Bird Study 



45 



Pigeon houses of the upper Nile* 

 Photo by J. H. Comstock. 



PIGEONS 



Teacher's Story 



HERE is a mention of domesticated pigeons by writers 

 three thousand years ago ; and Pliny relates that the 

 Romans were fervent pigeon fanciers at the beginning 

 of the Christian era. All of our domestic varieties of 

 pigeons have been developed from the Rock pigeon, a 

 wild species common in Europe and Asia. The carrier 

 pigeon was probably the first to be specially developed 

 because of its usefulness ; its love and devotion to mate 

 and young and its homesickness when separated from them were used by 

 man for his own interests. When a knight of old started off on a 

 Crusade or to other wars, he took with him several pigeons from the home 

 cote ; and after riding many days he wrote a letter and tied it to the neck 

 or under the wing of one of his birds, which he then set free, and it flew 

 home with its message; later he would set free another in like manner. 

 The drawback to this correspondence was that it went only in one direc- 

 tion; no bird from home brought message of cheer to the wandering 

 knight. Now-a-days mail routes, telegraph wires and wireless currents 

 enmesh our globe and the pigeon as a carrier is out-of-date; but fanciers 

 still perfect the homer breed and train pigeons for very difficult flight 

 competitions, some of them a distance of hundreds of miles. Recently 

 a homer made one thousand miles in two days, five hours and fifty 

 minutes. Read to the pupils "Amaux" in Animal Heroes by Thompson 

 Seton to give them an idea of the life of a homing pigeon. 



