They carry stock reports from large cities to the suburban residences of their owners. Ocean steamers carry them out to take last messages back. A lady in Boston once told me that she traveled through Europe and back again with a homing pigeon in her care. This valuable homer had been given to her in a basket, as the steamer left Boston. She was to release it when one day out. A thick fog came on, and as a fog is a deadly enemy to the brave little homer, she had to give him a trip abroad.
In Europe the end of a yacht race or a horse race is the signal for the release of a flock of homers, who carry the news to private lofts or newspaper offices.
While Gladstone was on his famous Midlothian campaign, homing pigeons carried reports from the different mining villages to Edinburgh. In the seclusion of their traveling-baskets the homers patiently awaited the conclusion of each speech of Gladstone’s at political meetings, and as soon as the last words had left the speaker’s lips, the reporters fastened their tiny slips to the birds’ leg-bands—for every pigeon has a ring slipped on when he is only a few days old—and gently opening the baskets, allowed them to fly up into the air.
Up, up, still farther went the keen-sighted birds, circling again and again to get their bearings, then off in the direction of their home-lofts in Edinburgh, where tempting food, fresh water, and their loved nest-mates were awaiting them.
Had these home-lofts been at the South Pole they would still have started for them. To reach home or die is the pigeon’s motto, and thousands, nay millions of them have perished for “home, sweet home.”
Pigeons have several enemies. There is the cruel gunner waiting for them, and the dreaded hawk, that Chinese ingenuity circumvents by attaching shrill whistles to the tail feathers of certain of their homers. As the birds pass swiftly through the air the whistles blow and the hawks will not come near.
Then there are storms and variable winds, and often the birds’ overpowering sense of fatigue, for many fanciers give their homers cruelly long journeys to perform. What a temptation to a weary bird perching on a tree branch, to rest himself for a few minutes, to go with a strange pigeon who so politely invites him to his near-by loft, where he will find rest and refreshment.
I have often read with interest advertisements in English bird newspapers of homing pigeons in strange lofts. “So-and-so could have his property if he would tell the initials and number on the leg-band of a certain bird, and also pay the expressage on the roamer.” I think the foggy climate is largely to blame for these numerous lost birds. In a fog a pigeon must stop. He has nothing to guide him on his journey. Darwin, who studied these birds for twenty years, proved in the first place that their memory is phenomenal, and in the second, that their eye-sight is limited by the horizon only.
The United States, following the example of European governments, started some years ago an extensive system of lofts in the army and navy. Professor Marion, of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, really began the organization of the messenger pigeon service for use in time of war.
Lieutenant Harlow, U. S. N., also started experiments at Key West, and when hostilities with Spain broke out, the navy department found on inquiry that Uncle Sam had a number of well-trained little war-birds at his disposal. Lieutenant Harlow’s cote at Key West being only ninety miles from Havana, the birds had not long distances to fly. In every boat of the torpedo flotilla taken out to sea, these pacific, patient birds had their own quarters. They were released at intervals, and scarcely one pigeon failed to return to its cote at Key West, with its cipher message in the national water-tight message holder fastened on its leg.