BRAVE WAR PIGEON REMEMBERED

MARY, THE BRAVEST OF WAR PIGEONS, IS REMEMBERED 09:00 - 01 December 2003 An expert at penetrating enemy territory, one of the Westcountry's bravest war heroes has finally been immortalised in a city centre memorial. More than 50 years since she played her role in the downfall of Nazi Germany, Mary the pigeon - service number 40.WCE.249 - has been remembered in Exeter's Northernhay Gardens. The Lord Mayor of Exeter, Margaret Danks, unveiled a plaque for the little grey bird, who flew secret missions in the Second World War, on Saturday. Carrier pigeons played an important role in communications during the two world wars. Every RAF flight left England with two pigeons on board which the crew could release if they got into difficulties, giving the precise location where the plane came down. Mary's owner, Charlie Brewer, a shoemaker from West Street in Exeter, made a significant contribution to wartime communications with his pigeons. Many ferried top secret information between London and Plymouth and France and London. Mr Brewer had to be sworn to secrecy over the activities of his pigeons and the messages they carried. He had a pigeon loft above his home just behind the city wall. Mary joined the pigeon service in 1940 and continued to work until the end of the war. She was wounded three times, received a total of 22 stitches, had part of her wing shot off, underwent a major operation to remove three pellets from her body and was badly injured in an attack by a hawk. On each occasion she managed to find her way home. Mary was one of only 32 pigeons to receive the Dickin Medal, known as the VC for animals, which was created by animal lover Mary Dickin to recognise the bravery of animals involved in the war effort. On November 20, 1945 Mary received her medal from Sir James Ross of the Air Ministry "for outstanding endurance on war service in spite of wounds".
AR-News: (UK) BRAVE WAR PIGEON REMEMBERED

January 16, 2008

LONDON — In times of war, they have proved safer than radios, more nimble than humans, more fuel-efficient than aircraft. Depending on the price of birdseed.

Their exploits, though, have tended to go underappreciated here in London, where Mayor Ken Livingstone's long-running war with the lowly pigeon over who controls the territory of Trafalgar Square has tended to obscure the otherwise heroic stature of the ubiquitous waddlers.

No more. Images of the long-distance homing birds that served Britain through two world wars went on auction Tuesday, fetching an unexpected $20,789 and a lot of surprised clucking.

The sale of the eight oil paintings ... has revived interest in the exploits of the quarter of a million pigeons drafted to serve as messengers and spies during World War II.

The owner of the paintings, Jack Lovell, established secret pigeon lofts near the Dover coast in 1939 that provided 200 specially bred Belgian pigeons, of the kind depicted in the images, to the Royal Navy for deployment behind enemy lines with the French Resistance.

...

Pigeons through the millenniums have acted as messengers of war. Genghis Khan deployed them in Europe in the 13th century. The first news of Wellington's victory at Waterloo came by pigeon post. And an estimated 20,000 military pigeons were killed during World War I.

One of them, Cher Ami, is credited by the Smithsonian Institution with having saved the lives of 194 American soldiers of the "Lost Battalion," which had become isolated from other American forces at Verdun, France. The male black check pigeon was shot as it made its way from the stranded battalion, arriving back behind American lines bloodied with its last message capsule dangling from a shattered leg. The bird died of its wounds in 1919, and was awarded the French Croix de Guerre.

By World War II, British military commanders were ready to give up winged communications in favor of radios -- until they remembered that radios were subject to interception.
...

Lovell's birds initially were deployed along the British coast as an early-warning system in the event of an invasion. Later, a loft was established at Bletchley Park, the Allies' center where codes and messages from several Axis countries, including those generated by the German Enigma machine, were deciphered.

The army, meanwhile, was experimenting with pigeon drops -- flying birds over occupied Europe and dropping them from planes, sometimes equipped with tiny parachutes. The practice had a disturbing casualty rate among the avian paratroopers, Lovell said.

He worked only with the Navy to smuggle birds by boat to the French underground.

Each capsule attached to a bird's leg could carry a sheet of paper 36 inches long. Some birds carried film shot inside German weapons and rocket factories, Lovell said.

"The problem was, what do you do when you want to liberate the pigeon, without it being conspicuous?" he said. "The simplest way was to take it out in a newspaper. You find some pigeons out in the street, you put some food out, you let the newspaper down, and all of them fly away together. Who could pick out the pigeon coming back with a message on him?"

Lovell isn't sure how many of his birds perished -- by then, the military was in control, he said. But most of them were making journeys of 250 miles back to their lofts in Britain.

"A pigeon, when it flies up high on a clear day, it can see 70 miles," he said. "They've got wonderful eyesight."


The Randi Rhodes Show > HOMAGE TO "WAR HERO" CARRIER PIGEONS

Britain turns its back onto the bird of peace.
After failed attempts to prevent pigeons from overruning British town squares, authorities have turned to unleashing Robotic Birds of Prey, or Robops for short, according to the Popular Science Blog. But Wired thinks the current Robop design is too tame, arguing they should have been equipped with “sidewinders and lasers”. Gizmodo says the current unarmed model costs $3,700, but may help Liverpool save on the 88 man-hours it spends shoveling pigeon-droppings daily.
Pajamas Media: The British War on Pigeons:

The hero of the latest British war movie is a pigeon called Valiant.
The farthest Daniella had ventured from home was a 28-mile trip down the M6 in the back of a white Vauxhall Astra van, so no one could be sure how she might respond when she was plonked in a field near Cherbourg and left to find her own way home. She made it, of course, extending her white wing tips to make the 300-mile trip to a loft at Audenshaw, north Manchester, in five hours with the rain and the wind on her nose - a performance that had some hard-bitten old pigeon men tipping their caps. It's not too often that a 12-week- old pigeon hen from the North pinches a national championship from under the beaks of the southern cocks.
It also left the bird's owner, Gerry Clements, with the thought that has preoccupied him many a time in the 55 years he has been breeding pigeons. "All that bird's known is her training run home from Stoke," he says. "She's never seen the sea but suddenly she's flying over water - more and more and more of it. Some birds will turn back but the best ones, like her, they just keep going. Where does she get the courage from?"
There's no room for philosophising like that in the pages of British Homing World - the pigeon fanciers' bible, where Daniella's win made her front-page news last year. But the bravest of the brave will finally get their dues this week in the pounds 20m Ealing Studios film Valiant, which is already being touted as a successor to the Oscar-winning Shrek, one of Hollywood's biggest animation films.
Inspired by the role played by racing pigeons during the Second World War, the film, which will be released on Friday, is about plucky young Valiant, a wood pigeon who decides to serve his country in the only way he knows how. Accompanied by a rather less motivated young friend, Bugsy, he dons goggles and a bomber jacket and prepares to brave Von Talon, a sinister falcon with a Germanic rasp.
The film's voices include Ewan McGregor, who plays Valiant, and Ricky Gervais as Bugsy, as well as John Cleese, John Hurt and Hugh Laurie. It also provides a directorial debut for Gary Chapman, a 44- year-old Mancunian brought in as a designer, drawing and sculpting maquettes of the characters. He was offered the directing job because his ideas for Valiant were so extraordinary.
But the most improbable name on the credit list is Gerry Francis - the former England football captain, ex-manager of Tottenham Hotspur and a dedicated pigeon fancier who was drafted in to ensure Valiant was historically accurate and the illustrations were anatomically correct.
Like Gerry Clements, Mr Francis is passionate about the birds of the RAF's Homing Pigeon Service, who were carted into battle in wicker baskets on infantrymen's backs. Amid radio silence they were set free to fly across the Channel with vital information tucked into steel phials tied to their legs, dodging snipers and hawks deployed by the German falcon brigades.
One of Mr Francis's favourite pigeon stories involves Winkie, who was travelling in a Beaufort bomber forced down in the North Sea. Despite being heavily oiled, she escaped from her container and flew 129 miles to Scotland, leaving her crew behind in a dinghy. The crew were rescued and later held a dinner for Winkie, who basked in her cage as she was toasted by the officers.
Mr Clements also talks of the cock pigeon Gustav, the finest of the lot for many fanciers. His name might sound suspiciously foreign, but he was as English as they come. Released from a ship close to the coast of Normandy as the D-Day landings began, he faced a headwind of 30mph and the sun, which he used to navigate with, was hidden behind dense cloud. Yet he still managed the 150-mile trip to a pigeon loft in Thorney Island, near Portsmouth, after a flight lasting five hours and 16 minutes.
His handler, Sgt Harry Halsey, took the message strapped to Gustav's leg that read: "We are just 20 miles or so off the beaches. First assault troops landed 0750. Signal says no interference from enemy gunfire on beach ... Steaming steadily in formation. Lightnings, Typhoons, Fortresses crossing since 0545. No enemy aircraft seen."
Gustav was one of 32 racing pigeons awarded the Dickin Medal, the animal equivalent of the Victoria Cross, of which only 60 have been awarded across the entire animal kingdom. Although his war-hero status did not guarantee him a rosy retirement, it should be said. He met a sorry end when someone mucking out his loft stepped on him by mistake.
During the Napoleonic Wars, Belgian and Dutch newspapers also relied heavily on birds to receive reports from the front. News of Napoleon's defeat at the Battle of Waterloo arrived in England by pigeon.
Pigeons' feats of avian heroism during the First World War are commemorated at a memorial in Lille, northern France, that recalls the more than 20,000 military pigeons killed during the conflict. However, during the war, German forces took possession of thousands of birds from Belgium alone.
But the Second World War was the pigeons' finest hour. Many nations deployed them, including the United States, which had more than 3,000 soldiers and 150 officers in the United States Pigeon Service to take care of 54,000 military pigeons.
Few could match the British, though. The birds have a place in the same pantheon of heroes as Churchill and General Montgomery and many are listed in the honourable roll-call of Dickin medal winners, named after Maria Dickin, founder of the People's Dispensary for Sick Animals. There was Cologne, who made it home, severely injured, from a British aircraft that ditched in the German city in 1943; Commando, who made three trips from occupied France; Princess, who flew 500 miles from Alexandria, Egypt, to allied forces; and GI Joe, America's finest, who raced home to Air Support Command at 60 miles an hour, just in time to reveal that a heavily fortified German position had been taken by the Allies and should not be bombed. One hundred lives were saved.
Continued

__________________

When all is done that is asked from me and I can fly no higher, I pray this day his hand extends to welcome home a flyer.
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And what thanks did they get? So grateful was the Ministry of Defence that after the war it considered establishing a squad of germ warfare suicide pigeons to carry biological agents being developed at its chemical and biological research station at Porton Down in Wiltshire into the Soviet Union, in the event of war.
Valiant creates the uplifting impression that courage alone drove these humble creatures to glory. But another explanation of the flights they made - employing the sun, the earth's magnetic field and their rarefied sense of smell to guide them - has more to do with nurture: the prosaic, breeder's process of pairing those males and females that have the most acute desire to get home fast.
If Mr Clements had to send one of his 140 birds into battle it would be his retired racer Bouncer, or GB97N27828, as the racing world knew him in his prime, a blue pied pigeon with flecks of iridescent purple in his feathers who could never get back to Audenshaw fast enough in his five-year racing career, which ended in 2002.
He was sired by one of Belgium's finest cocks and, Mr Clements says, was destined to be one of the best because "the apple never falls far from the tree". The bird, like his war-time predecessors, also underwent gentle encouragement in what the pigeon world knows as the widowhood system. This allows the male a five-minute unconsummated liaison with the female on the day before a race. "By the time of the race, his hunger to nest - and do what males are supposed to do - means he's raring to get back," says Mr Clements. "Let's just say you wouldn't catch him stopping off at the pub on the way home from work."
There are other ways of encouraging a pigeon to get home quickly. When Daniella won the national, she was returning to a seven-day- old chick she had been encouraged to foster before competing. Or there is the more chaotic Spanish way, in which fanciers set off a hen that the cocks are allowed to dash after. Speed isn't everything: the winning Spanish cock must reach the hen first, then persuade her to venture home with him.
Spain also has a habit of turning the event into a circus. The pigeons are fed food dye that turns their feathers every colour of the rainbow - quite a spectacle as they leave en masse. But above all, the charm test brings out the harmonious, gregarious, companionable qualities in racing pigeons that are often overlooked in the stories of normal dour breeds that no one wants to see in Trafalgar Square.
Mr Clements - who hopes Ewan McGregor and co will finally add such qualities to our perception of a much-mocked bird - hasn't had a serious pigeon fight in his lofts for six years - only the occasional wrestle which accompanies one bird trying to annex another's box. After sleeping on their feet for as few as five hours a night, his birds will perch side by side from before dawn, hardly ever squatting. The training regime is the same as it would have been for the war birds: a single hour's exercise at 7am and 7pm, occasional 30-mile training jaunts and a strict diet of maize, peas, wheat and sunflower hearts.
Rumours of these birds' intelligence can be overstated. When BBC television crews pitched up a few years ago to investigate the (ridiculous) story that pigeons used the motorway network to navigate their way home, one of Mr Clements' birds was placed on a road atlas to see if it followed the blue lines. Predictably, it failed the test.
But their "brains, stamina and speed" makes them formidable, Mr Clements concludes, as he demonstrates the fuselage of a male bird, which made it 450 miles home with a broken keel bone and a foot that remains badly damaged to this day.
"There were cases in the war where they brought messages home after their chests had been ripped out and once they have delivered them they just dropped dead," he says. "It's because of those qualities we like to call them the athletes of the skies."
The hero of the latest British war movie is a pigeon called Valiant. | Independent, The (London) | Find Articles at BNET.com

"£226,000 COSTS OF MAYOR'S WAR ON PIGEONS" - TUFFREY
12.25.53pm UTC (GMT +0000) Fri 29th Sep 2006
New research by the London Assembly Liberal Democrats has revealed today that the Ken Livingstone's war on pigeons in Trafalgar Square has so far cost the London tax payer £226,000 since 2003, or an average of £90 per pigeon removed.
Despite past claims that the pigeon population has been reduced to 150, the Mayor's answers to the Lib Dems reveals that the average pigeon count for 2006 remains at 1,000 birds per day.
Figures released by the Liberal Democrats last year shows that the cost of
Commenting on the new figures, Liberal Democrat Environment Spokesman on the London Assembly, Mike Tuffrey, said:
"The pigeons in Trafalgar Square are both a nuisance and a health hazard that most Londoners would be happy to see gone all together. But at a cost of £90 per pigeon removed, serious doubts should be raised about the effectiveness of the scheme as well as its value for money.
'Rather than relying on his French bird to do the job, the Mayor should be diversifying into other methods of pigeon control such as contraception or nesting prevention, as well as clearer signs forbidding feeding.
'Anyone strolling through Trafalgar Square these days will tell you there are still too many people feeding the pigeons. The Mayor could do much more to use the powers he has to crack down on those who encourage pigeons to remain in the square." ENDS
Notes to the Editors
1. The Hawk flying scheme was introduced in 2002
2. Questions to the Mayor on pigeons:
Pigeons
Question No: 1912 / 2006
Mike Tuffrey
How much has been spent each year on birds of prey to deter pigeons in Trafalgar Square since the they were introduced and what do the costs include? How many birds of prey have been used since their introduction? How many pigeons are estimated to have been killed by the birds of prey used to deter pigeons since they have been introduced?
Since birds of prey were introduced in Trafalgar Square, the costs have been:
2002/03 £44,343
2003/04 £78,241
2004/05 £25,100
2005/06 £29,531
2006/07 £38,160
This expenditure covers the contractor's costs of transport to the square and the handler flying the Harris hawk daily. Normally two hawks are brought to the square each day to cover the prescribed hours; only one hawk is flown at a time.
Since November 2003, 121 pigeons have been killed on the square.
Estimated expenditure figures of £31,000 provided for 2004/05 in response to question 1743/2005 have been adjusted to reflect actual payments.
Pigeons
Question No: 1914 / 2006
Mike Tuffrey
What estimates have been made of the numbers of pigeons in Trafalgar Square in each of the following years: 2000/01, 2001/02, 2002/03, 2003/04, 2004/05 and 2005/06?
The average number of pigeon count per day is:
2000 5,000
2001 3,600
2002 3,500
2003 3,200
2004 2,400
2005 1,400
2006 (to date) 1,000
3. Total expenditure on pigeons from GLA budget from 2002 is £215,375. In July 2006, the Mayor approved the appointment of NBC Bird Solutions Limited for flying of a Hawk on Trafalgar Square from 1 July 2006 to 30 June 2007 for a value of £46,280. Of this, £10,920 is being met by Westminster City Council, which owns the space in front of the National Gallery. This brings the total cost to the London tax payer up to £226,295 since its introduction in 2003.
Since the introduction of the hawk flying scheme in 2002, there has been a total of 2,500 pigeons removed by the bird, bringing the average cost per pigeon removed to £90,51.
4. A bylaw, prohibiting pigeon feeding in Trafalgar sq was introduced in October 2003. The bylaw was made by the Mayor on 20th November 2002 under section 385 of the Greater London Authority Act 1999. It amends existing byelaws which came into effect on 1st October 2000, the day on which the Mayor became responsible for both Trafalgar and Parliament Squares.
In accordance with the Local Government Act 1972 the Mayor advertised his intention to seek confirmation of the byelaw in a local newspaper (Westminster and Pimlico News) and responses were sent to the Secretary of State for the Department of Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) - the confirming authority for byelaws relating to the squares. The byelaw was formally submitted for confirmation by DCMS on 9th April 2003 along with supporting material for the need for such a byelaw. The Secretary of State (DCMS) agreed and confirmed the byelaw which will be advertised in the same local newspaper, on site at Trafalgar Square and copies sent to all London Boroughs.
Breach of this byelaw is a criminal offence punishable by a maximum fine of £50 in line with breaches of other byelaws. In considering whether to commence prosecution proceedings the Mayor must consider the public interest in doing so.
"£226,000 COSTS OF MAYOR'S WAR ON PIGEONS" - TUFFREY (London Assembly Liberal Democrats)

On a Wing and a Prayer
The little-known tale of Australia's feathered heroes -- a corps of pigeons that saved countless lives during World War 2, with some birds even being awarded medals for gallantry.
by John Piggott
Every ANZAC Day they proudly march -- the pigeon fanciers who went to war. Their numbers are smaller now, but they always raise a smile and a cheer from the crowds lining the street. Yet probably only those who served alongside them would be aware of how many soldiers owe their lives to the birds these men bred, trained and nurtured in the tropics of wartime Papua and New Guinea.
Patrols surrounded by the enemy, crews in sinking ships, engineers stranded by mud-slides, medical units desperately short of blood all have reason to thank the men and the birds of the Australian Corps of Signals Pigeon Service who, sixty years ago -- in December 1942 -- arrived in Port Moresby as the Japanese beat a bloody retreat along the Kokoda Track.
Keith Wrightson was among the first to arrive. Now living in Sydney, the 80-year-old is still racing birds and is regarded as one of the sport's greats. He was serving with the engineers when he was switched to the pigeon service, which was started after jungle warfare laid bare the limitations of modern communications.
In New Guinea and the islands, the rugged terrain posed special problems: not only was there a greater chance of lines being cut, but the portable wirelesses taken on patrols were heavy and could fail in the extreme humidity. A pair of pigeons could be taken into rough conditions needing little more than a cane carrier and food. Then there was the fear of intercepted messages but, as Wrightson says, 'You can't jam a bird' -- the enemy might shoot at it, but in doing so it reveals its position.
Sending messages by pigeon saved on precious airtime as war correspondents sending long dispatches from the front came to appreciate, and removed the need for decoding. But perhaps most valuable of all, the radio had yet to be invented that could transmit a hastily sketched map showing enemy positions. Other times they carried sketches showing reefs that could be used by landing craft carrying men to a beachhead -- they would know just where they were going to run into trouble.
Even the brass took some convincing. The remarkable pigeon man who instigated the service, Bert Cornish -- now 92 and living on the North Shore, Sydney where later he became Mayor of Ku-ring-gai -- wrote that 'probably one of the most difficult things to overcome was the prejudice within the Army itself,' or as Wrightson says, 'They thought they were going back to the Ark.'
Cornish had to find experienced men. His superiors wanted to take the easy option and recruit troops whose only contact with pigeons may well have been feeding them in the park. But Cornish knew this would be disastrous and fought hard to obtain a body of dedicated men such as Wrightson who knew what they were doing.
A call then went out to owners around Australia who responded by donating 13500 birds in 1942 alone. Lofts fixed and mobile were built, food supplies ensured (grain wasn't grown in either Papua or New Guinea, so everything had to be shipped from Australia), birds trained. But after arriving in Port Moresby it became clear that the mainland-bred birds had trouble acclimatising to the tropics. A breeding program was therefore begun.
It didn't take long for service personnel to be convinced of the birds' worth. To troops in desperate situations, sometimes pigeons were all that stood between them and disaster. 'Soon the pigeons were very much in demand,' says Wrightson. 'The crews of some Army supply boats refused to go to sea without them.'
The first of two Dickin Medals -- the animals' VC -- was awarded to an Australian bird, whose flight to Madang saved the crew and valuable cargo of a boat that was foundering during a tropical storm. In driving rain the bird had covered 64 kilometres in 50 minutes. By the war's end it had been on 23 missions.
The other medal went to a pigeon attached to American forces on Manus Island after a group of about 200 men were pinned down by the Japanese in April 1944. Suffering casualties and with gunfire raining down, they managed to release a pigeon carrying a plea for help. The bird arrived back at base 48 kilometres and 47 minutes later. Aircraft were sent to clear the area; the troops were saved.
Another time, a box containing a pair of birds was parachuted into the mountains, so a surrounded patrol could detail its position. Birds brought relief to Army engineers stranded by landslides while building a jeep track deep into the Owen Stanley Range. The Australian War Memorial says of the service: 'The pigeons of these lofts were called upon to operate under conditions which probably no other Army pigeons had to endure. At times the birds had to rise 2000 feet in a distance of three miles, with torrential rain or mist a distinct possibility. Rarely was a message not delivered.'
Wrightson still thrills at the sight of a pigeon fluttering to earth, its mission completed. But this time medals, not lives, are at stake. For him, it has been a life-long passion, one that started at the age of 15, when he inherited his step-brothers' pigeons after they died in separate car accidents. He has been racing under their name Dive Brothers ever since, his father filling in for him during the war years. 'It's an intriguing game,' he says. 'Once you've been bitten by the bug it never leaves you.'
For all their courage and the contribution they made, the pigeons of war did not live to race in peacetime. Strict quarantine laws meant all the birds that operated in New Guinea and the islands were not able to be brought into Australia -- they had to be put down. Wrightson says sadly there was probably no other choice: there was no one to whom they could give the birds because there weren't the grain crops to feed them, and it would have been cruel to leave them there, starving and terrorised by hawks.
Wrightson says a friend took half-a-dozen with him but they were whisked away and destroyed as soon as they reached Australia. Sent to a taxidermist, two finished up as exhibits at the Australian War Memorial. There, out of public view, they can still be found. A pair of small birds, each with a medal bearing an inscription: 'For Gallantry'.
Dickin Medal (The Victoria Cross for animals)
The Dickin Medal, a large bronze medallion, bears the words 'For Gallantry' and 'We Also Serve' -- all within a laurel wreath. The ribbon is striped green, dark brown and pale blue representing water, earth and air to symbolise the naval, military, civil defence and air forces.
The medal was instituted in 1943 by Mrs Maria Dickin, founder of the People's Dispensary for Sick Animals in England. It was awarded to any animal displaying conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty associated with, or under the control of, any branch of the Armed Forces or Civil Defence units during World War 2 and its aftermath.
At least two Australian carrier pigeons attached to the Australian Army have received the Dickin Medal:
Blue bar cock No. 139/D:43:T Detachment 10 Pigeon Section (Type B) attached to Detachment 55 Port Craft Company, Madang 12 July 1945. Awarded the Dickin Medal for gallantry carrying a message through a severe tropical storm thereby bringing help to an Army boat with a vital cargo, in danger of foundering.
Blue chequer cock No. 879/D: 43: Q Loft No. 5 of 1 Australian Pigeon Section, attached to the US forces, Manus Island, Admiralty Islands 5th April 1944. Awarded the Dickin Medal for gallantry carrying a message through heavy fire thereby bringing relief to a patrol surrounded and attacked by the enemy without other means of communication.
On a Wing and a Prayer

__________________

When all is done that is asked from me and I can fly no higher, I pray this day his hand extends to welcome home a flyer.
Author : http://www.pigeonrescue.com/
Website:http://pigeonworld.informe.com/index...e3a2a754004832
Watch: http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...29577913622678
Sign: http://www.all-creatures.org/alert/alert-20070124.html
E-Mail tallship30@yahoo.com

In this thread I have strived to point out how much the bird of peace has impacted our history.
How many doctors, scientist, inventors, simply would not be alive today if not for the efforts of the Pigeon during war time.
How many humans would not be alive today, many lives simply would not be here.
Pigeons and there abilities to "Home" have saved so many lives.
Before the telegraph, before the pony express these birds were used to communicate.
Over the years people with political power have made careless statements concerning the bird of peace.
Now it seems these majestic birds have fallen from grace, they are being mass poisoned, starved, shunned by mankind.
To quickly we humans forget what these birds have done for us.
To quickly we rush in to kill them.
Here in the USA, we honor the Bald Eagle "a preditor", when has this bird helped Mankind?, how many lives has this bird saved?
Why has the bird that has saved so many human lives throughout history gone without federal protection?
We Americans seem to protect those that KILL and shun those that SAVE.
I pray this thread "They Had No Choice", helps to change the way people look upon the Pigeon aka the Dove aka The Rock Dove.
THE BIRD OF PEACE
BrokenWing