Pigeons
and doves constitute the bird ‘clade Columbidae’ that include some 310 species. In general the terms "dove" and
"pigeon" are used somewhat interchangeably. In ornithological
practice, there is a tendency for "dove" to be used for smaller species
and "pigeon" for larger ones. Pigeons and doves are stout-bodied
birds with short necks, and have short slender bills. The
species commonly referred to just as "pigeon" is the Feral Rock
Pigeon, common in many cities.
They lay one or two eggs, and both parents care for the young, which
leave the nest after 7 to 28 days.
Trained domestic pigeons are
able to return to the home loft if released at a location that they have never
visited before and that may be hundreds of kilometres away. A special breed, called homing pigeons has
been developed through selective breeding to carry messages and members of this
variety of pigeon are still being used in the sport of pigeon racing and the
white release dove ceremony. The ability a pigeon to return home from a strange
location necessitates two sorts of information. The first, called "map
sense" is their geographic location. The second, "compass sense"
is the bearing they need to fly from their new location in order to reach their
home. There are some competitions for
the Pigeons testing the duration of their flight as also the distance that they
travel back home.
The
term ‘Stool pigeon’ means – a decoy
bird, or a police informer, or criminal's look-out or decoy. Then there is
perhaps ‘spy pigeon’ there too !
With
the strained relations with thy neighbour, even an avian is not above
suspicion. Security agencies are in a flutter over a pigeon with “Pakistani
markings” that was “caught” on the border in Pathankot district of Punjab on
Wednesday. The “suspect”, now in police custody, was
nabbed by villagers in the Bamial sector of Pathankot district, which is just a
few kilometres away from the Pakistan border.
The fact that the avian 'intruder' bore a stamped message and had a
wire-like object on its body made the security agencies take a closer look at
its flight into India. The bird had “Shakargarh” and “Narowal” written on its
body in English, along with some numbers and words in Urdu. Shakargarh tehsil
is a sub-divison of Narowal district in Pakistan’s Punjab province close to the
border. The numbers reportedly appeared to be that of a landline telephone in
Pakistan's Narowal district.
Indian
Express and other news agencies report that the bird landed at the mud and
brick house of barber Ramesh Chandra in Manwal village, 4km
from Pakistan border, around 6.30pm on Wednesday. The suspicions of the
barber's 14-year-old son were aroused by the Urdu markings, and he went to the
nearest police post around 9pm with the "spy bird". His arrival there
with the bird perched on a wire mesh along with Chandra's chicken created a
stir. The cops then took the bird to a
veterinary hospital in Pathankot for an X-ray. This did not throw up any clues.
The bird from
Pakistan getting spotted here is still stated as a rare occurrence. Though
there have been spies and peoples crossing the border illegally, perhaps avians
are not yet in to that !! Reports
state that the Cops at Bamiyal police post made a diary entry terming the bird
as a "suspected spy", and sent a communication to BSF and IB. The
bird was found on a day when an inter-state meeting on security was being held
among officials of Punjab Police, Indian Army as well as those from Kathua and
Jammu districts.
Though nothing
suspicious has been found as yet, the
agencies are not taking any chances and it is believed that the bird could have
been used to send across a message or a SIM card to a contact across the
border.
It is stated that
when World War II broke out, Britain was gripped by “Fifth Column Neurosis,” an
almost universal belief that the country was riddled with enemy spies, not all
of them human. Those times pigeons were
suspect, since it was widely believed that enemy agents had secret caches of
homing pigeons around the country that they used to send messages back to
Germany. Pigeon paranoia was actually a
logical response. By some weird accounts thousands of pigeons flew missions in
World War I, including the heroic Cher Ami, a Black Check cock carrier pigeon,
part of the U.S. Army Signal Corps in France. Cher Ami delivered 12 important
messages within the American sector at Verdun. On his last mission, in Oct 1918,
he was shot through the breast and leg, but still managed to deliver his
message—which saved 194 troops of Major Charles S. Whittlesey’s “Lost
Battalion.”
“Animal-based espionage and sabotage was all
the rage among Allied plotters,” – it is stated. Pigeons are still useful in the modern age. Criminals were found to be using carrier
pigeons to smuggle drugs and mobile phones into a prison in Marilia in Brazil. Kidnap gangs in Iraq reportedly used pigeons to
collect ransom.
.....
~but, don’t look at them with suspicion, the one near you is still a beautiful,
innocent little bird.
With regards – S.
Sampathkumar
29th May 2015.
