Oldest Feathered Friend

Narrated by Jimmy Smits & Paul Herlinger

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Inside, the hand of man is at play, crafting the ever-growing versions and variations of this family of birds. No animal has been this transformed by human beings as these ancient flyers, and as we have changed their lives, they have long been important to ours. They have given us sustenance. They have been a part of our most sacred events and have performed services that have saved our lives.

We have come to see their beauty and come to believe that they are perhaps nature’s finest athletes. They have been loyal soldiers in our greatest military battles and yet, have come to symbolize our hope for a world without conflict. Only in this century have they earned our ridicule instead of our respect. Few humans truly understand the beauty, the bravery, and our shared of history with these aerial wonders. They are the family known as pigeons and doves. Truly our oldest feathered friend.

The Rock

Today, to people in our cities, this is the pigeon. They know no others. These once domestic birds moved to the cities from abandoned farms and dovecotes. Somehow they survived. They adapted to man’s canyons of concrete and steel that resembled the rocky cliffs their ancestors once knew. They are often the only bird remaining in our cities. Every day they make new friends as youngsters marvel at a big bird—a big flying thing that will come to them and be fed.

But these creatures and their new friends are only a single page in an ancient unknown story of man and bird—a story city-dwellers, removed from farm and field, seldom know or understand.

In 1861, in a quarry in Bavaria, workmen unearthed some of the most important fossils ever found. Captured in limestone was the texture of feathers and evidence that a bird called “Archeopterix had lived in the Jurassic age. The discovery made scientists speculate that although something had eliminated dinosaurs from the earth’s surface, one creature and its feathered descendents lived to rule earth’s sky.

Of 9,000 species of birds, some 300 belong to a family known in Latin as columbidae. In Spanish, paloma. In English, pigeon or dove. Two words, one French, the other Anglo-Saxon for the same creatures. And of this family Columba livia, or the Rock Dove, has been man’s feathered friend longer than any other bird.

Named for the rock cliffs they inhabit in the wild, Rock Doves are one of the most successful of all things feathered. They survived both in ancient times and today in our modern world. The first farmers caught and tamed the bird for nourishment and realized they had a magical homing instinct for food or fancy.

They changed the bird’s appearance through selective breeding. Five thousand years later there are hundreds of domestic varieties. Selective breeding was easy. The gentle birds are prolific and excellent parents. They mate for life and both care for their two eggs and young. They feed their newborns pigeon milk, a rich food that both adults develop that doubles the youngster’s weight in two days—a jump start toward survival.

When Noah built the arc, the pigeons lived in the domestic section as a food source, but it was the bird’s homing ability that earned its release to find dry land. The dove returned with an olive branch. The flood had ended.

For millennia, humans worshiped the birds as a symbol of fertility with good reason. They are often the first and last to breed each season. Their tender courtship and soft cooing made them an icon of love. In Greek myth, Aphrodite, goddess of love, is a dove made human. The first Olympic athletes sent pet pigeons home with a strand of finish line on their foot if they won. This tradition was reserved in the releasing of pigeons during Olympic ceremonies.

The world’s oldest religions revered these gentle creatures. Christian scripture says the bird is the symbol of god, descending from on high; the holy spirit with wings. Muslims, Hindus and Jews hold the bird sacred, and they were used as a form of sacrifice. Mary and Joseph sacrificed two birds after the birth of Jesus. No bird is mentioned more often in the Old Testament. 

The peaceful nature and sounds of these creatures endeared them to many great artists; a pigeon loft still exists today in Monet’s garden in France. Matisse enjoyed pigeons as did Picasso, who often painted the birds and named his daughter Paloma, Spanish for pigeon.

As the ancient symbol of peace and purity, images of the birds are pervasive in modern society. In commerce, they symbolize purity of soap and confectionary, and in banking, the bird adorns millions of the VISA credit cards used around the world.  Millions of holiday greeting cards carry the likeness of a pigeon, and postage stamps also celebrate the birds.

But for all the symbols and celebration, the most fascinating story is the one of birds and humans and their lives together. As that Jurassic rock in Bavaria proves, birds are survivors, and this one, the rock dove, is the foundation of the prehistoric friendship between birds and human beings. And more than any feathered creature, it has survived and flourished, thanks to what both nature and man kind have given it.

House of Wings

It was an age without motors. A quieter time, few unnatural sounds disturbed the medieval silence, but there was the roar of distant wings.

For centuries pigeons were used for food and communications. But during the Middle Ages, the birds became a vital part of thousands of isolated communities. As catholic monks traveled to remote corners of Europe, the keeping of pigeons was raised to a high art.

By the 1500s, a dovecote was incorporated in most manor and monastery plans. Large buildings were designed to house thousands of birds in a huge central room. In this age, remote villages were dependant on the land around them to survive. Primitive farming methods yielded no crops that could feed livestock after the fall harvest, so fresh meat was very limited in the winter. Either it came from wild game or increasingly from these pigeon breeding facilities.

Pigeons were easy to manage. Birds would forage for miles, feeding on seeds or wild grains left by crude farming methods. Returning home, the birds fed their young squabs, which at a month of age were a vital source of fresh meat. In the depth of winter, the adults could also be eaten. Living within fortified walls, pigeons could still fly out when a castle was surrounded by an enemy, making the pigeon meat vital to a town under siege. Nesting in these stone holes, with adequate food and water near by, a breeding pair could be quite prolific, raising up to a dozen squabs a year.

Young pigeons grow rapidly and weigh almost a pound within a month. Their bodies are mostly pectoral muscle which constitutes tender, dark meat. With hundreds and often thousands of breeding pairs at work, the shear volume of pigeon meat emanating from these ancient dovecotes was tremendous—certainly a large, consistent source of fresh food in an age before grocery stores.

Historians have paid little attention to the importance of dovecotes to medieval communities, but pigeon holds are a feature of the era’s most important buildings. Obviously, the bird was considered an asset. It has been estimated that in England in 1650, some 26,000 dovecotes existed and housed some 13 million pairs of breeders. This means that 75 million squabs were raised annually in England alone, and France had almost twice as many dovecotes so the volume of squabs consumed was simply enormous. 

A common shape was the conical form with bird entry at the highest point, utilizing the pigeon’s rare ability among large birds to fly almost straight up or down.  The circular interior made it easy to access from a moving latter.

Along the Nile, the birds were more than a source of meat. In many Middle Eastern societies, they were considered sacred and never eaten but vital for another reason—their droppings. Pound for pound, pigeon manure is one of the richest natural fertilizers known to man. Rich in nitrogen, it rejuvenates intensely farmed soils. In Egypt, enormous pigeon towers with poles for the birds to roost on make it easy to collect dung below.  The collection of manure was a part of dovecote management and droppings were sold for a good profit.

In the 17^th century, a vital ingredient in gun powder was saltpeter, which could be extracted from pigeon manure. The compound was so important that King George I of England declared that all droppings were the property of the crown. Strict regulations were placed on dovecotes to ensure that each building contained the correct type of earthen floor.

The rich history of pigeon keeping is represented in the large variety of structures used for dovecotes in Arabia and Europe. These buildings gave the pigeon all it cared for, a dark, dry and secure place to build a nest, like the caves in which man first found the Rock Dove.

Only a few European dovecotes still house birds. People have forgotten what they were once used for. Hundreds of the oldest ones have tumbled down from neglect. Most have been put to other farmyard uses or even converted into modern homes, such as this one in England or this canal side former dovecote in France. But here in the English countryside it is easy to imagine the slower pace centuries ago when the medieval silence was shattered by the roar of a huge flock of birds rising in unison from this house of wings.

The Theory

He was a shy, well-bred student of nature. His ideas would shake the Victorian world, and at first, Charles Darwin’s interest in pigeons was purely scientific. By the 19^th century, England was at the height of her power, and its scientific community was wrestling with great questions of the day. Here in the quiet village of Downes, 30 miles from London, naturalist Darwin was wrestling with the greatest question of all.

Born into a family of eminent English doctors, Darwin’s true love was the study of living things. By chance, a friend suggested him for the position of naturalist for the H.M.S. Beagle. The expedition was a watershed for Darwin. He returned in 1836 to write a best-selling book on his travels and observations during five long years exploring the coasts of South America. In 1842, he and his wife Emma moved to Down House where Darwin would spend the next 40 years studying and writing about nature.

Down House no longer echoes with the noise of a busy family with 10 children, but the solitude of his study is the same. Here, and in long walks through his gardens, Darwin developed a profound theory of how living things developed on earth. He believed nature constantly produced slight variations of each species. The best adapted did better and reproduced more. His ideas were sparked by birds he saw on the Galapagos Islands, where a common ancestor from South America had differentiated into a dozen species of birds, now called Darwin’s finches. Each variety evolved on a different island in a response to specific conditions on each island.

Darwin could think of many naturally occurring examples of his theory, but he needed more proof. In the end, he found it in pigeons.

In the 1800s, a lively culture of pigeon breeding was underway. Millions of people kept pigeons, including Queen Victoria herself, whose favorite was the Jacobin with its delicate feathered hood.

Darwin chose pigeons for practical reasons. Many scientists, including his grandfather Erasmus Darwin, believed all domestic breeds emanated from the Rock Dove. Pigeons were available in a huge variety and bred quickly—far easier to observe changes in generations than with other domestic animals, such as cattle or sheep.

In 1855, Darwin traveled to London where he visited the major pigeon shows. He befriended leading pigeon breeders and for an upper-class Englishman, marveled at the knowledge of the rough and tumble pigeon men he sought out for birds and advice.

In Darwin’s mind, the Rock Dove could become a Fantail by the constant breeding of birds with extra tail feathers and other traits that were desired. He believed nature constantly selected the fittest, just as man selected the finest. Darwin theorized that for Rock Doves to be transformed into Powders, could only result from those birds with larger crops and slightly longer legs being paired for centuries. Darwin believed that what man did in a few thousand years was what nature was doing in many millions. He studied the fancy pigeon breeds, and his exhaustive research covered every aspect of each breed’s development and physical dimensions.

Within two years, Darwin had significantly altered his birds. Examples are displayed today at Down House. By meticulously recording the effect on shapes, particularly the coloration of the pigeons created when he mingled different varieties, Darwin had marshaled much of the proof he needed to publish his theory of evolution with confidence. The work, Origin of Species, stunned the world and sparked lively debate from the instant it was published in 1859, and a tiny plaque in his museum reminds visitors that it was his work with pigeons that provided the great scientist with irrefutable proof of his theory.

But another change took place here at Down House. That change was the one wrought on the aloof scientist himself by what was at first simply his laboratory animal of choice. As he worked with the birds, he grew fond of them. Perhaps the birds’ gentle nature matched his own, but, in the end, Darwin could no longer bring himself to kill any of his birds to continue his study of bones and form. For as much as Darwin had changed his pigeons, they to had changed him, and for the rest of his life, history’s most famous naturalist always had a special word for the skill of the pigeon breeders he had met, rich and poor, and a special place in his heart for the gentle birds he’d come to love.

The Messenger

In the centuries before the telegraph, an urgent message took days, weeks, or months to reach its destination. In those days, sending a message 50 miles an hour was not only fast, it was magic. How humans discovered the Rock Dove had homing abilities is unknown, but ancient sailors, before they learned to navigate, would release a pigeon raised in their town and steer home in the direction the bird disappeared.

Use of pigeons by the Mediterranean’s ancient priests and oracles and the Egyptians were just a few of the ways the birds were part of early civilizations; a pigeon post originated in China a half century before the birth of Christ.

The Romans used homing pigeons. Caesar sent messages back from Gaul. Mark Anthony sent news of his victories in Egypt. Christian crusaders venturing into the holy lands returned to Europe with birds used by the Saracens.

The Arabs made regular use of the messengers for communications, including a system created in Syria in the 12^th century that was a countrywide pigeon post.

In China in the next century, the Mongol Kublai Khan expanded existing government message systems over the entire Chinese empire. It remained in use almost five hundred years.

In the middle ages, the birds became a tool of European business powers. Ships often sent birds to the great port of Antwerp with news of their cargos and arrival times. By the early 1800s, the birds were successfully crossing the English Channel.

In 1815, at the battle of waterloo, birds scored a startling commercial coup. Homers owned by the Rothschild bank carried news of Napoleon’s stunning defeat to London long before it arrived by normal channels. Legend says the Rothschilds made a fortune on the London stock market with the advance information.

No use of pigeons would ultimately be as significant to present day commerce as a 76 mile flight from Belgium to Germany in 1850. Today, it is the world’s largest provider of information, moving millions of words and facts and figures around the world in seconds. It is Reuter, the global colossus of the information age that all began in 1850, tied to the leg of a homing pigeon. The Reuter’s story was captured in a classic film, staring Edward G. Robinson.

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The ridicule Julius Reuter received eventually turned to praise and profit, and the 100 years following Reuter’s pigeon service in 1850 proved to be the greatest period in the messenger’s proud history.

In 1870, when the Franco Prussian war began, the Prussians quickly overwhelmed the French, surrounded Paris, and laid siege to the great city in late September. Without supplies, the Parisians were quickly reduced to hard living, including taking their turn to catch a rat for dinner.

But they weren’t totally cut off. To get beyond the encircling Germans, hot air balloons were used. Lifted aloft with these new flying devices were baskets of Parisian pigeons. Landing outside German territory, the pigeons were fitted with messages created on tiny pieces of microfilm—the first significant use of the new process.

Released 50 to 100 miles from Paris, the birds headed home. A single bird could carry up to 40,000 letters captured on microfilm. During the many months of siege, over 1 million messages got through and earned the birds the love of all of France. The story of the pigeons’ heroic service through a gauntlet of Prussian guns and trained Falcons was widely publicized around the world. The events in Paris convinced European governments that pigeons were a valuable military tool and most established pigeon services.

By the beginning of the Great War, the messengers in service were even more advanced than their ancestors that had flown microfilm to Paris. Selected from highly developed European racing pigeon stock, these homers were capable of flying over 500 miles in a day, and better housing and training methods produced return rates approaching 90% for the message carrying birds.

New precautions had to be taken to protect the birds in the rat infested trenches, where a gas attack could come at any time. The greatest pigeon hero of this conflict was “Cher Ami”, French for dear friend.  The American born cock bird saved what was called the lost battalion, cut off and savagely shelled unknowingly by their own artillery. U.S. soldiers had sent human runners and pigeon messages begging for relief. Their last bird, their final hope rose from the ground only to be shot and fall. He rose again and despite two bullet wounds carried their message through. Cher Ami was honored by the French government and his preserved body today resides in the Smithsonian.

After the war, the U.S. Signal Corps Pigeon Center at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey was a hub for breeding and training soldiers in using the birds. Birds were trained to fly at night and were often released from aircraft or balloons in flight. Learning to use pigeons was part of basic training for soldiers around the world.

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By the next war, both the allies and axis armies had extensive pigeon services. Mussolini’s army released homers in the streets of Rome and the Nazis devised clever uses, including an automated camera for aerial spy photography and trained dogs to carry birds between units as well.

Like the ancient mariners, the British found the birds particularly vital to carry messages over water.  Homers were assigned to ships and planes and were carried in special waterproof pigeon containers. Far from land, a downed crew would often watch their only hope, a young homing pigeon, carry their distress message in the direction of home. Hundreds of airmen and sailors’ lives were saved by the birds.

Since pigeons could be released far behind enemy lines, without breaking radio silence, they were a vital part of intelligence work in the forests, jungles and deserts where the war was fought. “Jungle Joe” for example was four months old when he carried a secret agent’s message over 200 miles of Burmese mountains. Paratroopers often strapped a homing pigeon to their chests before jumping behind enemy lines. In an effort to get information from Nazi occupied France, the allies parachuted over 10,000 birds in tiny containers, each bearing a request for French citizens to note enemy activities and send the information by a pigeon to England.

Homing pigeons’ bravery was exceptional. Birds would do anything to get home. They walked when their wings were broken or flew in spite of mortal body wounds, often dying on the landing board of their beloved home. During World War II, they achieved an incredible 98% success rate in getting messages home. Hundreds of them were recognized by the military in both wars.

For many, such as “Spike”, recognition was given for years of brave service. Spike carried over 50 important messages during his time as a soldier. In England, the prestigious Dicken Medal honored particularly brave efforts. Fifty-four allied birds were given this award, including G.I. Joe, probably the best known bird of the Second World War. When the British battalion he was working for unexpectedly captured a German-held town in Italy, G.I. Joe flew through to stop a wave of American bombers minutes before they obliterated the town. Field commanders credited Joe with saving as many as 1,000 British lives. His body is displayed today at Fort Monmouth’s communications museum.

In the 1950s, governments began to disband their pigeon services; although, American birds served again with distinction in Korea. The French, Israeli, and Chinese armies still maintain active pigeon programs.

The military importance of the birds was tremendous; commercial uses have also been part of the messenger’s story.

Old news reels are full of unusual uses of homers, from delivering orders for salesmen in remote towns to delivering a canary.

The birds’ ability to carry such large objects was also an advantage for publishers who used pigeons for decades to carry film back from important stories. The Lockheed Aircraft Company called on the birds for the same use, to fly microfilm from one office to another and avoid crowded California highways. The system was fast, inexpensive and highly reliable.

Winged couriers are often called obsolete, only to prove that they still can provide vital service against modern technology. Pigeons were used successfully by the North Vietnamese. In Desert Storm, reports indicate that the Iraqi army sent messages to Baghdad by a pigeon, in spite of intense U.S. military jamming of radio signals.

Possibly the final irony of the birds’ role in the world’s great wars is their part in the 50^th anniversary of D-day. To honor U.S. troops who died on the beaches of France and are buried at the US cemetery in St. James, a special ceremony was conducted. As soldiers who served in this historic battle and today, as symbols of the peace, those who died here fought to win. The messengers fly on.

The Marathon

This is a carrier pigeon. Bred for centuries as a proud show bird, before its huge waddle grew too large and hamper its vision, it could carry a message and did centuries ago, before this bird arrived on the scene in the 1800s. This is a homing pigeon, a racer, the only variety on earth capable of carrying the mail 500 miles in a single day. The words dove and pigeon can both be used for one family of birds, but two names that really shouldn’t be mixed are carrier pigeon and homing pigeon.

By the 19^th century, the classic fancy breeds were well-developed. The modern homing pigeon was literally under construction in the attic lofts of Antwerp and other Belgian cities. Carriers and other breeds were being reengineered into a new marathon flyer. The birds who carried news for Reuter’s agency in 1850 were early products of this brilliant Belgian breeding. Driving their development was a combination of commerce and development.

In addition to using the birds as business messengers, Belgians devised a method of racing their pigeons. Fanciers took their birds to a nearby club where they were entered by being stamped with identifying numbers. The birds were shipped south or out to sea and released. When a bird returned home, it was lowered from the attic loft in a special bag. Then, a fast runner would race through town trying to be the first one timed in.

In the late 1800s, pigeon racing became a passion and racing clubs were born in cities around the world. Shipment by rail or plane made long distance contests practical. These were truly marathon events, and birds were bred that could fly four, five and even six hundred miles in a single day. Development of timing clocks replaced the need for human carriers. But, at heart, the sport is much the same as seen in these black and white news reels.

Today, Belgium is still considered the world’s center for this past time. Entire families practice the sport, often competing with birds developed by their father or grandfather.

Though it’s a mostly male hobby, women and husband and wife teams also take part, often doing well in even the hottest competition in Belgium.

Well over a million people race pigeons around the world, the largest concentration in mainland China, where more than a quarter million fanciers compete.

Old birds race in the spring, while young birds or birds born that same year race in late summer or fall.

Some of the largest races, in terms of cash contests, are in Asia, particularly Taiwan and the United States, where several contests have well over half a million dollars in prizes. As they were a century ago, race birds are still entered at the local club. Today, a numbered rubber band called a countermark is placed on the bird, which also carries an identifying metal ring on its foot. All of the contestants own timing clocks which are started and checked by race officials.

Prior to the race every loft must be surveyed to determine its exact distance from each release point.

That night, the birds are transported to the starting point. In the morning, provided there is good weather along the course home, they are set free. Waiting at home, the fancier hopes his pigeons have a combination of the best breeding and condition to ensure his birds fly at the head of the flock. When birds arrive, the owner must coax them in, remove the numbered rubber band and put it in the clock, turning the handle records the exact time the bird arrived, in the sealed chamber only race officials can open.

Today, computers make the race calculations in seconds. Races can include hundreds of lofts and thousands of birds. The speediest bird is determined by mathematics. Distance from the release point to the home loft is divided by the time it took the bird to fly it, yielding an average flying speed, spelled out in yards or meters per minute. The winners are those who flew home at the fastest average course speed.

A single century of intense breeding has wrought tremendous change on the homing pigeons waiting for the start of the contest from the tiny Belgian town of Quievrain. These racing homers still look like Rock Doves on the outside, but inside they are quite different. Their hearts for example are typically twice the size of other pigeons, and the navigation systems are far superior. No other pigeon variety can as easily find and fly its way home from hundreds of miles. For these racing homers, that is a short distance event.

Driving this profound change is what’s about to begin. This morning, young Belgian racing pigeons will take to the skies in one of the greatest examples of natural selection practiced on any domestic creature. Most birds will race home quickly from this and other races this season, but only a few will truly excel, arriving time and again a little ahead of most others.

Later, when each owner selects birds as breeders for the stock line, only those that performed well against this incredible competition will be chosen. For only the best ones breed. Being one of the best out of a quarter million pairs of wings is pigeon racing. This is the marathon in the sky.

Bird Business

It’s a very simple life here, but its impact on the domestic pigeon was enormous. For centuries, the trade and breeding stock was hampered by one basic fact; if a man said a bird was the parent or child of certain other birds, how could it be proved? True pedigrees did not exist because there was no way to accurately identify each pigeon. Colored descriptions weren’t enough. Wing stamps faded. Feathers fell out. These weren’t conclusive proof of pedigree.

Not until 1896 did the various pigeon organizations find a method they could all agree on. They had a lot to consider. The idea of banding a bird was totally new. The answer was a feather light, seamless aluminum ring. Slipped painlessly on, the fast growing bird was permanently ringed. A bird must be banded before it could be raced or entered in a show. Each band carried the letters from the organization that issued it, the year the bird was banded, the club the fancier belonged to and a consecutive number. No other pigeon on earth would ever be U.S.A. 43 6390—that was the number of GI Joe in the records of the US army.

Here in Pennsylvania, pigeon bands have been made for generations. It was here that the message capsules that carried Cher Ami’s message in World War I were made. Each year, millions of colored aluminum bands are hand made. First, the year and letters of the issuing organization are entered, then the club letters, and finally the numbers. Hands fly as they enter the numbers that will make each band special and make each bird special too.

The band is proof of ownership. National organizations maintain systems to speed the return of found birds, particularly racers, to their rightful owners. In Belgium, plastic coated metal rings are made in part by computer. Millions of brightly colored bands are sold throughout the world each year to register pedigree birds.

Another item that goes on the birds’ legs is also sold in the millions. A bird needs a registration band only once in its life, but a racer carries a rubber countermark every time it competes.

Around the world, major supply companies provide the broad spectrum of materials that fancy and racing pigeon owners buy each year. Shipping crates, show cages, loft supplies all sell by the thousands each year. Trophies and keepsakes are another popular pigeon product. Both racing and show organizations world wide use hundreds of thousands of awards each year. Increasingly, as fanciers invest in the latest treatments to keep their pedigree pets in perfect health, the volume of vitamins and medicines is booming on all continents. There is even a demand for full time veterinary services just for pigeons. This vet in Belgium is a racing pigeon specialist, helping concerned trainers keep their team in perfect health. In North America, there is a medical hotline to call for the latest health advice.

Today, special breeding facilities housing retired racing champions exists to provide young pigeons to beginning fanciers. Many are managed by champion trainers, and strains of winners are often named for the breeder who created them. In Europe, several companies sell pigeon lofts that range in price from a few thousand to tens of thousands of dollars. But the greatest volume of this bird business is something used every day.

A pigeon eats a little over an ounce of seeds a day. Wild Rock Doves lived on all manner of weed seeds and wild grain, but for the pedigree pigeon, their owners want them to have the best. Feed companies have long catered to the pigeon trade. This plant in Antwerp, Belgium receives grain by barge. The huge hoppers of individual grains all feed into mixing areas where machinery measures the precise percentages of protein fat and fiber that fanciers want for their birds.

Many of the people in the business can trace their roots back to the turn of the century when the pigeon was the first bird to carry an official band and the boom this brought to the pigeon business began.

On the Table

Like many tame animals, pigeons have given their lives for human sustenance and religious sacrifice since before the dawn of recorded history. Being domesticated can have its drawbacks. Even after most European dovecotes were abandoned in the 1800s, when other sources of meat were developed, squab remained a menu item in fine restaurants. The modern squab business didn’t get much attention until a young entrepreneur in Boston saw squabs as his road to riches.

His name was Elmer C. Rice, and he was to squabs what Colonel Sanders was to chicken. The son of a Massachusetts grain dealer at the turn of the century, he was a young newspaper reporter, when his work took him to a farm where homing pigeons were being raised for the squab market. Rice learned from the farmer that the demand for the birds was so tremendous that he couldn’t meet it. That night Rice couldn’t sleep. He immediately began writing a booklet on squab raising and using his newspaper knowledge, Rice bought a small ad in national newspapers touting the book.

Orders began to roll in. Americans were hungry for a means to raise extra money on their small farm or backyard. Elmer’s one dollar how-to book would grow to a volume of hundreds of pages, would be reprinted more than 50 times, and even translated into brail. It is still the all-time best seller on pigeons.

In 1900, he began his own squab farm to sell breeding stock and supplies to the legions of people who bought his books. Business boomed. Other publications touted squab raising. Rice discovered and promoted even larger utility breeds that would yield larger squabs for sale.

By the time of his death in 1954, the business had changed. The squab market was hit hard by new factory farming methods using chickens and game hens that fend for themselves out of the egg. Squab raising dwindled down to a luxury trade.

For all of Rice’s boosterism of the squab business, the writer who had the greatest impact on modern squab raising was and the pigeon hobby itself was an attorney from rural South Carolina named Wendell Levi. Levi had pigeons as a boy and was in the Pigeon Corps during the First World War. Returning home, he founded the Palmetto Pigeon Farm. Over 70 years later, the plant is still in operation.

The open front pens allow the breeders to enjoy the warm South Carolina sunshine. Thousands of squabs raised here go to gourmet markets throughout North America. Customers have included many U.S. presidents and world famous restaurants, and the farm also supplies birds to dozens of research Universities.

In addition, Wendell Levi labored for years on a book that when it was published in 1941, became the instant reference work on the bird that bore its name, the pigeon. Its 600 pages constituted the never to be equaled, classic reference work that still sells throughout the world.

Business at Palmetto began booming in the 1990s as an increasing number of Asians, who consider squab a delicacy, moved to North America. Surprisingly, what is now a gourmet item may return as a source of fresh food for remote areas. Nutritional scientists are researching the use of the birds in underdeveloped countries. The birds’ ancient attributes could someday benefit people in third world countries, much as they did in countless European dovecotes centuries ago.

In the Lab

Many of the qualities people like about pigeons, their sturdy constitution, handy size, intelligence, gentle nature and ease of care, make the birds popular in another world, the world of science. In this century, the birds have been at the center of a number of scientific breakthroughs. In 1932, scientists studying pigeon milk were able to isolate prolactin or milk production enzymes, leading to dramatic advances in dairy science and other areas.

The famous Skinner box is named after Harvard behavioral scientist BF Skinner who used pigeons pecking at blinking lights in a box to test a variety of learning abilities. Skinner first used pigeons on a project during World War II to steer an unmanned aircraft carrying a bomb. He trained pigeons to peck at a target on a radar screen in the bomb’s nose cone, thus guiding the bomb and themselves on a one way trip to the target. The system worked but was never used in combat.

Later, Skinner experimented with the cognitive or learning abilities of the birds. He believed that how pigeons learned was representative of many animals’ learning skills, including humans. Skinner taught pigeons to play ping pong by rewarding a bird when it got its ball past an opponent. He also proved that the birds had incredible powers of recognition and memory, remembering and tapping out long chains of color sequences in order to earn grain. Working with Robert Epson, Skinner helped to disprove a long held theory that some animals instinctively knew how to use tools. The pigeon experiment showed that a bird could learn how to use one object in order to touch another object based on only a little advanced training.

Today at Harvard, the birds are still being used by the scientists who followed Skinner. Unlike laboratory mice and rats, pigeons are much faster at reacting to stimuli, meaning they can generate more data per hour. A bird will happily peck for four to six thousand times per hour—a high rate of data input for a few grains of corn.

Research has proven that in many ways the pigeon is as intelligent as many higher order animals, such as porpoises and dolphins and that the bird can remember up to 300 distinct objects for an indefinite period of time. A fascinating offshoot of Skinner’s methods was a test program called Operation Sea Hunt, developed for the U. S. Coastguard. Birds, trained to peck when they saw the color of life vests, were placed in a special undercarriage on a coastguard search and rescue helicopter. The loyal little team had a bird’s eye view of the ocean below and performed perfectly, spotting objects three times faster than the human pilots.

At New York’s Cornell University, a brilliant biologist named Bill Keaton founded a program in the late 1960s to research how homing pigeons and all birds navigate. Keaton and the Cornell team confirmed the birds used the sun, the earth’s magnetic field, smells and sounds, and an arsenal of senses to help them find their way home. The breakthrough research included discovering the birds could hear infrasounds and see polarized or infrared light. Possibly, Keaton’s most vital finding was that there was not one single homing faculty, but a beautifully developed hierarchy of powers the pigeons used depending on the circumstances it faced.

In the 1990s, experiments with pigeons were underway at the University of Montana. Biologist Ken Dial has developed a flight lab dedicated to unlocking the mysteries of bird flight. Dr. Dial and his associates are looking at bird flight in entirely new ways.

Thanks to the miniaturization of modern censors, Dial was able to surgically implant measuring devices in pigeons without hurting the bird or altering its normal flight actions. By connecting censors to wing bones and muscle groups, the team is studying what happens when a pigeon is in flight. Extremely high speed film captures the big bird’s ability to fly almost straight up and flying through a maze of suspended plastic panels to maneuver with the precision of a prima ballerina. In a wind tunnel, birds fly with censors through an x-ray type scope, showing the bird, in this case a starling, flies in a swimming motion that looks surprisingly like the breaststroke.

The Montana team plans to expand work with homing pigeons, including studies on how the birds manage to breathe normally at high altitudes. Professor Dial is impressed with what his breakthrough research is beginning to reveal about Columba livia.

As researchers increasingly study pigeons throughout the world, many are coming to the same conclusion as Ken Dial; pound for pound, Columba livia is one of the smartest most physically adept creatures in the animal kingdom.

The Entertainers

They’re great workers, reliable and pliable. They learn complicated tasks and perform them gladly over and over again. They’re beautiful and a real crowd pleaser when they fly, and finally, they’ll work for peanuts. No, not even that, a few kernels of corn will do.

White doves and pigeons are a favorite of the entertainment industry. Magic acts such as that by magician and dove expert Tony Clark are very popular, with the easy to train white doves replacing the old rabbit in the hat tricks, for more thrilling magic effects.

Hollywood and Madison Avenue have always liked to use pigeons. For the movie The Birds, Alfred Hitchcock launched a promotional pigeon race that appeared in newsreels of the day.

Like many movie and commercial directors, Hitchcock would often use pigeons flying through a scene to create action in his movies.

In a movie he produced just before his untimely death, beloved actor Michael Landon starred with Art Carney in Where Pigeons go to Die, a poignant story of a Belgian grandfather and grandson and their mutual love of pigeons.

Each week on America’s Emmy award winning police drama, NYPD Blue, TV star Jimmy Smitts plays detective Bobby Simone, who after a tough day as a homicide detective on the mean streets of New York, finds comfort spending time with his rooftop flock of racing pigeons.

Of all the examples of pigeons in the entertainment industry, there is no more regular or orderly effort than that conceived by the late Walt Disney with the help of his friend Roy Rogers. Rogers was not only a famous cowboy, he was a racing pigeon fancier. He convinced Disney that white homing pigeons could be used with effect at his new amusement park in California. The birds still fly today at Disneyland.

When the first moves were made to build the huge new Disneyworld, the very first Disney employees to live at the new Florida site were 200 white homers, sent from California. Over the years, this team of birds has taken part in almost every major show at the Florida property, and loyal teams of pigeons are part of the cast at Disney Parks in the US, France, and Japan. In Florida, a six hundred bird team is supervised by a full time staff of four people. After years of sending birds to over 24 events a day, seven days a week, both the people and the pigeons have this routine down pat. A handler that wants to fill a basket has only one thing to do, stand out of the way.

As babies, the birds are fed in their crates and rewarded when they return. But even when their food ration is increased, they still fight for the chance to go to a show. Some birds volunteer this way for over a dozen trips a day. For the handlers, the toughest part of loading the crates is to weed out the birds with feathers missing from their tails; only a perfect flock of white doves will do for a show at the Magic Kingdom.

Held backstage while a show is underway, the release of white pigeons is part of the climax of shows like Snow White and Beauty and the Beast, and every day at sunset, rain or shine, the largest team is carried to Main Street to take part in flag ceremonies. For many of the young guests, seeing the birds is a special treat, and the gentle Disney handlers are skilled at telling the pigeons story. They often let a child hold the bird, which brings a look of amazement to a young face.

At a selected point in the Star Spangled Banner, the flock is released to fly the mile back to their loft.

And back at the pigeon corner of Disneyworld, its chow time. These entertainers get their big meal of the day and then settle down with full tummies for a good night’s rest before show time tomorrow.

Designer Genes

It’s a game begun before the birth of Christ, in the Arabian skies. Two-thousand years ago, when Modina, Italy became so popular, a special flying breed was created and named for the city, but it really hit its stride when it got to the world’s great melting pot, New York City.

The game is the flying sport called Trigoneri, or mumbling in the vernacular of Brooklyn, and the game hasn’t changed in thousands of years. Pigeons are very gregarious, but something happens when a single bird or a group merges with another flock, the urge to stay together overcomes the pull to go home. Foreign birds can be drawn from the sky into a loft of another flock. These strangers are a prize; capturing another fancier’s pigeons is a mark of pride.

At the turn of the century, New York teemed with immigrants from different cultures. For the newcomers who landed at Ellis Island, the tenement roof was the route to the open sky from the crowded masses below. Many brought their love of pigeons from the old country, and the sky of New York became filled with thousands of pigeon flocks.

The birds in this game are called Flights, ancient Arabian strains bred to fly for long periods. Rain or shine, the battles in the sky were joined. Men and boys, living a hard life in a new land, delighted in the hobby.

In typical American style, enterprising pet shop owners served as the place where captured birds were bought, sold or traded in exchange. The pigeon exchange hasn’t changed in decades. Fanciers bring in birds they’ve captured. The pet shop pays a couple of dollars for a bird. Later, the bird’s owner or any perspective buyer can buy this bird for three or four dollars.

The faces peering into these cages still represent all of the races that populate the city, and the walls of the pet shops are lined with the memories of famous pigeons and pigeon people. The exchanges are lively places. Several stay open from seven in the morning to midnight every day of the week. As always, there’s some old timer around to talk pigeons with and time to bag a few new birds.

But that’s not the whole story here in New York. From spring through fall, the great flocks would wheel over the New York skyline as they still do today, but then came winter, and season’s end. The Mumblers would have to be content with a winter of pigeon talk while bad weather ruled the rooftops.

Then, some 50 years ago, a group of them got together for an experiment. They decided to literally build a new variety, a show bird from the ground up. They adopted a blueprint of a bird they hoped to fashion from their flights, then, went to work. The result, in only five decades of selective breeding, is profound.

If he were alive, Darwin may have left the seclusion of the English countryside to witness it. Much of the history of the classic breeds like the Carrier, Fantail, or Powder is lost in thousands of years of pigeon history, but here, made in America is a totally new well-documented creation, the product of hundreds of proud parents who were genetic designers of a new bird.

It’s called the Domestic Show Flight. It is as distinctive a breed as the city that spawned it. With a sweeping hairdo like Elvis and the permanent glare of a New York cab driver, you may find it beautiful or you may think it odd, but consider this, every person who breeds this bird, sees much more than the creature itself. This is flying history to these men. They and their fathers and friends created it.

The change was accelerated by the fact that the breeders were all near by, regularly exhibiting their birds and comparing them with others. This is much like what happened in ancient, relatively isolated cities. Geography was also on the New Yorkers’ side. A single club administered the standard, trained the judges, and insured that all the breeders were shooting for the same genetic target.

The domestic show flight story is a high-speed version of the forces who have created something over 800 varieties of domestic pigeons today, a number that continues to climb. As with ancient breeds, the Domestic Show Flight and its perfected form are now on its way from its city of origin, continuing the never-ending distribution of genetic material of the Rock Dove. It’s ironic that a breed created by immigrants is now an immigrant itself, as pigeon breeders in different countries add the new variety to their flocks.

Showtime

We don’t know when it began or where, but we do know how. One day thousands of years ago, the first human played matchmaker to a pair of Rock Doves, and at that moment, the story began. They were mates, and the children that would hatch in that first nest were the beginning of an endless chain of generations carefully altered by humans. Over the centuries, the matchmaking continued.

Little by little, changes occurred. Humans recorded the differences in the birds they created. Ignorant of genetics but aware of variations, various breeders mixed and matched, striving for new forms. They worked to make slight deviations permanent, and entire new varieties were gradually refined. It was a pastime many practiced, commoner and king, all striving to create special types of birds. Some people have a special kinship with these pigeons—stock sense, their eyes see more, their hands speak to them of changes. Their intuitions are profound. These few are the ones who changed the bird the most.

And, like any artist, there comes a time to show your work. Each fall, after their birds have molted beautiful new feathers, they yearn to display their living art. Slowly, an international hobby evolved—a competition among fanciers to determine who has created the most beautiful bird. Millions of birds, thousands of years and hundreds of varieties later the human urge is the same today as it was so long ago. The drive to display the beauty and variety of their beloved pigeons brings people together for one great event—Showtime.

The process starts with two ingredients, breeder and a brood. Preparing for competition is often a solitary undertaking. Countless quiet hours are spent with a long list of tasks that are critical to creating birds that can compete for top honors. It’s time spent choosing the all important matings, constantly examining how birds look and feel in the hand, and training the best to become familiar with show cages. These days, deep in the pigeons’ world, are often a breeder’s most favorite moments.

In the summer, the routine is broken with the occasional local show, but the main events are many months ahead. Summer passes to fall and the birds finish growing new feathers. The show pace quickens and the fanciers now travel a little farther for regional events, where the competition trickles in from a wider area and the number of birds on display climbs to the hundreds. Finally, with snow in the north or chilled morning sun in the south, the season hits full stride. Now, come the classic national contests, where a flood of competitors flow in from hundreds or even thousands of miles away, and the stream of entrants swells into the thousands and thousands of pigeons.

Here is a continent of competition, and the culmination of a year of work. Brought together in a giant exposition hall are cage after cage of creatures so varied and sundry, it takes a truly imaginative mind to believe they all trace their roots back to the little grey Rock Dove.

The first order of business is to get the birds settled in after their journey. Each bird has been assigned a cage in the area where its breed is to be displayed. Tracking down the correct compartment in a sea of wire rooms can be a real challenge, and not all the guests are happy with their roosts when they finally get there.

During the hours before the judging begins, the breeders renew old friendships and make last minute adjustments to the birds. Show rules allow an owner to trip unwanted feathers or oil their feet to make them a rich red color for the judge to see.

At a major national show, almost 150 breeds may be represented; as many in one room as Darwin thought existed on the planet in the middle of the last century. Since then, hundreds of new breeds or subsets of traditional breeds have been created, all developed and recognized by the national pigeon organizations. Breeds are sub-divided by sex, age and often numerous color groupings. The larger the show, the higher the number of classes in each category, and the more prizes available.

Exotic feather patterns, huge muffed legs, tiny beaks, enormous beaks, giant ruts, and delicate doves. Nowhere is it more apparent that the word beauty has many definitions than here at a great pigeon show. One breeder’s masterpiece is plain ugly to another. The entire spectrum of nature’s design seems to play out in the cages that line these halls, and a few speak Mother Nature’s sense of humor.

As much as the birds are trained to display, so do the breeders proudly exhibit their credentials; starched, white judging coats covered with the symbols of each exhibitor’s favorite breeds and honors make the show look like a room full of scientists in lab coats.

The coat is a symbol of how deeply they honor and understand the science of genetics.

For though they may not hold PhDs, they know the ways of nature and her bird designs in practice if not in theory. To these backyard genetic engineers, the white coat is a symbol of respect each person has for the breeder’s art and for each other.

If a bird hopes to win, it must possess each and every feature that is part of an exacting preset list of conditions, regarding body type, profile, feather style, color and dozens of other marks—a definition of excellence, a standard by which all birds are measured. A bird will undergo a careful visual inspection and be physically examined several times as these characteristics are evaluated.

These high standards can best be understood by what is happening out in the parking lot or in a room next to the huge show hall. Here, stacked together in happy disarray, are birds for sale. To the average person they look exactly like the birds entered in the big show, the same proud shapes and striking colors, but according to the standards, they are not the same at all. The serious breeder instantly sees flaws the untrained eye is blind to.

The market is hard on the also rands, these swap meet birds can be had for a few dollars. Those of championship caliber can be worth a hundred times more. As the birds are brought to the judging area,  exhibitors know their birds’ chances hinge on how the judge interprets the standard and how each bird compares to today’s competition. It depends too on how the bird performs during that all too brief moment when the judge gives the pigeon his full attention. Even a champion has a bad day.

Typically the judge will start from the bottom up, eliminating birds which have obvious flaws and trying to diplomatically explain his reasons to a new exhibitor. As the windowing process continues, the tension in the audience mounts. From back here it’s hard to know how your bird compares to the find looking competitors next to it. Details of feather and confirmation are unknown, and often when the judge reaches into pull their pigeon, a breeders heart sinks, thinking the bird is on the way out, only to realize the judge has moved it forward in the rankings toward number one. Agony becomes ecstasy in an instant. These few minutes quietly spent in tiny section of a great echoing hall are the moments that have always inspired the great breeders. This is the finish line.

After months of work with an individual bird and often decades of work with its ancestors, its time to put it all on the line, to know that of all the human beings around you, with their parallel years in the game, you have bred the best. You and your bird are champions.

Epilogue

At the end of the day, it’s not just about winning, because win or lose these men and women will be back next year. This is a pastime tied to the seasons. Each new spring brings new life, part of an endless string of fresh starts that rejuvenate the human spirit to try again.

In the pigeon’s world, humans can rule, our decisions dictating the very outcome of their creation. It is uncommon power for the common man, and with this power there is a responsibility and a reward. We are responsible for caring for the generations that we help create, and yet, we are rewarded by seeing our creations take shape, take flight before our eyes.

For the millions of people on earth who keep pigeons, their love for these birds usually began when they were children. They still remember the first time they held a pigeon. Few animals are as comfortable in our hands as the Rock Dove and its descendants, and as their young eyes gaze down at the powerful feathered creature, there was a magical moment when the large bird settled and became calm. At this instant, a bond was formed. There was a fusion between the tiny human fingers and a great, quiet bird.

There are many areas where pigeons have affected human history. For our sustenance, they provided food for our bodies and enrichment for our fields. As soldiers in our service, they have saved our lives. For our science, they were critical to discoveries of how life itself evolved and how our bodies function and learn. And finally and most of all, they were good for our soul, in our art and religion and in our hearts as we experience their world. 

That is the legacy of the Rock Dove, a proud history that only in this century has been sadly lost amidst the distractions of urban society. As our sustenance and soldier, for our science and our soul, this ancient family has been a part of our lives and the story continues. It is never-ending. For the humans who love and respect these birds, there will always be that bond. Each spring there will always be the wonder, as they see their bird flourish and fly. This is the world of pigeons. These are our oldest feathered friends.

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