Doves And Pigeons - Crusader Bird Messages

Every time, during the spring and summer, that the landscaping company hired by the developer here arrives to mow off the empty common areas that are covered in beautiful grasses -- I want to cry. My tears are for the many families of wild Mourning Doves that nest there.

Since their nests are on the ground and their hatched babies are hiding among the tall grasses, it just seems so heartless and wrong that for the sake of "pretty" they don't deserve to live -- in the eyes of those who probably don't even know they are there.

Of course, our tender-footed city slicker neighbors who demand pristine Disney golf course lawns and common areas, probably aren't swayed by my concerns. They are alarmed that the tall swaying native grasses will lure in "the undesirables," including the birds, snakes, and coyotes -- who were all here first.

According to the Bible, during the great flood Noah sent a dove from the Ark to find out if land was nearby. On its second attempt, the bird returned with a leaf, indicating that the waters covering the earth had gone down.

Since early times, the doves have been considered as gentle birds, mostly helpful to mankind, and the very symbol of peace and love. In some places certain kinds of doves are sacred and are never killed, but most kinds are hunted by both man and predatory animals.

Doves and pigeons belong to the Columbidae, in the order Columbiformes. The order includes also the Sand Grouse and some interesting birds, the former Dodo and the Solitaire, that have become extinct.

The Columbidae are found in most parts of the world. They come in a great range of sizes. The little Turtle Dove of South America, for instance, is as small as a sparrow. Yet the Great Crowned Pigeon of the Solomon Islands, is almost as big as a turkey.

The family Columbidae can be roughly divided into ground dwellers (like the Mourning Doves) and tree dwellers (like the Pigeon), but this does not always hold true. The ground dwellers are mostly smaller and have stronger legs and feet than their relatives of the tree tops.

From one pigeon of the old World, known as the Rock Dove, man has developed more than two hundred kinds of domestic pigeons in the last three thousand years.

In the time of the Crusades, pigeons were used by knights to carry messages back to their castles, and centuries later, in the Siege of Paris (1870), the pigeon-post birds carried letters over the heads of the soldiers surrounding the city.

Birds of this type are known as Homing, or Carrier Pigeons, and by careful breeding man has produced Carriers that can fly over sixty miles per hour, return home from as much as twenty-six hundred miles, and even find a moving ship on the ocean if it is their home.

While no longer commonly used by the armed forces of countries to carry messages, they have been invaluable during times of war in a world before satellite technology. Yet, surprisingly, use of Homing pigeons is still being utilized in today's world. Recently, there was a South African IT firm (Unlimited IT) who in the throes of a technical problem via it's satellite, decided to use a homing pigeon to send its data files.

It took the pigeon a little over two hours round trip to solve the data transfer problem, white the local broadband provider was so slow that it couldn't even transfer five percent of the data via the modern method. (Hint: For hubbers in areas with a serious shortage of bandwidth, maybe you should be considering a pet homing pigeon?)

Before You Consider This Pet, Here's Some Pigeon Facts!

There are about five hundred and fifty kids of pigeons and doves combined. Other domestic pigeons are raised for food, for beauty, and for curiosity. Some have an ability to tumble in the air while flying. Others strut in an unusual manner. They are most numerous in the East Indian and Australian regions, but over one hundred kinds are found in North America.

They are different from all other birds in at least two respects:

1. They drink water as a horse does, by sucking the water up without throwing their heads back to swallow as do other birds.
2. The young bird places its bill in the parent's mouth and sucks out the milky food as the adult brings up portions. The nestlings of other kinds of partly digested food in the same way.

Both parents work together to build the nest. It is usually of loose sticks, set low in a tree or bush, but some are on the ground or even in rabbit burrows. Both parents share the work of sitting on the eggs until they hatch, and both father and mother feed the helpless naked babies.

Usually, the mother lays two eggs, but sometimes only one. The eggs are always some shade of white.

Pigeons prefer to take dust baths rather than water baths. They generally feed on weed seeds, waste grains, fruits, or nuts -- depending on their size and on the food that is available nearby.

The voice of all pigeons and doves is called a "coo." It is usually low and mournful, but sometimes as loud as an owl's call.

In urban areas across the world there are many who call pigeons "rats with wings." Some people dislike these birds because they frequently nest near houses and apartment buildings. They start cooing early in the morning, before their human neighbors want to be awakened. Their droppings when their population is large, can be a great nuisance and health hazards, particularly when they take over abandoned or buildings that are in ill repair.

A number of pigeons have been completely removed from earth, mainly because of man's carelessness and lack of knowledge.

The wild pigeon of North America, also known as the Passenger pigeon, is one of the best examples of such unwise destruction of a species. When the white men came, they found Passenger pigeons throughout most of North America in enormous numbers.

They traveled in flocks, millions to a flock, and they also nested sociably.

In 1871 in an area of central Wisconsin that measured seventy-five miles long and almost fifteen miles wide, there was the largest nesting of Passenger pigeons ever recorded.

On this land there were an estimated twenty-five trees to the acre, with five nests (or about ten adult birds) in each tree.

It is believed that this nesting contained a total of one hundred and thirty-six million wild pigeons. In other words, there were about eighty percent more pigeons in this one flock as there were pigeons at the time in the United States.

Well, the Wisconsin war against pigeons only took less than thirty years, because by 1899, man had succeeding in killing the last of the passenger pigeons in Wisconsin. Now, if you went to school in the 1950s as I did, you were probably taught in grade school that the last Passenger pigeon in the world (Martha) died in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914. What a lonely little bird she must of been without others of his kind.

Man alone is responsible for the extinction of the Passenger pigeon. Passenger pigeons in Wisconsin, about one and a half pigeons were shipped forty-four dozen birds in a barrel by the train boxcar load to the East coast. You could by a pair of pigeons for your dinner table for two cents. It's claimed that many of the poor, particularly slaves and servants never had any other kind of meat for their dinner tables.

The methods for capturing the Passenger pigeons were nothing short of awful. Grain and feed was soaked in alcohol to stupefy the birds to make them easier to capture and kill. Fires were set in nesting areas to drive them from their roosts.

By 1900, cash rewards were offered for the discovery of a pigeon nest. Not one was said to be found in Wisconsin. Efforts to re-establish the Passenger pigeon came too late and too little and the birds would not breed in captivity.

The only thing good that came out of the situation was that once they disappeared the outcry was great enough to raise awareness in conversation that saved other species of birds and animals from becoming extinct.

Some other members of the order Columbiformes, living on islands where they had no enemies, had lost the use of their wings and couldn't fly when men first discover4ed them.

The saying "dead as a dodo" refers to one of these pigeon-like birds that became extinct within a hundred years after man first came to its home on the island of Mauritus. Not only was the Dodo hunted by man for food, it was also killed by animals man brought to the Mauritius, such as pigs who were turned loose and went wild there.

On a nearby island, the same thing happened to the Solitaire -- another pigeon-like bird which weighed as much as forty-five pounds. One man who studied the Solitaires said that "As soon as they were caught, they shed tears without crying, and refused all manner of sustenance, until they died in captivity."

These birds have not existed for nearly three hundred years because man found them good to eat and they could not fly, so could not escape. There were no game laws or concept of conservation awareness back then to protect them.

Throughout history man has captured pigeons in a variety of ways, including primarily with nets for food and this is still done in some places. In ancient times the cruel practice of using a Stool pigeon was well known.

This was a bird whose eyelids had been sewn together, so it would continually cry out and flap its wings. Its cries attracted other pigeons and they were easily captured and killed.

Even later, in the United States, the little and sweet Mourning Dove was hunted for sport by this method in many states and it is estimated that at least a half million of them were killed in a single season in one state before this practice was outlawed.

What is commonly known in India as the Rock pigeon actually is one of the seventeen Sand Grouse species known in the world. They are all about a foot in length and are pigeon-like, but they differed in many ways and belong in a separate bird family by themselves.

Most different is the fact that they normally lay their three eggs in a depression on the ground, and when the eggs hatch, the young birds are fully feathered and can run around in search of food almost immediately. However, they drink as other pigeons do.

Sand Grouse are birds of the great deserts and plains, with a plumage that looks the color of the ground, and have feathers on their legs.

One of the great bird mysteries is the fact that the Pallas Sand Grouse twice flew into Europe in great numbers (1863 and 1888) for unknown reasons. Some of them nested there but were soon all killed or died.

Pigeons, Mourning Doves, and Sand Grouse are more or less harmless birds that eat such foods as waste grain and weed seeds, nutmeg, mangrove, figs, and acorns. Sometimes they damage man's cultivated crops, but more often they entertain him as pets, as fast-flying targets to the sporting hunter, or as an inspiring, quickly moving flock.

They have been valuable food to mankind in some parts of the world and to certain animals, such as the hawk and the wild cat.

To fill this important place in her plan, mother nature has blessed the pigeons with the power to raise two or more families of young each season, or in warmer climates several families a year.

Because of their importance to man and other animals, man should care wisely for this valuable resource and never let another pigeon species become "dead as a Dodo."

Here Are A Few Pigeon Family Fun Facts

• Some pigeons are considered among the most beautiful birds in the world. Among them are the superb Fruit pigeons and the magnificent Australian variety of them.
• Some pigeons can run through the grass faster than a man.
• Some do not migrate, but remain in a single locality.
• Probably the most unusual species is the Tooth-billed pigeon of the Samoan Islands, which has a hooked bill with notches, like teeth. It feeds on the fig tree and makes a loud rushing noise like distant thunder.
• Pigeons have been compared jokingly to "bobble heads" but there is a method to their odd behavior -- they have monocular vision which and the movement of stepping forward helps them to see better.
• Racing pigeons are not only big business, but also a bird that can fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars to own.
• Pigeons are so intelligent that they can do things that only humans and primates are capable of, including recognizing all the letters in the English alphabet, and knowing the difference between themselves and another pigeon in the mirror. They can even tell humans apart.