In Australia we have the "Native Crested Pigeon", they make a load squeal whooshing sound when flapping their wings..

@betreger

This is one hell of a project you have taken on.

It is definitely suffering from more mission creep than I had anticipated at the outset, I have to admit. And you're not alone when it comes to a shortfall of optimism either. A keen birdwatcher friend, who has also kept birds in the past thinks there's a chance she may never actually learn to fly. I remember the belief my twin and I had in ourselves and in each other that if we could run just that bit faster, we'd have been able to teach We-wish (our orphaned baby cheetah) to hunt for herself - but she never did. It was so much fun trying though :) I so want Tinks to have a chance at being a wild pigeon - and there are some successes reported on the internet, some taking just a week or so, others four months or more. I can give it that amount of time, if need be, I'm sure. The places that would be prepared to take her in indefinitely, unfortunately, are quite far flung from where I am. I've heard rumours however of one that wouldn't be completely out of the question for me to get to if it comes down to conceding defeat with her. So I'll attempt to find out more about it either way.

But thank you so much for the well wishes :) From the very first one from SciManStev, right up until now and I know well beyond, they are enormously appreciated!

@lunkerlander

I think the grey birds are not pigeons, but another related species called a "Eurasian Collared Dove".

I think your think is right, I really do :) and it looks like Chris does agree after all. I assumed he hadn't for some reason. It does seem to be universally the case that if a bird is a member of the pigeon/dove family - then after only a really short period of looking, well... quite frankly - considerably hideous ;) they become virtually indistinguishable from their parents (however pretty or ugly they may be on the eye).

@Stargate
Wow... what a swish-looking pigeon! :) It's beautiful!

I used to see these (African Olive/Rameron pigeons) a lot and these speckled ones too were very pretty.

@Chris

it's very unusual that a feral pigeon would let someone pick it up to the extent of unfolding it's wings.

I did say it was a young one, and it's not like it can fly away is it? So both of those circumstances might also be considered unusual, don't you think? And perhaps, with enough unusuals coinciding in one place at the same time...? ;) Then there's also the fact that when I'm not tripping over stuff, I really can be quiet and exceedingly gentle in my movements. Children and animals generally find me quite trustworthy to be around. I mean, have you ever had a little teeny tiny spider happily spinning a web from your fringe? No? Well I have :)

To pick her up the first time, it was simply a matter of slowly placing a tea towel over her so that it covered her eyes, and wrapping it around her as I lifted her. Unearthing her head from the bundle and properly introducing myself once she felt safe and secure in my hands probably got us off to a good start. She's not once attempted to peck at me or even looked like she was considering it. An older, previously street-wised-up bird might not have either, but a beloved pet of many years, in pain or afraid could be just as likely to lash out or resist being handled at times - so preconceptions aren't always a good predictor I've found.

It has become so humanised that even if it did learn to fly it probably wouldn't survive long in the wild.

The sooner she's free to "come and go" from the hutch (albeit over a limited, enclosed area for the moment) and "forage" for food from the ground rather than from a container inside it, and assuming she does learn to fly (and hopefully proficiently) then the better her chances of surviving without me is what I'm thinking. Whether/when that will be though, I don't know.

I'd planned to post a progress report, but it will keep until tomorrow. It was so nice to find some posts to respond to instead!! So thank you for those :)

I'll chat more about those links you posted, Chris, tomorrow, and also post the one I referred to earlier. Until then, night night and sweet dreams everyone :)

Annie, I have been following this story with interest as I have always felt pigeons get bad press.

As you may or may not know I am currently in New York, and on my walks today I have taken a few pictures that prove pigeons are the same here.

This is Bryant Park pigeon.



This a HighLine pigeon



And this is a Times Square pigeon



Ubiquitous!!

Around the time Annie started this thread, this fine fella (or lass) took to spending hours on end grounded on the field outside my living room window:


Because the behaviour seemed similar, I did wonder whether I was seeing a similar phenomenon - grounded and alone. But as time has passed, the paths have diverged.

Firstly, this pigeon is definitely there by choice - as it proved by flying away strongly, accompanied by alarm calls, when I first produced the camera to try and take its portrait. It took some time lurking behind an open window, with the camera primed at full zoom, to get this one.

Then, the behaviour here seems to be associated with weather and food. I first noticed 'my' pigeon soon after the long, hot, summer gave way to a more normal mixture of rain and more rain. The field changed back from parched brown to the green you see here, and the pigeon was actively pecking at the lush young grass (another problem for portraiture!). The same thing happened a couple of fields away, where the sheep (which had spent the summer lying in the shade of the only tree in their field) could be heard loudly and enthusiastically dining on the same fresh grass.

This bird is a Common wood pigeon (Columba palumbus) - more commonly heard than seen - and, on reflection, the behaviour seems normal for the sudden arrival of fresh growth after a period of famine.

It's just me, with a quick thank you for the lovely pictures :) and the pigeon stuff too. I'll leave replying properly to them until after the sky has stopped doing that dark, middle-of-the-night stuff though. Emerging from two unscheduled insomnias in a row, leaves scheduling one for now a bit of a well-that's-just-not-going-to-happen,-is-it event, which it isn't.

So night night everyone until morning :)

Four days ago, I said this:

"I'd planned to post a progress report, but it will keep until tomorrow" and then went on to say this as well: "I'll chat more about those links you posted, Chris, tomorrow, and also post the one I referred to earlier."

None of it happened. You probably noticed. That's why it's about to happen now instead, but it'll be in reverse order I think, and possibly in parts who knows - maybe even spread about over more than one post! :) So I'd best get on with it.


DISEASE
Putting aside the uncomfortable truth that we humans play host to so many transmittable diseases, that to count them, we'd need to borrow an awful lot more fingers than we have hanging about our own persons, and then *set eyes to an uncompromising angle* are bound to catch something while we're doing that... I thought it might be nice if we had a look at those zoonotic diseases and super-fun-parasites we can get from, say...

Cats: Feline cowpox, toxoplasmosis, toxocariasis, ringworm, roundworm, hookworm, feline conjunctivitis, pasteurellosis, salmonella, cat scratch disease (cat scratch fever, bartonellosis), helicobacter pylori, mycobacteria turburculosis, rotavirus, rabies, chlamydia and giardia.

And while we're at it - let's also have a look at

A few from dogs too: Brucellosis, campylobacter, hydatid disease, pasteurellosis, rabies, ringworm, roundworm, hookworm, toxocariasis, zoonotic diphtheria, rotavirus, cryptosporidia, giardia, leptospirosis, sarcoptic mange or scabies and fleas.

And here are some that feral pigeons can carry: Chiamdiosis, psittacosis, histoplasmosis, cryptococcosis, chlamydia psittaci and campylobacter jejuni.

Wasn't that fun! ;)

This link (on whether birds and in particular, pigeons spread diseases) is from the pigeon control advisory service and it might help those of us who've believed the bad press (as Bernie put it) propagated by pest control firms touting for government contracts and using paranoia to get them - so much so that we're now accomplices in the propaganda machine. The belief that "they do" has seeped into our brains without us even noticing or remembering how it got there, making us ardent believers of it, soaking in and spreading it about to one another every time we feel it pertinent to mention it.

But we can fix that :) and even if you don't want to read the whole piece, a scan through the bullet pointed section that quotes a wide range of experts is good for one's perspective I think :) And the extracts I've extracted are too, in my opinion - particularly that first sentence from an anniet point of view because I've done that (but then I've also slipped in a just-squashed squirrel whilst I was making a dash across the road once :( and that was far more horrible and gross, believe me)

There are only two circumstances where pigeons may be considered to represent a threat to human health: where excrement from roosting pigeons has fallen to pavement areas below causing a slip hazard and where pigeons roost in large numbers and pigeon excrement accrues as a result. Large quantities of well-dried pigeon excrement, when disturbed and breathed in, can cause irritation to the bronchial tubes but nothing more. If the dust is breathed in by someone with a pre-existing respiratory condition the effects can be more serious but the chance of anyone with a serious respiratory condition being exposed to this type of risk is virtually nil.

The issue of disease being transmitted to humans by birds has recently been highlighted worldwide by the avian influenza epidemic. The root cause of this disease, as with so many animal and bird-related diseases, was found to be intensive farming, particularly poultry farming. Intensively farmed birds such as chickens and turkeys are housed in appalling and cramped conditions where standards of hygiene are non-existent. In these conditions birds have to be fed large doses of antibiotic drugs just to keep them alive long enough to be killed for meat. Infection amongst birds housed in these conditions is rife even so. It therefore comes as no surprise to learn that diseases such as salmonella, often wrongly associated with the pigeon, is regularly transmitted to human beings through supermarket poultry and eggs from battery farms. Even in light of this clear connection between the transmission of diseases like salmonella and avian influenza from intensively farmed poultry to human beings, and the lack of any evidence to connect the pigeon with the transmission of these diseases, the pigeon was immediately identified as being a potential source of transmission to humans. The pest control industry made much of the connection as did the media, both for commercial gain. However, the pigeon was found to be highly resistant to all strains of avian influenza and yet this fact was never reported – it was in nobody’s best interest to do so.

I bolded that last bit for us. There's a list of some of the research that went into making that statement possible, and then the article closes with this:

In summary, these research programmes offer conclusive evidence that pigeons play no part in the spread of avian influenza and as a result are highly unlikely to be instrumental in the spread of any other type of virus or disease. Although pigeons have no potential to spread avian influenza several other species of wild birds, mainly waterfowl, were found to be carriers of the avian influenza virus and these included swans. Although swans live in close association with man and are a much loved and highly protected species, neither the pest control industry nor the media called for swans to be killed en masse just because they harboured the potential to infect human beings. Yet, during the avian influenza outbreak, both the media and the pest control industry made much of the danger posed by the pigeon and called for extensive culling of pigeon flocks. The reality is that pigeons, and most other so-called pest species of birds, are easy commercial targets that pose no threat whatsoever to human beings.

@Bernie I remember that you said you'd be going to the US (in the cash or card thread I think it was) but I didn't know that you were now there! Have a lovely time :) And thank you so much for the pictures. It wasn't until I started uni and work, in Johannesburg, that I saw much in the way of city pigeons - and yes... they all looked so-much-the same-yet-each-so-subtly-different all the way down there too :)

@Richard

this fine fella (or lass)

If you lurk at length and perhaps quite ... um... innovatively in some way and could get a picture of its foot... maybe...? We could try work it out from that ;)

But well done for getting any picture at all. Our regular pair of woodpigeons take fright so easily! I know I keep mentioning our birdwatcher friend, but he's a very useful information source on wild birds, and he says a lot of birds have had their usual behaviour patterns dramatically altered this year due to the hot, dry spell. The early nesters either lost their young or simply didn't lay until really late in the season so there could be a lot of younger-than-usual immatures trying make it through winter this year. He's yet to report on any effects he's noticed on London's bird of prey population. I must remember to ask him that actually :) He will be pleased! So many of our mutual friends sort of glaze-over-a-lot when he starts on about birds :)

I'm glad your one feels secure and safe enough to potter about at ground level at length and only experience utter alarm at the sight of a camera :) And a very pretty portrait it makes too!

I'll stop now. That way I can compile my next post at Chris. Yes. I will :) Whether that will include or precede a progress report on Tinks, I'm as much in the dark as you lot are - because I don't know that yet.

@Richard

this fine fella (or lass)

If you lurk at length and perhaps quite ... um... innovatively in some way and could get a picture of its foot... maybe...? We could try work it out from that ;)

I'm glad your one feels secure and safe enough to potter about at ground level at length and only experience utter alarm at the sight of a camera :) And a very pretty portrait it makes too!

The field in question is dedicated as the village recreation ground, so s/he will have become quite habituated to multiple dog walkers (and their dogs), joggers, football trainees and so on - though I didn't see it during the Gala held on the same field in early July. I guess Pigeon Risk Assessment Services came up with a 'no' for that one.

As regards photographing his or her toes - any efforts would have to be carried out in full view of the same passing traffic. I'm not sure whether "but I was only trying to upskirt the pigeon, officer" would be accepted as a valid plea in mitigation.

I'm not sure whether "but I was only trying to upskirt the pigeon, officer" would be accepted as a valid plea in mitigation.

:)))

No. I suppose not, and then there's facing everyone in the pub afterwards too... assuming you made bail that is...

Oh well, not all my thoughts are actionable in all senses of the word at once, but I'll try at-ing some at Chris anyway... ;)

Firstly, I'm going to chat about the links you kindly posted, Chris, like the ones here for example.. One word (from your second link) made me snort rather a lot. I'll post the sentence to help narrow it down : "Pigeons are highly dependent on humans to provide them with food and sites for roosting, loafing, and nesting." :))) They sound such... layabouts when it's put like that. It seems true, I have to admit because they do seem to do a lot of that, but are we sure that's actually what they doing? It could just be a lot of really deep thinking. And they are constantly scanning stuff with their eyes. Not enough probably some times - like just before getting flattened onto the road or becoming something's breakfast - but they don't exactly look not-busy ever really.... except perhaps when they're asleep, but if we slept like they sleep, we would describe ourselves as barely ever having got a wink.

The third link, I'll reserve chatting about to my next, progress report post. It is most suitable for that I think :)

I came across this sort of by chance a few days ago: This link will take you to a short you tube clip and this an article about the same study: from which I've quoted below and that I thought was really interesting.

In spite of their limited intellect, the bobble-headed birds have certain advantages. They have excellent visual systems, similar to, if not better than, a human's. They sense five different colors as opposed to our three, and they don’t “fill in” the gaps like we do when expected shapes are missing.

[...]

...over the course of just 1 month, their accuracy rose as high as 80% -- good, but not as good as human experts. Far more impressive was the wisdom of the flock. By showing the same images to different birds and combining their guesses, the accuracy rose to 99%, on par with trained human experts and far more reliable than a computer doing automatic image analysis.

Maybe they should use pigeons to train the computers? It's just a thought - yes... another one ;)

Thank you for the other two links too. My garden is occasionally on a sparrowhawk's rounds, particularly in the spring time before the plants have put on enough protective growth. I try not to think why because they're amazingly beautiful to see, literally, just the other side of the lounge window from you, and they have young to feed after all.

Oh, at this point I must confirm that 4 legs maximum per item is where my borderline is drawn. Anything over that is Yeuch with a capital Y.

Butterflies? Ladybirds? Bees? Daddy long legs's? At least earthworms aren't on that list I suppose...

*scowl* and now there's an interruption... back in a bit,

Due to a combination of insomnia last weekend, and the camera just happening to run out of useable battery life to record my efforts in the garden, I turned to MS paint instead. I was all enthusiastic about posting the results here, but I've kind of lost that feeling now. They are a bit on the large side too. I could include them as links maybe, just in case someone is interested in seeing them. They'll be at the bottom of this post if I do, anyway. I had to bear in mind that it couldn't cost anything, and might need to be quickly and unobtrusively folded up and stashed out of site should I hear of any imminent visit from my landlord.

On both those counts, I've succeeded, but that does compromise how secure it is. Given enough time, a determined cat would probably be able to get in. Take Oscar for instance. I knew for sure I'd had great success blocking up all his prior entry and exit points when his head appeared above the hedge in a position I've never seen him resort to before, and which there really is not a lot I can do about.

So for the moment, Tinks is only let loose in her extension during the day if someone's going to be round and about nearby keeping an ear out for suspicious noises emanating from the garden. From around the start of dusk, she potters into the hutch anyway, so it's just a matter of securing that then for the night.

The said flightless one got her first taste of her extension's relative freedoms on Sunday afternoon, and for about the first hour was determined to explore the perimeter looking for a way out rather than taking any interest in appreciating its features at all - which was to be expected I suppose. Then another pigeon turned up and another, first stopping dead in their tracks to stare appalled by the whole edifice before them, then appearing to join in in searching for possible escape routes for her. No sooner had something or other startled them into flying off, they returned, this time with more pigeons in tow. And so that continued until the numbers in varying stages of shock, hopeful helplessness, and doom-laden despair surrounding her enclosure was getting ridiculous. By which time she'd clearly resigned herself to the fact there was no way out, and had started taking a bit more interest in making the best of what space she did have and that's when she first chose what I later was to realise was her most favouritest spot ever in the whole world :) And as I've just realised I've got to get up in less than three hours, and can't do that unless I go to bed first, I'd best do so and leave finishing this to another time.

Materials and planned layout
Predator shielding and Activity centre

I think that Tinks should get together with Trevor - the only question being 'his place or hers'. And I'm sure Annie would get on famously with Trevor's new family.

Hi Annie! Well there is one cat you don't need to worry about, Grace, She's on a 14"x19" tray table in My kitchen, She can jump 4' straight up, is 16lbs in weight and Her feet are 2.5 fingers wide w/claws that are about 1/4" long.

She's My big bad Putty Tat... And She has some grey in the tip of Her 10yr old tail now. :(

---

The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

You know how when you find out at short notice that you're going to be so busy in the next week or few, that all the important must-do things you've been putting off doing because you thought you'd have plenty of time to get round to them, except when you know you're unlikely to manage to get round to even one of them, you suddenly lose your mind and try to get them all done at once, plus other things that occur to you might also best be done just in case, along the way...?

Well that's what happened.

The good thing about it in the short term (from Tink's point of view) is that a bit of it has been gardening, which means she's been able to have the full run of all the places beyond the confines of just her hutch and enclosure. It also means she's getting more opportunities for exercise than she was getting in her most favouritist spot she hardly ever moved from once she'd chosen it - except to eat of course, and then to go to bed.

Y-e-e-e-e-s... I never elaborated in the end on that did I? And its connection to the bit on those design diagrams referred to as "possibly a big mistake".

Photos will be the best way of explaining that, I think :) I just need to find the cable for the camera. It's temporarily not where I thought I'd left it :\ which means it must be instead, where I actually left it and finding that will be all that's needed to de-mystify myself ;)

Don't forget a sand pit and a bucket and spade

Would a dustbath do, do you think? I've cultivated one for her.

I say cultivated. It's more me simply taking advantage of the large scale death that heat wave wrought upon the lawn and not bothering to remedy a section of it. There is a sort of bucket - and I'm thinking of installing it too - except it's a large pot plant container that on lifting from its tucked-away-and-forgotten-about spot during recent efforts to spruce up the garden (as per that long opening sentence) left its bottom behind, embedded in the ground. On its side, it would make an excellently mysterious activity tunnel I think. She's remarkably unfazed by the weird collection of odds and ends I've been scattering about in my wake really, which is not how most of the other pigeons are... well not for the first ten or eleven times they get themselves all spooked by them anyway :)

I had no idea pigeons could be so amusing to watch, I really didn't :) Some or all perhaps, of the funnier moments, were probably less so for the pigeons involved in them (who mostly appeared taken aback and a bit more than a little confused by their various predicaments) but they were enormously entertaining from my point of view, because no harm came to any despite their apparent conviction that life had suddenly turned all lemony on them. I'll probably bang on about that later I expect.

@ Trevor That's a brilliant news item, Richard!! :)) Thank you for that :) I know I would fit in with his new family - most definitely, and far better than I do in London! As to "her place or his"... awwwwwww :) although I must admit, last Saturday, Trevor's quack would have probably translated as: "nowhere near me - please". That's because I'm not sure she was looking her best at all really. There was an incident. She saved herself from a sparrowhawk... y-e-e-e-s ... not after a wheatear it wasn't ... n-o-o-o-o... and whether it was Tinks or one of the smaller birds that was on its menu, my arrival crouch-staggering out from under the trampoline muddied any hope of working that out. Not sure who was most horrified to see the other to be honest. There's a partial record of Tinks's disarray (post-incident) also on camera. I'm not sure how well those turned out though, but If Trevor doesn't get wind of them... I'll post them too :)

zoom! :) It's so lovely to see you, And Grace too! :) I meant to say that in the Raccoon thread, and to congratulate you on the results of your diet. Well done!

Anyway, a proper update with pictures will (I hope) be posted before the weekend.

Well that was a long wait. Assuming anyone was. I will now briefly, with those photographs I promised, try to catch up with myself.

Firstly: Tinks in her most-favouritest-of-all-favouritest-places.



If you click on her, you will know why. Or you could just take my other half's view, which is: I've turned her into a budgie. Which is a bit ridiculous because she looks nothing like a budgie and doesn't behave like any I've seen in front of one :)

What proved very interesting on its installation, is that she wasn't at all spooked by it, and instead spent ages "exploring" what she was seeing happen in it (from different angles and directions of approach) and that included preening herself (much more than I'd ever seen her do before). That has proved a good thing with her wings I think. What later proved very interesting too was when she was then given the run of the whole garden. The enclosure at that point, became open to the other birds to come and go from (and past as their travels take them) and the pigeons (much more so than the smaller birds) seemed to have some very varied reactions to coming across it. Some initially took a headless chicken approach and fled - with some of those deliberately avoiding it afterwards, and others eventually succumbing to curiosity and pecking at it, then mostly disregarding its mysteriousness once the novelty had worn off.

Some didn't react to it at all. Only one other I'm aware of, has settled down in front of it for ages at a time. It's the same pigeon that comes to sit with Tinks on the window ledge as the sun starts to go down, and stays there with her long after all the other pigeons have disappeared and presumably gone to roost. She's a sweetie and very timid around other pigeons - much like Tinks is - and she clearly doesn't seem to have a significant other or an obvious family group of her own, poor love. Pigeons are largely social birds, and to see two that life circumstances have visited lonely times upon, then finding one another - well, keeping chicken wire between them feels very wrong, which is partly why I'm tending towards letting Tinks out of her enclosure as much as possible, more so than keeping her in it - although that does add a little paranoia to my day as to whether she's okay what with mother nature's array of choice predators and their menus. Y-e-e-e-e-s... just writing that down has made me jumpy, and brings me to the other photos I promised.

Their quality is a bit haphazard but being too fussy in that regard would have compromised the sequence they depict... that of her disarray post-sparrowhawk encounter, and her eventual restored pristineness :)

The worst effects of her going to ground deep in the ivy beside the trampoline, had mostly fallen off by the time I'd got the camera, but what was left for her to sort out without gravity to help her, was nevertheless still quite amusing :)

erm...you're still a bit...

nearly there...

:)

It was after all that, that I noticed she'd begun a series of long treks round the garden interspersed with periods where she appeared to have gone missing but hadn't.

This is one of the spots I found her in (secreted in the undergrowth beside our raised pond).



She explored every corner and every area of groundcover there is available, bar one. It seemed to me that she was checking out what bolt holes she could head for should she need one in the future (depending on her where she might possibly be at that time). It seemed a good bit of forward thinking ... other than the fact that the one corner she completely disregarded... to me looked by far the best of all of them. Which is how I came to give it a bit of a poke, believing a slightly larger opening into it would make it more attractive as a hidey-hole, and is why that wasp incident came to pass. Yes - so elevating Tinks's level of intelligence a lot higher than mine :)

Well there are pigeons and there are Homing Pigeons(a B17) of another feather as it were.

Or the Clay Pigeon(a B24)...

---

The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

Yes - so elevating Tinks's level of intelligence a lot higher than mine :)

By coincidence this morning I was thinking about bird intelligence when I met some crows just outside.
Birds are actually quite intelligent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_intelligence
Here we sometimes call people who are really stupid Hönshjärna literally translated Chickenbrain.
However, a survey conducted at the University of Bristol, shows that the chicken, right after hatching, can keep track of objects that disappear out of sight. This ability does not develop to a human child until after 12 months of age. In addition, chickens, and even freshly hatched chickens, can count up to five.
And pigeons are really clever too:)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-2sq2hLDQY
[url]Are Crows the Ultimate Problem Solvers?[/url]

Those were brilliant links, moomin, thank you! :)

Your pictures have aroused my curiosity enormously, Vic :) I remember reading somewhere (don't ask me where though because that information appears to have fallen out of my head since I did) that homing pigeons were regular members of the flight crew on the RAF's Wellington bombers during the war. I'm not sure if they were on other planes too, but they'd be released if one went down or crashed behind enemy lines, with information about where the plane was when it happened. Was that a practise on B17's too, or other USAF planes, is what I got to wondering? It's a very nicely painted picture of a pigeon either way though. I'm quietly confident the lady painted on the Clay Pidgeon doesn't depict any strategy involving throwing one or two of them out to get news back to HQ's though... *slow blink* although I could be wrong I suppose...

I did have a pigeon-post-update on Tinks and friends poised at the "post reply" stage, but then I lost it due to an unexpected outage combined with a flurry of personal stupidity the other night. Yes... and as I haven't quite got round to reconstituting it yet, those interested will have a bit of a wait while I get on with doing so :)

edit: oh my... proofreading this is taking me on a lurch so far right it really doesn't suit my leanings at all... no... ;) so I'll leave it unchecked I think, or do it in a different browser maybe...

I know this is going to sound like I've gone quite, quite mad, people, and maybe I have - but Tinks's arrival in this little part of the planet I'm in, has been so good for me. I can't even begin to describe all the ways and hows and why-that-is's but it's true :) She's proving to be the best distracting tonic for my soul that there's been for a long, long time. I know she doesn't feel the same way about me though but I won't take that personally ;) and if I thought she did... well this thread would become something along the lines, of: how to tame an other-half into wanting a feral pigeon; and how to persuade my pussycats into not wanting to eat one, of which the latter would be a lot easier to do I think ;)

Anyway, my concerns that the cat incident might have done permanent damage to her right wing have reduced enormously in the last week. I'm not sure whether it's because we have a new regular visiting pigeon that has a really amusing method of trying to maximise her opportunity for food-security. It's by running about feeding with her undercarriage as close to the ground as possible and her wings fully extended :) She's so funny as she tries to cover as many tasty titbits as she can (with all of herself) whilst her beak is busy hoovering up in front of her face* but that's a bit beside the point. How successful that actually is as a tactic I'm not sure, and it's not one I can envisage a shyer, more retiring type like Tinks would ever use, but since she has seen the method, she's been emulating an extended-wing scampering sort of gait on the ground not dissimilar to footage I've seen of young albatross trying to get airborne.

It's not how I've ever seen any pigeon take to the air though, but it might be a start in the right direction... maybe? It would be good if it was. If I can get a photo of it, I will, but she actually achieved a state of sort-of-airborne (in the sense her feet were no longer on the ground, and neither was any other part of her for about a second or so but no more than that - with a trajectory loosely horizontal to the earth rather than perpendicularly-into it) last Saturday*. With this method of take-off, running out of garden (but not looming walls in her path) is going to be a bit of a big obstacle if she's ever going to manage anything more sustained, and other than borrowing a runway at London City Airport for her to practise on, I'm proving a bit clueless at working out how to help fix that. Something I thought might work (which I'll leave mentioning until my next post, to stop this one getting much longer than it already is) hasn't, but it was only implemented on Tuesday, so it might given more time.

And, I've yet to see her co-ordinate a landing with any grace whatsoever either.

No.

That's because, quite frankly people... she's awful at it. Whether from a running start or a leaping one. There's been the: drop like a stone feet first (from the trampoline) that I've already mentioned before, and there is the: leap-from-the-window-ledge and land but-mostly-on-your-head-on-the-trampoline-whilst-performing-a-sort-of-somersualty- bounce-with-forward-pike-aaaaaannnnnd...twist-to-end, so that when she is upright again, she has a leg sticking out somewhere between the long feathers at the back of one of her wings which I've completely forgotten the name of ...

hold on... I almost had it then... nope, gone again

*fetid scowl into the space called anniet's brain*

if you don't mind waiting, I will go and find out, and then I will come back and hopefully tell you.



(Thank you for your patience)... which she then painstakingly attempts to disentangle - but not always with great success unless stepping on her wing first, then catapulting herself forward and hopping on it can be called that? Which is pretty much how she landed after her brief flight.

But I will stop now, and continue droning on at you tomorrow instead, which is when I will also, hopefully, re-upload some photo's and post them too :) In the meantime, night, night and sweet dreams to everyone.

* There's another one that always but always arrives late, lands at as long a distance as possible from a group that's already there pecking at bits on the ground, then dashes at full tilt across the intervening space with its head down (a bit like a bull might) and its wings closed (which is where the bull analogy stops working entirely) and only stops once it's reached the absolute centre of the feeding zone which tends to be where the highest concentration of seeds are.

* I hadn't been paying proper attention though because I was digging a hole for our beautiful soft, big pusscat, Raphael who we had to have put to sleep completely out of the blue that morning :(( so everything my eyes were processing was a bit blurry and really very soggy. (He'd taken to sleeping a bit oddly for a few days beforehand and I'm wondering now that it's too late, whether he was trying to tell me something wasn't quite right, or whether it was because he'd taken to sleeping so oddly and I'd not discouraged it, which caused there to be something not quite right :( but he was a wonderful pussycat and is being very much missed

As to wings and eating the mockingbirds here do a three stage unfurl as they search for grubs. I assume that is to scare the grubs into motion as the sun goes away, but perhaps it is also some sort of visual acuity increase for the bird as it sees both sun and shade views. YMMV

Black heron egrets turn into umbrellas when they're hungry :)

Target in sight, bombay doors open, dive flaps ready to be engaged, diving on target...

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's