pigeon post

Have given myself a bit of a break from blogging, as the residency artists are on holiday until September. Whilst sitting in the garden listening to Woman's Hour my curiosity about homing pigeons was reawakened by a section on a woman from the Scilly Isles who nurses pigeons who are lost or sick. Apparently the Scilly Isles is the first bit of land many pigeons reach especially if the wind blows them off course.

Some flights have been as long as 1689 miles reaching speeds of up to around 30 miles per hour and bursts of speed up to 60 mph. Homing pigeons have been used to carry messages written on thin paper, which are attached to the birds leg in a small tube, this is how the term pigeon post came to be developed.

When a homing pigeon is released from a site some distance from its home loft, it initially circles around the release site several times. It then orients itself in a particular direction and flies in a relatively straight path away from the release site. The original bearing in which the pigeon flies is usually quite close to the actual direction of the home loft. Although the approximate direction is maintained during flight, the homeward journey of the pigeon varies. A pigeon, even when it is released from the same site on numerous occasions, does not fly an identical route each trip. Gould (1982) describes