Of Feather & Skin, Finger & Wing: for the Love of Pigeons

Honouring our other-than-human kin on Remembrance Sunday

Today has been Remembrance Sunday and often I share about the apathy, self-interest, and greed that fuels war. There is no such thing as a 'just war' and there are no 'glorious dead'.

Not when our military recruitment services continue to deliberately target schools in deprived areas, turning vulnerable children and a broken society to their own advantage & attracting condemnation from the United Nations.

Not when we remember veteran of the conflict in Northern Ireland, David Clapson, who died alone in a diabetic coma after the Government's Austerity measures deprived him of food and the electricity needed to keep his insulin cold.

Not when we remember the words of Harry Patch, the last surviving WWI veteran, who died in 2009; "Politicians who took us to war should have been given the guns and told to settle their differences themselves, instead of organising nothing better than legalised mass murder."

Not when our hearts, courage, and decency, our love, are turned against us by those in power.

But there are other-than-human beings who have also become embroiled in the horrors of war and this year my mind has turned to them. We often hear of horses and dogs being honoured for their bravery, but our much denigrated pigeons have also played their role.

The feral pigeons who we are so familiar with, and often despise, are the descendants of wild rock doves, the first bird to be domesticated, or to domesticate us, in the Middle East around 6,000 years ago. They were valued both for their homing abilities and as food. A funeral meal preserved in a tomb from Second Dynasty Egypt (approx 2,800 to 2,675 BCE) includes pigeon meat. A set of Mesopotamian tablets from 1,700 BCE contain a recipe for pigeon stew made with leeks, garlic, and milk. The Torah and the Bible are awash with pigeon imagery. Since that time pigeons have contributed to human wellbeing in all manner of surprising ways.

Barbara Allen, in her book 'Pigeon', writes that, "The relationship that humans have with the pigeon is one of the oldest partnerships. The bond between human and bird, feather, skin, wing and finger, is exquisite in its intensity and in its earthiness." Inventor Nikola Tesla would feed pigeons crumbs from the window of his home in New York, capturing sick birds and sending them to a local animal hospital to be cared for. His biographer, John. J. O'Neill, describes one white pigeon as the "love story of Tesla's life."

They are the most incredible birds. Often accused of being stupid, pigeons are able to do basic maths at the same level as monkeys. They are able to distinguish real words from made up ones. They are attentive parents, mating for life. Both males & females produce crop milk which they gently drip-feed to their chicks. This is a blessing for pigeons, making them almost impossible to farm using factory methods; the chicks need both their parents to provide them with milk in their early days.

Pigeons, rabbits, and carp provided the majority of meat throughout the seasonal year in Europe until quite recently, with pigeons producing nutrient-rich dung that played a significant part in agricultural advances. They have also played a part in increasing our medical knowledge, with prolactin, the hormone responsible for milk production in mammals, first being identified in pigeons in 1933.

We still don't fully understand pigeons' astonishing homing abilities, which seem to be due to a mixture of following the Earth's magnetic field, use of landmarks, smell, and sound waves. They are able to follow each other and teach one another routes. We have yet to learn how they find their way home across unfamiliar terrain.

Julius Ceasar used homing pigeons to send messages from Rome to Gaul, and 6th Century Cyrus, King of Persia, used them to communicate with various parts of his empire. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, carrier pigeons delivered messages from besieged Parisians, with the Prussian army using hawks to hunt them down. More than one million messages were carried via microfilm in this way during the four month siege. Pigeons provided the first postal service, the first news service, and the first 'internet'. In 2009, a pigeon carried a 4GB memory stick 80km across South Africa in the time that it took the country’s biggest internet service provider to transfer only 4 per cent of the data on the stick.

Returning to Remembrance Day, during World Wars I and II, pigeons carried messages across the trenches, enduring enemy fire & toxic gas and saving many thousands of lives.

The most famous WWI pigeon hero was Cher Ami ('dear friend'), who in 1918, despite being shot & sustaining serious injuries to her leg and breast, plus being blinded in one eye, was able to deliver a message which saved US soldiers of the Seventy-Seventh Division from 'friendly' artillery fire. For her bravery, Cher Ami was awarded one of France's highest military honours, the Croix de Guerre.

In all, thirty-two pigeons have been awarded the Dickin Medal, the other-than-human equivalent of the Victoria Cross. With only fifty-four medals awarded overall, this makes pigeons one of the most decorated animals in history. They have been used both to deliver messages and to fly cameras over enemy lines on reconnaissance missions.

During WWII, the UK maintained up to 250,000 pigeons for military purposes. 90% of their missions were successful. One pigeon named Spike flew 52 missions behind enemy lines without sustaining a single injury. However, a messenger pigeon's task was incredibly dangerous, with enemy soldiers attempting to shoot them from the sky knowing that they were carrying valuable information.

During WWII, Mary of Exeter flew several missions bringing critical intelligence back from France to her home behind the Exeter boot shop where she had her roost. Despite being injured by shrapnel, shotgun pellets, and a bird of prey attack, she never failed to get home.

In 1943, British soldiers were able to liberate an Italian town against all expectation. They were aware that the town was due to be bombed by the Allies and, unable to get a radio message through, they sent pigeon, G.I Joe, with a message to call off the raid. Joe flew 20 miles in 20 minutes to deliver a message that saved the lives of more than 100 soldiers, and presumably many civilians. He arrived just as the planes were preparing for take off. In November, 1946 G.I Joe was awarded the Dickin Medal for gallantry. In 2019, he was posthumously awarded the Animals in War and Peace Medal for Bravery.

pdsa.org.uk

Other pigeons awarded medals for bravery include Winkie, White Vision, Tyke, Gustav, Beach Comber, Paddy, Kenley Lass, Navy Blue, Flying Dutchman, Dutch Coast, Commando, Royal Blue, Ruhr Express, Scotch Lass, William of Orange, Billy, Broad Arrow, Maquis, Tommy, All Alone, Princess, and Mercury. And all for us in wars not of their making.

Winged messengers throughout the ages, with modern methods of communication, and impersonal farming methods, we have forgotten the debt we owe to our pigeon kin and have come to consider them vermin, as we do so many who live on the edge of our consciousness and just refuse to go away.

In her book, 'Pigeon Watching', Rosemary Mosco tells us that, in 1941, "Wendell Mitchell Levi, former president of the National Pigeon Association, wrote in his much-celebrated tome The Pigeon, “Wherever civilization has flourished, there the pigeon has thrived, and the higher the civilization, usually the higher the regard for the pigeon.” Our current antipathy to the beautiful pigeon, and our continued acceptance of the inevitability of war, would suggest that he was right. Pigeons have done so much for us through millennia and yet we can barely stand the sight of them now, enduring their presence at best.

We feed a flock of up to fifty pigeons in the hedgehermitage garden. I adore and am in awe of them more every day. Often, on a day when I might have fallen through the cracks in my own heart, they have saved me with their relentless tenacity of being and their irridescent beauty. I promise you that, were you to spend time close to them, like Nikola Tesla, you would fall in love.

At the rising of the sun and its going down, we will remember them.

References:

‘A Pocket Guide to Pigeon Watching: getting to know the world's most misunderstood bird', Rosemary Mosco, Workman Publishing, 2021.

‘Pigeon’, Barbara Allen, Reaktion Books, 2009.

‘Homing: On pigeons, dwellings, and why we return’, Jon Day, John Murray Publishers, 2019.

‘Pigeons: the fascinating saga of the world's most revered and reviled bird', Andrew D. Blechman, Grove Press, 2006.

https://theconversation.com/in-defence-of-pigeons-187216?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.I._Joe_(pigeon)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_pigeon

https://www.pdsa.org.uk/what-we-do/animal-awards-programme/pdsa-dickin-medal

https://www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts/birds/feral-pigeon-flying-rat-or-urban-hero/

https://www.salon.com/2021/10/26/humans-domesticated-pigeons-then-abandoned-them-is-it-time-for-a-reappraisal/