DOMESTIC PIGEONS 99 



by any trained homer is reputed to be from Denver 

 to Springfield, Massachusetts, or 1689.44 miles. 

 About a month was consumed by the bird in com- 

 pleting the journey. 



Mention of the above records at once brings up 

 a question which has long lurked in the back of 

 our minds. How fast can birds fly? Authentic 

 information on this question is meager indeed. 

 Speed of birds has long formed a subject for 

 heated discussion, especially among sportsmen, 

 and we have often heard that some wild ducks 

 attain the remarkable velocity of 150 and even 

 200 miles an hour ! Such, apparently, is not the 

 case. The fastest recorded time for ducks is 

 ninety miles as determined by telegraph from 

 point to point. The English partridge, also a 

 fast moving target, has been measured as doing 

 only 28.4 miles an hour. It is seldom that a 

 barn-swallow or a chimney-swift passes a train 

 traveling forty miles an hour. The average rate 

 for homing pigeons does not much exceed that 

 speed, but that is only the average. Some homers 

 are swifter than others. Flights by pigeons of 

 a mile a minute are yearly becoming more com- 

 mon, and one bird has flown one hundred miles at 

 the truly phenomenal rate of 2511.87 yards, or 

 virtually a mile and a half a minute ! 



Homing pigeons are bred for speed and hom- 

 ing instinct. That a bird can successfully undergo 

 artificial selection for an instinct sounds strange, 



