The Curious Bird Lover's Handbook by Niall Edworthy

Author:Niall Edworthy
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473543997
Publisher: Transworld

from Home Thoughts, from Abroad

And after April, when May follows,

And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!

Hark, where my blossom’d pear-tree in the hedge

Leans to the field and scatters on the clover

Blossoms and dewdrops – at the bent spray’s edge –

That’s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,

Lest you should think he never could recapture

The first fine careless rapture!

And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,

All will be gay when noontide wakes anew

The buttercups, the little children’s dower

– Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

ROBERT BROWNING (1812–89)

Pigeons: war heroes to zeroes

Today, an email message clicks into our inbox with a piece of important information; 100 years ago a pigeon fluttered back into its roost with the news tied to its body. As soon as man discovered that a pigeon had the ability to return to its nest from hundreds of miles away, he began to use the bird as a means of long-distance communication. We know pigeons were widely used by Greeks and Romans for a whole host of purposes, from passing back vital military information to sending personal letters and delivering the results of the Olympic Games. In the Middle Ages, the cities of the Middle East were all linked by an extensive network of pigeon post. At the turn of the twentieth century, English football fans smuggled birds into away football matches and released them at half-time and the final whistle to fly home and inform the locals of the score. Pigeons played an important role in the two World Wars, saving thousands of lives in conflicts, carrying messages back from soldiers and undercover agents behind enemy lines. In the First World War they often flew through heavy bombardment and poison gas to deliver vital information. The birds were also released from convoy ships in the Atlantic after a U-boat torpedo attack, giving the coordinates of the location of the sinking ship so that the crew might be rescued. Today, pigeons are no longer cherished and admired as they were for so many centuries. On the contrary, they are regarded as an unhygienic nuisance and millions of them are exterminated every year across the globe by pest controllers.

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