I've been distracted the past few weeks, but thought it was
time I make another entry. Since this blog is entitled "doggedly
writing," and since I do enjoy pretty much everything that has anything to
do with dogs, I was thinking of coming up with something clever (or at least
something) that related to the art of inserting dogs into works of fiction. I
started researching the ways animals have been used in warfare and found a lot
of interesting stuff about war dogs, but then I got sidetracked by something shiny
(this is par for the course with me). So the Jennings dog and Sergeant Stubbs will have to
wait. This week, I'm writing about messenger pigeons.
Messenger
birds do come into fantasy fiction sometimes. I make a couple of references to
them in my own novel, so I thought it might be nice to have a better idea how
these birds have been used to send messages throughout history so that my
treatment of them will be more accurate.
Messenger
(or carrier) pigeons are specially bred members of the same species (Columba livia) of "rock dove
pigeon" that we see befouling statues in large cities. These birds mate
for life and have a remarkable ability to find their way back to their home
nest over long distances and unfamiliar terrain. Over thousands of years, pigeon
fanciers have created a special breed of these birds that are capable of flying
hundreds of miles in a day at average speeds well in excess of 50 miles per
hour and that can carry up to 75 grams.
Research
suggests that these birds normally use a combination of visual cues and will
use landmarks, when in familiar terrain, and the angle and polarization of
sunlight calibrated against their internal clock when unfamiliar terrain.
Olfaction also appears to play a role in their navigational abilities, which is
interesting, because birds are generally thought to have a poor sense of smell.
Most intriguingly, birds that are hooded or blinded are also able to find their
ways home. The discovery of iron containing short nerve branches in the upper
beaks of these birds provides a possible clue as to how they are able to detect
the magnetic field of the Earth.
After
reading all this, I don't think I'll ever look at those messy birds crowding
city squares in quite the same way again. There is still a lot we don't know
about how pigeons' nervous systems decode and interpret magnetic data, but
people have been taking advantage of, and honing, these remarkable abilities
for millennia. The Egyptians and Persians were using messenger pigeons 3000
years ago, so it is certainly well within the technological capability of any
fantasy world to have a messenger bird service.
Like
anything else, there are limitations to the use of carrier pigeons, however. As
a rule, they only carry messages one way--back to their home coop. So to use
messenger birds, they must first be transported to a desired location via
overland or sea travel, and kept in cages. When you need one to carry a message
back to its home coop, you write a message on thin, light paper, attach it to a
tube on one of the bird's legs and release it. Of course, what this means is
that you want to have the capability of sending and receiving messages between
many locations, you will need a large number of pigeon coops. In fact, at the Marne during World War I, the French troops had 72 pigeon
lofts, which they advanced with their troops.
Evidently,
there have been a few cases where birds were trained to carry messages in two
directions over relatively short distances. This was achieved by feeding the
birds in a location away from their home coop. So messages could be attached to
birds that were flying away to feed and then the same birds could carry
messages back to their home coop later.
Some interesting carrier pigeon trivia:
-modern racing pigeons have been clocked at speeds of 92
miles per hour in 400 mile races. Birds can fly in excess of 100 mph for
shorter distances.
-They can fly up to 700 miles in a day.
-Homing pigeons were used in both world wars
-pigeons are still used today by the French, Israeli and
Iraqi armies.
-they were used in the gulf war, because they are immune to
electronic jamming
-they can live for over 30 years
-in the 1800's, a pigeon flew from Africa to England in 55
days, a distance of over 7000 miles.
-32 pigeons have received the Dickin medal, the highest
medal available to animals in the UK.
-Between 1977-1983, two English hospitals used carrier
pigeons to transport laboratory specimens.
-During WWI, A carrier pigeon named Cher Ami delivered a
message in spite of having his foot shot off. The message saved a group of
American soldiers who were surrounded. This bird was awarded the Criox de
Guerre medal.
-pigeons were used to carry aerial reconnaissance cameras
during WWII.
-Modern pigeon races can have purses in excess of $600,000
-The Taliban banned the keeping or use of carrier pigeons in
Afghanistan.
-Pigeons were used to announce the winners of the Olympics
in ancient Greece.
Cher Ami: WWI Pigeon Hero
