26 



Bird Notes and News 



striking ; Pigeons taken out by aeroplanes 

 and seaplanes bringing S.O.S. messages from 

 machines in distress and saving many a life. 

 One such instance is that of two R.A.F. 

 officers compelled to descend about five 

 miles from a rocky Scottish coast and in 

 momentary danger of drowning through the 

 heavy sea dashing their machine to pieces. 

 The bird they released flew twenty-two 

 miles to its loft in twenty-two minutes, 

 and relief came in time to save the airmen 

 who were clinging to the wreckage of their 

 craft. In another case a large seaplane 

 crashed ; two Pigeons were fished out of 

 their submerged cage ; one was already 

 dead, the other bedraggled and shivering 

 with cold. The officer dried and warmed 

 it, fastened the message to its leg and set 

 it free. With some feeble dazed flopping 

 of unsteady wings it started, pulled itself 

 together, and sped away. The bird \\a,s 

 exhausted with its effort, but the men were 

 saved. 



Wounds and death have to be faced by 

 the war Pigeons as by the soldier. They 

 have arrived with injured wings, with feet 

 shot off, worn out and dying ; but " instinct " 

 has taken them home. Perhaps the most 

 touching story is told by a Canadian, Flight- 

 Commander R. Leckie, D.S.O., in a letter 

 home, published by an American paper. 

 After an engagement with hostile aircraft 

 over the North Sea he came down, his 

 seaplane riddled with shrapnel, over fifty 

 miles from land, and then had to act as 

 rescuer and host to the crew of an aeroplane, 

 wrecked by engine failure. Six men were 

 then adrift in a doomed machine, with no 

 food and little water. The Commander had 

 four pigeons ; one was released at once, a 

 second on the next day, a third on the 

 third day. All failed to reach home, 

 perishing over the waste of waters. The 

 fourth, set free in a fog, hungry and thirsty, 

 struggled over the fifty miles of sea without 

 a landmark and without a rest. He could 

 not reach his loft, but fluttered down in a 

 coastguard station, and there fell dead from 

 exhaustion. But his message was delivered, 

 and six men were saved. 



" In a glass case hung in the wardroom may be 

 seen a pretty stuffed Pigeon, with a little plate 

 bearing the inscription : ' A very gallant gentle- 

 man.' " 



The brave explorer whose memory those 

 words enshrine would not have grudged 

 them to the little bird. 



After the Pigeon, the Canary. Canaries 

 have been employed in the trench, as in the 

 coal-mine, to detect the presence of noxious 

 gases. Birds are infinitely quicker than 

 man to detect poisonous fumes and to suffer 

 from them. Theirs is the post of danger to 

 test if the air be safe for man. Says one 

 writer of his company's bird : 



" Many were the nights on which he was rudely 

 distiu-bed from his slumbers, dumped uncere- 

 moniously into a sandbag, and carried through 

 rain and snow up to the trenches. Here he would 

 do his job underground, and as often as not reach 

 the surface again a limp Uttle form lying at the 

 bottom of his cage. He never failed us, though. 

 . . . Hats off to the Canaries ! Theirs is a V.C, 

 job every time." 



How if the V.C. took the form of an order 

 of release for every little bird choking in 

 the evil atmosphere of the catcher's stifling 

 box, the dealer's fetid shop, the darkened 

 cage ? 



Pigeon and Canary represent the trained 

 and drilled force, doing their part like the 

 army horses and dogs, because man has given 

 it them to do. There are other divisions of 

 the service in the V.A.D., most conspicuous 

 perhaps being the Gulls. The help rendered 

 by them in indicating the presence of German 

 mines and submarines has furnished exciting 

 episodes in the war, as narrated by British 

 sailors ; and a French writer. M. Louis 

 Rousseau, claims them {Bulletin of the 

 S.F.P.O., June 1918) as "one of our most 

 precious auxiliaries." 



" They rendered great services before the war. 

 Did they not cleanse our harbours and the outlets 

 of our streams and rivers of garbage ? They have 

 at all times indicated to our fishermen the presence 

 of shoals of fish, differing species pursuing the 

 track of pilchards, herrmg, whiting, etc. . . . 

 They have wished to follow our seamen and continue 

 to aid their fishing. Our boats and their crews are 

 mobilised and fish for mines and submarines. 

 Their allies in times of peace have imitated them ; 

 they too are mobilised, they continue their 

 intelligence, they serve in the war. " 



It is good to find Gulls circling about the 

 Britannia of the seas who personifies Punch's 

 tribute to the British Navy. 



Equally valuable as allies have been the 

 great land army of insect- and vermin- 

 eating birds, clearing earth and air and plant 

 of pests innumerable. Their part has been 



