Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Adding to the race...A birding adventure!





The weekend before our move, Saturday I think it was, a quiet little visitor came walking down our sidewalk asking for help. We had noticed a lone pigeon wandering around our at a neighbors place and seemingly not afraid of people. We tried to lure it over to us with seeds and it came pretty close, close enough even for us to notice that it had a band on one of its legs.





Faith therefore decided to try to catch it as it didn't seem to be able to fly. With a quick grab we had it and the mystery began.





Several letters, numbers and a phone number were on the tag, but we had no clue what it all meant. Faith tried to call the phone number but no answer.


Finally after searching all over the Internet, first only coming up with information for the phone number, which turned out to be from the Wabash, Indiana area, I was able to solve the mystery surrounding our friendly pigeon!


To our surprise we had in our hands an American Racing Pigeon from the Fort Wayne, Indiana pigeon racing club!!! How exciting!!! The only problem was it was only two days before we started to move and also the next day was Sunday, wherein we would be gone up north all day! Thankfully, even though we were not able to get hold of the owners, we were able to get hold of another club member and he was going to check it out. However, when he called back he said that he could find no record of the bird and that if we just made sure it had food and water for a few days, we could then let it go and hopefully it would find its way home. Monday morning came around and the pigeon was looking like it was ready to fly. Faith climbed out onto the roof and sent it on it's way. We hoped it would find the right flight wave and head back home.







~Researching about the birds I found out that these pigeons are being trained to race up to 200 miles and it seemed to be quite the extensive group/union that was founded back in the 1800's though of course back then they had the homing pigeons which are now extinct.




Anyways, we said goodbye to pigeon, never expecting to see it again on Wednesday when everyone was here helping load the truck and it came walking down the road to the place where it knew it could receive food. Though it seemed like it could fly, the man we had talked to before said that sometimes when they get lost they will just start walking around looking for help! Definitely what this little guy was doing!

After sitting under the front of the truck for a while it finally disappeared, hopefully heading out again to try to find its way home.


What a great experience it was anyways and being able to once again observe so closely one of God's amazing creations!


He[Noah] also sent out from himself a dove, to see if the waters had receded from the face of the ground. But the dove found no resting place for the sole of her foot, and she returned into the ark to him, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth. So he put out his hand and took her, and drew her into the ark to himself. And he waited yet another seven days, and again he sent the dove out from the ark. Then the dove came to him in the evening, and behold, a freshly plucked olive leaf was in her mouth; and Noah knew that the waters had receded from the earth. Genesis 8:8-11