Steven Helmrich, age 9, of South Williamsport PA
How are homing Pigeons trained?
This, says Andy, is a very thoughtful question to come to the mind of a nine‑year‑old person, We all know that our astronauts need. training. The acrobat who walks the dazzling high wire must practice for years and even the seal at the circus must be trained. But many people think that a homing pigeon carries his messages with no training at all. And this is not so.
The cheerful chimp has certain gifts from Mother Nature. He can learn to follow simple orders and carry them out without getting tired or upset. This is the gift which makes him a born astronaut. But he needs long and patient training to use his talents to make a successful trip around, the globe. The homing pigeon has the gift of being able to find his way home from far away. But he must be trained to make the best of this useful talent.
The training of homing pigeons, strange to say, began thousands of years ago. The human family made friends with the wild rock pigeons that lived in the Old World. Then they discovered that some of these birds had a strange gift, they could find their way home from far away, Even in the pigeon world, children tend to take after their parents. So people chose the most gifted pigeons and bred them with other gifted ones.
After many generations, our ancestors got a special breed of gifted pigeons. All the children were gifted, though some more so than others. The best ones were trained to carry messages in ancient Egypt 3,000 years ago and later the Roman armies used them to carry military information. The breed was improved as the most gifted pigeons were selected from each generation ‑. and this still goes on.
In a modern pigeon loft, training begins soon after the young birds learn to fly. The trainer lets them out to see the world. The gifted youngsters fly around a bit and soon come home. After a few trips, they know the neighborhood, Now the trainer takes them a few miles from home and lets them free. His eager young pupils circle around and then their wonderful homing instinct tells them which direction to take and off they fly home.
In the months that follow, the trainer takes them farther and farther from home. He begins to pick his most gifted birds, those that fly straightest and fastest. The best birds get tougher training. They are carried in special boxes 100 miles, 300 and 500 miles and then freed to find their way home. When each homer returns to his cozy loft his flying time is checked. It takes two or three years to train the gifted bird and at last he can fly in races with other homers and carry messages strapped to his back or leg.
The training of a homer is a matter of learning bit by bit, just as we learn our lessons. Each lesson gets a little harder and at last we find it easy to read and add and multiply. We have the gifts or talents which can be trained to do these things. The pigeon can never learn to road. But he has a gift which can be trained to show him the way home from far, far away.