The pigeons that went viral in December for wearing cowboy hats have been rescued. The Las Vegas birds with hats attached to their heads led to a conversation about animal abuse. Many users tweeted to ask that they be freed from their hats. In early December, a Facebook video posted by user Bobby Lee went […]
Feathers are flying in the bird world. Potential changes to the law, following a campaign by pigeon fanciers to reduce attacks on their pets by raptors, have met with opposition from the RSPB. The Raptor Alliance, a body representing many of the UK’s 42,000 pigeon owners, is writing to MPs warning that an “iconic traditional […]
A pair of researchers with Harvard University has uncovered one of the secrets behind pigeons’ impressive flight abilities. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, David Williams and Andrew Biewener describe how they videotaped some of the birds flying through an obstacle course they made, and what they found when […]
And a poem – Pigeons by Richard Kell They paddle with staccato feet In powder-pools of sunlight, Small blue busybodies Strutting like fat gentlemen With hands clasped Under their swallowtail coats; And, as they stump about, Their heads like tiny hammers Tap at imaginary nails In non-existent walls. Elusive ghosts of sunshine Slither down the […]
You may have heard the expression “cat among the pigeons”. Last week I experienced a similar situation but involving a Sparrow Hawk. Whilst strolling across open farmland around Croagh Bay on the west coast of Ireland, I heard the alarm calls of several bird species including starlings and blackbirds. That’s when I saw the culprit […]
Goshawks single out “odd-coloured” pigeons as prey in large flocks to enhance their chances of a successful hunt, a study has found. Research by a University of Oxford team examined the so-called “oddity effect” that the birds of prey use to target feral pigeons in Hamburg, Germany. Most feral pigeons are grey-blue but many flocks […]
Businessman, mayor and outdoorsman William Butts Mershon lived his life in Saginaw. He was born in 1856, and as a teen in the 1870s he loved to hunt. His father, who owned a lumber mill in Saginaw, went hunting with William and their bird dogs Sport, Bob and Ranger. He wrote much later as an […]
Flaco, the Eurasian eagle owl who gained fame after living free in New York City after escaping from captivity, was weakened by rat poison and a pigeon virus to the extent he would have died even if he had not fatally collided with a building earlier this year, a postmortem has found. Flaco was 13 […]