canaries, would peck eagerly at this salt, though caged canaries would
die if fed salt.
These two pigeons flew to the roof-veranda, and as soon as I discovered
their preferred corner I gave them a box in it. There they laid not
two but four eggs, and sat on them, one relieving the other, after the
usual intervals. I was very proud and very boastful, until after I had
a call from my friend the pigeon-fancier, who laughed heartily at my
two birds.
“They are females,” he said, “a pair only lays two eggs for a nest.”
This threw some light on the strange actions of the Englishman. The
birds had probably laid four eggs in their traveling-cage, and in
disgust at finding that he had two females sold to him instead of a
pair that would have enabled him to raise young ones, he had decided
not to give them a further trip of a few thousand miles.
The fancier exchanged one of them for me, and I got a fine blue homer,
who took kindly to my gray one, and soon raised a number of healthy,
handsome birds. I became very fond of these homers, and on learning
something of the history of their kind, soon surveyed them with
feelings of mingled admiration and respect.
They are our best and most wonderful birds, and they were our first,
for did not one of them perform the first messenger service on record
in carrying the sprig of green to the waiting Noah in the ark?
The dove was the ancestor of the carrier--and the smerle and the
cumulet and the carrier were the ancestors of the homer, and yet even
to-day there are persons who do not know what a remarkable part pigeons
play in times of peace, in times of war, and in times of love.
Ever since the days of Noah this chunky, round-headed, clear-sighted,
faithful, intelligent little creature has been the hard-working servant
of many nations. The Romans used him in war-time for conveying messages
from the armies, and an old song tells us of a warrior wounded in
battle sending an outpouring of his heart to his lady-love by means of
a carrier pigeon:
Fly away to my native land, sweet bird,
Fly away to my native land;
And bear these lines to my lady-love,
I have traced with a feeble hand.
She marvels much at my long delay,
A rumor of death she has heard,
She thinks, perhaps, I have falsely strayed;
Fly away to her bower, sweet bird.
I read in a book about pigeons that, when Brutus was besieged in Mutina
43 B. C. by Mark Antony, by setting free carrier pigeons that flew over
the heads of the besiegers and defied the blockade, he communicated
with the Roman consuls who came to raise the siege.
A certain shrewd Mohammedan ruler of Syria and Egypt who reigned in
A. D. 1145 had a pigeon postal service from one end of his dominions
to the other. Towers were built for the protection of the little
messengers, and from these towers watchmen strained their eyes to see
that no hostile power attacked the birds in the service of the monarch.
To-day, in spite of telegraphy, telephones, and wireless communication,
the brave birds hold their own. They are the messenger-boys of the air.
Let us mention some of the errands they do.
They carry stock reports from large cities to the suburban residences
of their owners. Ocean steamers carry them out to take last messages
back. A lady in Boston once told me that she traveled through Europe
and back again with a homing pigeon in her care. This valuable homer
had been given to her in a basket, as the steamer left Boston. She was
to release it when one day out. A thick fog came on, and as a fog is
a deadly enemy to the brave little homer, she had to give him a trip
abroad.
In Europe the end of a yacht race or a horse race is the signal for the
release of a flock of homers, who carry the news to private lofts or
newspaper offices.
While Gladstone was on his famous Midlothian campaign, homing pigeons
carried reports from the different mining villages to Edinburgh. In the
seclusion of their traveling-baskets the homers patiently awaited the
conclusion of each speech of Gladstone’s at political meetings, and
as soon as the last words had left the speaker’s lips, the reporters
fastened their tiny slips to the birds’ leg-bands--for every pigeon
has a ring slipped on when he is only a few days old--and gently
opening the baskets, allowed them to fly up into the air.
Up, up, still farther went the keen-sighted birds, circling again
and again to get their bearings, then off in the direction of their
home-lofts in Edinburgh, where tempting food, fresh water, and their
loved nest-mates were awaiting them.
Had these home-lofts been at the South Pole they would still have
started for them. To reach home or die is the pigeon’s motto, and
thousands, nay millions of them have perished for “home, sweet home.”
Pigeons have several enemies. There is the cruel gunner waiting for
them, and the dreaded hawk, that Chinese ingenuity circumvents by
attaching shrill whistles to the tail feathers of certain of their
homers. As the birds pass swiftly through the air the whistles blow and
the hawks will not come near.
Then there are storms and variable winds, and often the birds’
overpowering sense of fatigue, for many fanciers give their homers
cruelly long journeys to perform. What a temptation to a weary bird
perching on a tree branch, to rest himself for a few minutes, to go
with a strange pigeon who so politely invites him to his near-by loft,
where he will find rest and refreshment.
I have often read with interest advertisements in English bird
newspapers of homing pigeons in strange lofts. “So-and-so could have
his property if he would tell the initials and number on the leg-band
of a certain bird, and also pay the expressage on the roamer.” I think
the foggy climate is largely to blame for these numerous lost birds. In
a fog a pigeon must stop. He has nothing to guide him on his journey.
Darwin, who studied these birds for twenty years, proved in the first
place that their memory is phenomenal, and in the second, that their
eye-sight is limited by the horizon only.
The United States, following the example of European governments,
started some years ago an extensive system of lofts in the army and
navy. Professor Marion, of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland,
really began the organization of the messenger pigeon service for use
in time of war.
Lieutenant Harlow, U. S. N., also started experiments at Key West, and
when hostilities with Spain broke out, the navy department found on
inquiry that Uncle Sam had a number of well-trained little war-birds at
his disposal. Lieutenant Harlow’s cote at Key West being only ninety
miles from Havana, the birds had not long distances to fly. In every
boat of the torpedo flotilla taken out to sea, these pacific, patient
birds had their own quarters. They were released at intervals, and
scarcely one pigeon failed to return to its cote at Key West, with its
cipher message in the national water-tight message holder fastened on
its leg.
These patriotic birds are equally ready for peaceful campaigns, if one
can call a presidential election by that name. Once, during a hotly
contested election in Arizona, they did fine service in bringing the
returns for outlying districts, some of them flying at the rate of a
mile a minute.
France is very suspicious of foreign-trained homers, since her
experience during the Franco-Prussian War. At that time she learned the
great service done by pigeons in bringing relief to beleaguered Paris.
Now she does foreign pigeons the honor of excluding them from France.
An alien pigeon cannot take up its residence there except under such
restrictions as any well-brought-up bird would resent.
Germany too has its pigeons. While traveling in that country I was
amused at the military aspect of many of its inhabitants, and was not
surprised to learn that it has military pigeons. One can imagine the
proud carriage of a German war-bird.
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