How To Train A Homing Pigeon

How To Train A Homing Pigeon

Pigeons are animals. Let's start with the basics.

Life. They are alive. Not "dead" like stones, gases or liquids.

Archea. They came from single cells.

Multicellular eukarote are metazoa or animalia organisms, they're motile (they move), and they're heterotrophs (they ingest other organisms)..

Phylum cordata they are animals with vertibrae or close related. As embryos they have a notochord (a tiny spine), a dorsal nerve cord (becomes the spinal cord), an endostyle (a groove that's on the ventral wall of the pharynx which produces mucus to gather food particles) and a post-anal tail.

Subphylum vertebrata They have a backbone and spinal column

Class - Aves. They are birds. They are winged, bipedal, endothermic (warm-blooded), egg-laying, vertebrate animals. The earliest known bird is the archaeopteryx (meaning Ancient Wing), which was around during the Jurassic period. It was like a magpie but about half a metre long. It lived in Germany.

Birds have no teeth, a four-chambered heart and wings. Most birds fly. Ones that don't include penguins, chickens, and the New Zealand Moa - now sadly extinct. They were 12ft Ostriches and died out around 1500 AD.

The smallest bird is the Bee Hummingbird. It's about 5 centimetres or 2 inches long. Nowadays the biggest bird is the 9ft ostrich. The biggest ever bird, however, was the Elephant Bird from Madagascar. It's scientific name was the Aepyornis Maximus, and was about 1/4 of the size of a T-Rex.

Birds are social monogamous - meaning for one breeding season at a time, or up to several years, they pick a single partner but rarely for life. Birds that do mate for life include swans, geese, eagles and some owls. But don't worry, if their partner dies, they grieve but move on and find a new partner eventually to stop them from being lonely. A few birds are also polygymous (have many females) or polyandrous (have many male mates).

There are a few theories about how flight started:

• Cursorial (from the ground up) - The early birds were running along with their wings out, trying to keep their balance, the feather grew naturally for warmth and speed and eventually they picked up enough lift to keep going into the sky.
• Arboreal - From the trees down. They were up in the trees and jumping down, and the feathers and wings helped with landing. Then, they threw themselves at the ground and missed. 
• WAIR - Wing Assisted Incline Running. So, right, they were running up a hill, and then the hill ran out and they kept running and just lept into the air and kept running into the sky until they were flying.

Family - Columbidae. Pigeons are the Columbidae family along with Doves, within the order Columbiformes - meaning they are monogamous and can suck up water without tilting their head back.

Dodos are also Columbiformes.

Migration

Bird populations migrate along a flyway. There are 11 major ones. Highlights include:

• Atlantic - Connects the Appalachians to Jamacia via the West Coast of the US.
• Central American - Down from central Canada to the tip of South America
• Pacific - From Alaska to Patagonia
• East Atlantic - Greenland, West Europe, curling around to the East to Southern Africa
• Central Asian - from the top West of Russia, straight down to Iraq and Yemen, then veers off toward Sri Lanka.
• East Asian - Zig-zags from Australia to Russia, then New Zealand and screws back to Japan. 

The primary motivation for migration is food, but high stress, physical exertion and predation dog them the whole way. Migration was not accepted universally as a theory until at least 1878. Until this time everyone thought swallows hibernated as they couldn't explain why they just suddenly disappeared.

They know when to go due to the timing of the day length. Even captive birds fly in migration directions before returning to their cages.

They navigate by the sun and the moon and use them as a compass. They automatically correct their direction based on the time of day or night. They also use magnetoception. There are a lot of nerves in the upper beak which contains biological magnetite - the most magnetic of all naturally occuring minerals on Earth. Magnetite is also found in the brains of bees, termites and fish. And in the same place (behind the nose) in humans.

The chiton - a mollusc also called a "sea cradle" - which looks like a giant tongue has teeth made of magnetite.

Magnetite is an iron oxide with the chemical formula Fe3O4 or FeO-Fe2O3. It's brittle, black, twice as hard as chalk and half as hard as diamond in large quantities.

Also, in the eyes of pigeons there are photoreceptor cells. Inside there is a light-sensitive molecule called cryptochrome which when in contact with blue light splits into two molecules each with a spare electron. The spinning of these electrons is affected by magnetic fields which in turn affects the light sensitivity of the retinal nerons (like a tiny brain in the eye) which enables the bird to "see" or rather "visually sense" the magnetic field.

With humans, this sense is in the nose, and studies have proved that it is affected by large magnets. Some people find their magnetoception is improved by having magnetic implants under their skin.

Birds use this sense to navigate both globally and locally.

How to Train A Homing Pigeon

And now on to the climax. To find a good homing pigeon:

• Examine the feathers, they should be smooth, slippery and full of natural powder. 
• The feet should be white and full of powder - the whiter the legs the healthier the pigeon.
• The pigeon's pectoral muscles should be strong. If they are weak the tail sticks up at the back and will be dented. Healthy pigeons have straight tails.
• Other muscles should be firm and streamlined. If they're too bony it means it has poor stamina and will be a slow flier. 
• Gaps in the wing feathers mean poor flying. A strong pigeon will try to stop you looking at its feathers. 
• Check for pararsites, mites and feather lice. 
• Start with young birds.
• Create a fly pen so they can fly but not escape. Feed them in their loft so they know to go there for food.
• Start to let the pigeons fly outside the pen. They WILL go crazy at first, flying around or diving to the floor. 
• After a few days they'll start going off in a flock and coming back together for about an hour at a time. 
• At this point take pigeons out 5-10 miles and let them fly home.
• Every time they omplete a distance 3 times, make it further away. 
• Work your way up to about 50 miles as that's their limit. Although they have been known o do up to 200 miles.
• Train once a week, changing the direction from the loft and the direction of release.
• In winter only release them on clear good days.
• Keep them hungry before a flight so they have something to return to.

Facts

Thirty-two pigeons have been decorated with military honours for war contributions, including GI Joe, Paddy, Commando and William of Orange.

Pigeon is the cheap option for sacrifice if you can't afford a more expensive animal according to the Jewish Tanakh. They're also the only birds you're allowed to use for a korban sacrifice.

Pigeon breast is very tasty and kosher.

Don't get too carried away as 19% of all species of pigeon are endangered.