Across the old Roman Empire were scattered examples of the columbarium after the genus name of the Rock dove, Columba - "culvery" to the Cornish, "doocot" to the Scottish, "dovecote" to the English.
I kept homing pigeons for a few years to train my bird dog. They became part of the homestead family quickly. Their navigational ability has been studied extensively. Their capability to "home" is still not completely understood...the four or five best theories are impressive. They can routinely be taken hundreds of miles from their coop and find their way back with ease. They are not trash eaters or dirty as many people think. They primarily eat seeds. And they are delicious, not just as squab [before they fledge] but as adults as well.
Ha-ha! I did a brief stint in my youth at our country’s largest airport, doing ‘green’ bird control ‘flying falcons’ or at least that’s how it was advertised to the public. The falcons were there in their pens, but what i really did was drive around blasting wildlife with a twelve-gauge. The Italian workers would come by and pick up not only all the Canada geese from the filthy waterfront to eat but the seagulls too.
I got into pigeons at a falconry meet. A friend of mine had her goshawk there on its perch and adjacent some of her pigeons in a wooden doweled hutch. There they were justaposed, and i realized the spectacle of those pigeons, their perfect beauty, for me was more compelling than that of the flat, lacertid predator. I got some pigeons and quit falconry. Ironic that in doing so, i have witnessed far more and far better flights by predatory birds in keeping pigeons as they attempted to catch my charges than i ever did when i was spending hours and weeks and months training a raptor for the same. Only now for no more effort, time and expenditure than putting out a bit of seed and water daily.
The common sooty pigeon of the streets
Spells all the grunge ground out by urbane life –
The thick air dulls his blotchéd wing, he eats
The gutter-slime, and courts his would-be wife
with gross inflations, sings with horrid calls,
Grim coos and gurglings, clatters when he flies
Streaks white-wash droppings on the city's walls,
and mummifies in attics when he dies.
But if transpose this self-same bird from these
Dull streets to water-running gorge-cut shale
He sets his wings into the rushing breeze
(Dihedral now explained) upwards he sails
And fills the broken niche. No less himself,
He fits, his forebears fit him for, that rocky shelf.
Cornell University, 1967-1968
I kept homing pigeons for a few years to train my bird dog. They became part of the homestead family quickly. Their navigational ability has been studied extensively. Their capability to "home" is still not completely understood...the four or five best theories are impressive. They can routinely be taken hundreds of miles from their coop and find their way back with ease. They are not trash eaters or dirty as many people think. They primarily eat seeds. And they are delicious, not just as squab [before they fledge] but as adults as well.
Hunters in the US call dove, the ribeye of the sky.
Very dark, fine-grained meat on these ones of ours. You have to cook it right or it is rubbery. But that goes for a lot of meats.
Yeah. I tried Canadian goose. Not so good
Ha-ha! I did a brief stint in my youth at our country’s largest airport, doing ‘green’ bird control ‘flying falcons’ or at least that’s how it was advertised to the public. The falcons were there in their pens, but what i really did was drive around blasting wildlife with a twelve-gauge. The Italian workers would come by and pick up not only all the Canada geese from the filthy waterfront to eat but the seagulls too.
I got into pigeons at a falconry meet. A friend of mine had her goshawk there on its perch and adjacent some of her pigeons in a wooden doweled hutch. There they were justaposed, and i realized the spectacle of those pigeons, their perfect beauty, for me was more compelling than that of the flat, lacertid predator. I got some pigeons and quit falconry. Ironic that in doing so, i have witnessed far more and far better flights by predatory birds in keeping pigeons as they attempted to catch my charges than i ever did when i was spending hours and weeks and months training a raptor for the same. Only now for no more effort, time and expenditure than putting out a bit of seed and water daily.