Homing Pigeons: How Homing Pigeons Find Their Way Home

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How Do Homing Pigeons Find Their Way Home?

Homing pigeons have been used for over 3000 years, with the highest use in recent history being during World War I. They are still used in some remote areas and special conditions when electronic communication is not reliable or possible. Today they are raised mostly for personal enjoyment or for racing competitions to see how quickly they will return home.

Homing pigeons are also known as racing pigeons especially when bred for competitive sport reasons. They are part of the order of birds known as Columbiformes. Columbidae is their family group and Columbia Livia or Rock pigeons, is the particular name given to homing pigeons.

Homing pigeons have an unusually strong natural instinct to return home, which researchers say are related to a combination of the use of sight, smell and an orientation with the earth’s magnetic fields. The unique navigational abilities that these pigeons have has been the subject of much debate and scientific research. Charles Walcott, the retired Dean of University faculty at Cornell University, established what he perceived to be the critical factors enabling the birds to find their way home. These key points include being able to assess the magnetic flow of the earth, calculating the angle of the sun, polarized light, star patterns, and further using the sense of smell to guide them. Mr. Walcott refers to homing pigeons as the ‘athletes of the bird world’. Racing pigeons are also called ‘thoroughbreds’ due to their special breeding and unique skills, particularly their strength, endurance and speed.

The way in which the pigeons utilize these natural homing instincts to navigate their way even when the territory is unfamiliar is fascinating to ornithologists, who are people who study birds and bird-watchers. The methods the birds use are complex, both to orient where they are, where they are going, and to plot the return journey. Scientists have discussed the sensory abilities of the homing pigeon and the way these might affect their orientation when released close to home or further from home. Senses such as sight, sound and smell are listed, as well as a sense of perceiving changes in atmospheric pressure.

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology mentions that each pigeon has a unique and individualistic way of making its assessments and focusing in on any of the above techniques. A report is given of a homing pigeon trained near a mountain who always returned to a mountain scene given his orientation comfort. This bird’s visual cue might have been his dominant homing clue.

The homing mechanisms are thought, by scientists, to be a combination of the key factors; earth’s magnetic field, sun, smell, visual guidelines, with the possibility of a specific prioritization according to personal breeding or fancy.

As a racing pigeon these birds are bred and raised to fly considerable distances. The distance length and the speed with which they return is valued in prize terms, the fastest and longest distance traveler bringing in high money prices for the owner-breeder. The pigeons take approximately two years to breed, with allocations of time in stages to begin their process of flying short to longer distances.

Reports have been given of homing or racing pigeons as heroes in battle. In Word Wars I and II they were used to send messages by the United States Army Signal Corps, evidently helping to save lives and gleaning significant information. Cher Ami was one such well-known pigeon used by the American forces in France during World War I. Members of the 77th Infantry Division were saved as a result of his mission.

There are times when homing pigeons lose their way. This may be due to weather conditions or a change in the geomagnetic field that creates a sense of disorientation. Other possibilities may result from exhaustion or dehydration. A pigeon with a poor olfactory sense is said to be less able to relocate. Generally the homing pigeons are able to return home from a distance of hundreds of miles.

The sport of racing pigeons is diminishing apparently due to the younger generation not being interested enough to continue the tradition. Rising costs have also contributed considerably to the demise of the sport. Homing pigeons are still used in celebratory fashion as symbols of love and peace.

How To Train Homing Pigeons?

A new owner will receive a pair of adult birds to breed or six to eight week old baby birds. Homing pigeons must be trained from baby birds. When receiving a pair of homing pigeons as adults, the new owner cannot release them as they will return to their original home loft. If birds are received as babies, they must be kept confined to the loft for a period of several days until they are oriented with their new home. For six week old babies it is four days, seven weeks old for five days and eight weeks old for six days. Place sheets of muslin around the exposed sides of the loft to protect them from cold and drafts. This is easily done by draping the muslin over long wooden dowels or making the muslin sheets into simple drapes that you will run the dowels through. Next, attach the dowels to the sides of the loft using a system such as a hardware hook designed to hold a dowel, or small blocks of wood that the dowels can rest on.

After about two to three months the loft doors can be opened and the young birds allowed to exit naturally to start to explore outside. Never force or scare the young birds out of the loft as they are sensitive creatures and frighten easily. They will associate this trauma with their home loft and this is something that the owner does not want the birds to experience.

Unless the birds are simply being raised for enjoyment and the owner likes seeing them fly around the immediate area and return, the next step does not need to occur. If the birds are being raised for racing purposes or the owner is interested in testing their homing ability, then he or she will do the following. Gently place the young birds in a portable cage and then drive down the road a few miles from home. The best time of day is before 9AM and not when their is rain, fog or high wind as these conditions will affect the birds ability to return home. Release the birds into an open field, not close to a heavily wooded area, then drive home. Do this daily for about six days then take one day off with no training. Increase the distance each week gradually by a few miles in five mile increments until the birds reach a distance of about fifty miles. Most of the birds will return home but expect some casualties if there are larger predatory birds or game hunters in the area. It is suggested to time the birds by keeping track of how long it takes them to return home. In some European countries such as England, it is a regular pastime and clubs have developed around the sport with specially designed cages on wheels that are attached to vehicles to transport groups of birds.

Homing pigeons can actually be faster to transfer data than the Internet, depending on the amount of data being transferred. In a test, a carrier pigeon attached with a 4GB memory stick loaded to its capacity, “transferred” the data quicker than the speed of the Internet itself. In the same amount of time it took the bird to fly this distance then transfer the data from the memory stick into a computer, only 4% of the data was able to be downloaded over an ADSL line when sent through the internet connection.

Resources about Homing Pigeons

PDF about Olfactory Navigation in Homing Pigeons

University of Minnesota the use of Homing Pigeons During World War I

Jessica Meade,* Dora Biro, and Tim Guilford experiment titled “Homing pigeons develop local route stereotypy”

Orientation of homing pigeons altered by a change in the direction of an applied magnetic field. Homing pigeons were equipped with a pair of small coils around their heads. Birds with an induced field of 0.6 gauss and the south magnetic pole up, oriented toward home normally under both sun and overcast. Birds with the polarity reversed oriented toward home when the sun was visible but often flew away from home under overcast.

Resource by Will

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