A Guide to Keeping and Caring for the Domesticated Pigeon

By Read Books Ltd.

This vintage volume contains a detailed guide to keeping pigeons, and includes historical information, tips for the general care and management of pigeons, and a wealth of other interesting information related to pigeons. Written in simple, plain language and full of interesting and practicable information, this book is perfect for the pigeon enthusiast, and would make for a great addition to collections of pigeon related literature. The chapters of this volume include: 'Management of Pigeons', 'Classification of Pigeons', and 'Domestic Pigeons'. Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive, and it is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern edition complete with a specially commissioned introduction on pigeons.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Oct 13, 2011
• ISBN: 9781447491729

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INTRODUCTORY.

WHAT a wide gulph separates the Pigeons from all our other captive or domestic birds! How completely discrepant are all their modes of increase and action, their whole system of life, their very mind and affections! Compare them with the gallinaceous tribes, and they scarcely seem to belong to the same class of beings. These walk the ground, those glide on air; these lazily gorge and fatten at home, those traverse whole districts and cross wide seas to obtain an independent supply of nutriment. The Gallinaceæ are sensual and tyrannical; though gallant and chivalrous, yet they are faithless; they are pugnacious, even murderous; and life-destroyers for the gratification of their appetite merely. The Columbidæ are amorous, beseeching, full of affectionate attachment, quarrelling solely in defence of their mates or their young, content to subsist on fruits and grain, or tender herbs. Force, vanity, aggression and greediness pertain to the one class; grace, agility sentiment, devotion, and temperance to the other. The gallinaceous birds seem to be representatives of the fervid and selfish passions of the East; the Doves to have been created as types almost of Christian virtue. To suffer the onslaughts of the cruel; to bean, and, if possible, to escape, but neither to attack nor to revenge; to adhere to chastity, even when gratifying their natural affections; to submit to an equal division of the labour of tending the helpless young; to prefer a settled home to indulgence in capricious wanderings—these are a few out of the many attributes which have conciliated towards them the approving regard of mankind, and even perhaps caused them to be honoured by being mysteriously connected with some of the most meaning ceremonies and important events that are mentioned in sacred history.

And yet, at the present day, a love for Pigeons is considered rather low, a taste scarcely the thing to be indulged in, a study of a department of nature from which little can be learned, and, as a hobby, decidedly out of fashion. But any pursuit may be vulgarized and made the means of evil, by being taken up from base motives and in an unworthy manner; and, on the other hand, even an indulgence in the Pigeon fancy may be so regulated and conducted as to afford interest and instruction to the young, and a healthy relaxation and matter for speculative inquiry to their seniors.

What boy, whose parents permitted him to keep ever so few pairs of Pigeons, forgets in after days the pleasing anxieties of which they were the source—the occupation for spare half-hours which they never failed to afford? Well do we remember our first two pigeon-houses, of widely-diverse construction; the earliest effort of contrivance being an old tea-chest fixed against a wall, with the complicated machinery of a falling platform, or trap, in front, to be drawn up by a half-penny-worth of string, so as to secure the inmates, or their visitors, for a learned inspection; the second, a more ambitious piece of architecture, namely, a tub mounted on the top of a short scaffold-pole, divided internally into apartments, each of some cubic inches capacity, and each with a little landing-place projecting for the birds to alight upon, after their meal on the ground, or their circling exercise above the housetops. And the wonderment to behold the process of fixing this lofty structure firm and upright in its site in the back-yard! How the man dug an awful hole in the ground, from which he could with difficulty shovel out the earth for the crowding, and the pushing, and the peeping in of us children and the maids—how the tall structure was, by the combined efforts of all present, slowly set upright—how three or four vast flint-stones (rocks they seemed to us to be) were jammed in at the foot with a beetle borrowed from the paviour that lived up a yard in our street—how, when earth and pebbles had been duly added to make all smooth and tight, we retired a few yards and looked up with admiration—and when at last the short ladder was brought wherewith to ascend, which we did without delay, and inspect the lockers, Smeaton, gazing from the top of the Eddystone Lighthouse, or Stephenson darting on a locomotive engine through the Menai Tube, might enjoy a pride higher in degree, but not stronger in intenseness!

And then, the strange events necessarily occurring to us. (The plural is used because no boy pigeon-keeper looks after his birds without a companion or two.) The severe countenance with which our neighbour and landlord, hitherto beaming with benignant smiles, now greeted us as we were walking over the tiles of the outhouses in pursuit of an old Duffer with a clipped wing; the astonishment of a respectable shoemaker on the other side of the street, to see a boy’s face peeping over the ridge of the opposite roof, with the air of Cortes surveying the Pacific Ocean from the summit of the Andes, rather than with the consciousness of being the mischievous urchin that he was; the arrival of a strange Pigeon with a sore and naked breast; the bold resolve to use decisive surgery, and decapitate it, lest the evil should prove contagious; the trepidation of the maid who held the body, while we secured the head and wielded the fatal chopper: the universal horror that the body should flap, and flutter, and palpitate for a while after the operation was complete; the enigmatical illustration from English history, King Charles walked and talked; half an hour after, his head was off, uttered without proper pause at the semicolon or comma—these, and a whole chronicle full of such-like accidents, soon showed us that life, to the young, is an onward journey through an unexplored country, every step in which leads to some discovery, and opens to us a pleasant or a repulsive prospect. In maturer age, pitfalls, famishing deserts, and entangled wildernesses, or the flattering and deceptive mirage, showing signs of refreshing waters where drought alone exists, may await our advancing footsteps; or it may be our better fate to progress through glorious scenes, and mount to commanding eminences, still excited in either case by fresh and new adventure. Progressive must our journey ever continue to be. Nor even in old age need our interest in the novelties of existence flag, if we have but duties and proper pursuits in this world, and a religious hope for the next.

But Pigeons are useful, not as mere pets for childhood and diversions for men, but as affording, by their extraordinary and most paradoxical increase, a valuable supply of food both to man and to other carnivorous creatures. It seems strange that a creature which brings two at most at a birth, so to speak, should multiply rapidly into countless flocks; and that the species which is of all the most innumerable, darkening the sky from one point of the horizon to the opposite visible verge, and stretching its living streams no one knows how many miles beyond it each way—small detachments from whose main army supply some of the American cities with poultry by cart-loads, till the inhabitants almost loathe the sight of the dish, good as it is, upon their tables—should yet lay no more than two, and frequently only a single egg, and still more frequently rear but a single chick*, while the Partridge, the Turkey, the Guinea-fowl, and even the Hen, notwithstanding the multitudinous broods they lead forth, are not nearly so abundant, the closest approach to them among gallinaceous birds being perhaps made by the Quail. But a due attention to the growth, mode of rearing, and subsequent proceedings, of the young Pigeons go far to explain how so vast and anomalous a result is obtained from means apparently so inadequate, and which thus becomes less puzzling to us than the existence of immense flocks of Sea-fowl, of species which never lay but a single egg, and that only once a year. These, however, are probably much indebted for their numbers to their hardiness and longevity, as well as to their security from serious persecution. The Pigeon, on the contrary, seems to have overspread the land in consequence of an innate force of reproductiveness with which it seems to have been purposely and providentially endowed for the sake of affording a suitable prey to the numerous fleshly appetites on earth and in air, of winged, quadruped, and reptile gluttons which are perpetually craving to be daily satisfied.

All this destiny of supplying meat to the eater would have been hopelessly baffled, had the young Pigeons required to be tended, and fed, and led about, and guarded like little Chickens, for months after their birth; in this case, there would have been no living clouds consisting of millions of individuals, however numerous the hatch from each female might have been; but in the existing wise arrangement there is no waste, either of time or energetic force; the coupling of a single male with a single female proves to be an economical plan, instead of the reverse, as those might be apt to fancy on whose thoughts the polygamous domestic Fowl, so readily obtrudes itself: the helplessness and indolence of the young for a time, are only made the means of their sooner becoming able not merely to shift for themselves, but, in their own rapidly-arriving turn, to rear young for themselves. The details to be hereafter given will show how completely and effectually this great end is carried out with the least possible expenditure of time and power. The forcing by gardeners, and the fattening by graziers, indeed all our artificial means of obtaining extra produce, take very second rank when we compare them with the process by which a couple of eggs, in the course of a few weeks, are nursed into a pair of perfect creatures, male and female, able to traverse long distances in search of subsistence, and to fulfil the grand law, increase and multiply.

This alone would be wonderful; but to the innate energies implanted for useful and necessary ends, we find superadded a further quality—beauty. To the Deity alone do works of supererogation belong: He gives what is needful with a paternal liberality, and then is lavish of his bounty, and bestows ornament and decoration upon his creatures. There can scarcely be a doubt that many of the appendages to the plumage of birds, not to say a word about brilliant colours, are given not for any use, or to servo the performance of any function in the economy of the creatures, but solely for appearance sake, a fact of which they themselves manifest a consciousness. Innumerable instances of this might be adduced, but a less well-known example is seen in the brilliant assemblage of Hummingbirds collected by Mr. Gould, and now under the course of illustration by that gentleman, with his usual great artistic and ornithological ability. One, perhaps several, species, in addition to the parts which usually reflect the most dazzling and glancing hues, has the very under tail-coverts metallic. In most birds, colours so disposed would be little if at all observed; but in these Humming-birds the flight is so abrupt, and the motions so sharply checked and reversed, very much by the action of the tail, that the metallic feathers are suddenly seen, like a momentary star, which as suddenly vanishes, and which marks, by its appearance and extinction, the sparkling turns in the zig-zag course which the flashing bird pursues through the sunshine.

And the Pigeons, too, have their amethystine necks, and their metallic plumage, either whole or partial; sometimes a complete panoply of blazing scales, occasionally a few patches of bronze and tinsel on the wings. Crests, too, in others, are added to give grace to the head, and voices, if not melodious, yet most expressive, which is better far. In form and motion we have everything that is charming and attractive, either in repose or activity. Even in the individuals destined for homely uses there is so much that is lovely and pleasing, that we often spare their lives in order to continue a little longer to admire their beauty and protect their gentleness. Each in its kind has its own special grace: there is the decorous Nun, the grotesquely-strutting Powter, the comely Turbit, the gay and frisky Tumbler, the stately Swan-like Fantail. In any account of so varied and yet so closely related a family, it will clearly be advisable to endeavour to produce something like a historic sketch, before proceeding to details respecting either distinct species or their supposed varieties.

The first mention of Pigeons to be met with is found in the Holy Scriptures.

"And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened