Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the World's Most Revered and Reviled Bird

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We and our partners use data for Personalised ads and content, ad and content measurement, audience insights and product development. certain birds are not equipped to handle all conditions , so why have that bird in your loft or spend money breeding for a quality that can not help you in your area. It’s all too easy to treat them as disposable pests, but when you’ve seen an injured one, or have been, as I was, unfortunate enough to witness one disappear under the wheel of a passing bus, you remember that they are living feeling beings who deserve not to be kicked around or hurt for no reason.

you would be crucified here,i know its nice,even magical getting birds coming in from Barcelona days out of racetime,just to see them turn up ,when you come home from work one evening,but those types are slowly ending. very simple,very,efficient,inbreeding cannot lie it will tell you very quickly faults in your base birds. Zentall suggests that across species, quality may be easier--that is, faster--to judge than quantity.

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My only criticism is that I thought it presented (in)breeding in a very neutral way even when describing certain breeds as literally incapable of feeding their young or flying. Even if you’re familiar with some of the topics beforehand, the explanations are so brief and simple (without sacrificing accuracy! Charles Darwin loved them (much of Chapter One of On the Origin of Species is devoted to them), as did Pablo Picasso who not only painted them but named his daughter after them (Paloma, his “little dove”); the Mughal emperor Akbar, Queen Victoria, inventor Nikola Tesla, painters Claude Monet and Henri Matisse, head of the fashion house Maurizio Gucci, Yul Brynner and Walt Disney—pigeon fanciers all. I’d also seen signs on the pavement of our local train station asking people to treat the local pigeons with more kindness, and that left an impression on me.

The author actually talks of the visible genetic markers for some broader types and how they are transmitted to future generations based on the type of the mate.