The wing was not broken. I kept the bird by himself for some time, and decided that he was half-starved and deadly weary. He had started to moult, and his poor jagged feathers had not been able to carry him more than a few feet from the ground. I put him in with the others, and left him eating and drinking and meditating. I hope he will not put on flesh and beat his fellows before I return.
When I get on the subject of pigeons it is difficult for me to stop talking. I shall be pleased if I have convinced any doubters that they are really intelligent birds, and the ones most suitable for domestication. Any one can keep a few by giving them a room or a part of a room in an attic and allowing them to fly in and out through an open window.
One thing I am firmly convinced of—pigeons should always be under supervision. Bird-lovers are not apt to be annoyed by them, but non-bird-lovers often complain, and justly complain, of unwished-for birds that come and make untidy nests and disfigure their buildings. Every city should maintain pigeon-lofts. There should be, in a few exposed places, rooms where they can go in and lay eggs in boxes prepared for them. The cost would be trifling, and one would have the squabs to dispose of.
I have educated myself into laying sentiment aside. Pigeons should not be allowed to increase indefinitely, nor should large flocks be fed all summer and be allowed to starve all winter. They should be regulated. Every summer a certain number of squabs should be mercifully killed.
I managed in this way on my farm: Each pair of birds had two large nesting-boxes. When their first pair of squabs was ready to leave the nest they were just suitable for the market. I gently lifted them out and delivered them over to one of the men about the farm. The little creatures had had a happy life. They had an instantaneous death. The parents, taken up with the second nest, never resented the removal of the first pair of squabs. Whereas, if I had kept taking their eggs from them, they would have become uneasy, and would have tried to find a safe place to build.
It would have been cruel to keep all my squabs. Few farmers wanted them. I could not feed a large number, and I decided that the right way was to kill them, though that one thing—the necessity of taking life would easily have destroyed my pleasure in farm life, if I had allowed it to do so.
One thing I have discovered about them, making them more suitable than any other birds for pets, is that they do not mind careful handling. My pigeons climb about me like pups, and they are the only birds I have that do not object when a hand is laid over their wings. All my other tame birds will light on my shoulder or hand, allow me to talk to them, but would be overcome with uneasiness if I put my hand over their only means of escape from an enemy—their wings.
My pigeons go to sleep on my lap, and let me fondle them as much as I choose. Indeed, I should say from what I know of them, that a pigeon that has once formed an attachment for a human being, will never entirely go back to pigeon society.
