Keeping tabs on stray pigeons

broughcut · June 6, 2007

Would a user-maintained site like this be any use for connecting lost pigeons with owners?

http://www.tempestattack.com/pigeons/

you need the last backslash in there, otherwise you will get a not found error.

demo ring number is 1234-TN1234-NEHU2007 - this will return a test record.

note this has absolutely nothing to do with NEHU, I just put it together as a demo. You can register demo accounts to test how it might work, click 'edit' to add pigeons once logged in. Feel free to add and edit records. Logged in members can only see their own account.

Could do with a bulk-add feature so users can add sequentially numbered rings. It's just a demo site, put it together today mainly to help me learn some Ruby on Rails programming... we have acquired a lost bird and have had difficulty tacking down the owner, so I though something like this would be handy. (It's getting a little too comfortable -- has taken to flying up to the kitchen window and tapping on the glass when it wants lunch. If anyone's missing a bird released in the North York Moors past week, drop me a PM and I'll pass on the ring no.)

If you think it might be useful and can think of any other features (pretty much anything is possible) I'm open to suggestions. It would work best as a member-maintained offshoot sponsored by one of the unions, as the union websites are obviously the first place most people will check to get contact details and if unions approved and verified registrations it would prevent any abuse (such as ppl registering numbers they do not own). With some small tweaks here and there it would be ready to go and the database would easily scale to handle thousands of members.

It was primarily such an exercise in database/application design and it may be that something like this just isn't suited to pigeon racing -- I don't know how the community is organised or how much of a problem strays are. (tap tap :-/ )

broughcut · June 6, 2007

excuse the bump

the bird we have milling around is

NEHU2006 1027 TN2882

been here around five days. YO18 postcode /NY Moors

harryjacko · June 6, 2007

Hi broughcut, thanks for taking the time to bother about our little "athlete's of the sky", the unions keep a record of all the rings issued over the last 10 yr, anyone can contact them to find the owner of a ring, the unions dont like to give out owners details to finders without first contacting the owner because some unscrupulous fancier, on finding out he has one of the top fancier's birds in his possession, would not then follow up the repatriation of the bird and maybe would keep it himself and breed from it. Like your thinking though

broughcut · June 7, 2007

ah, I thought it'd be a little more complicated! I suppose the top breeders could provide an anon contact.

Would be easy to add a 'last seen' feature for birds that are presumed to be resting and not contained. We're still just feeding her and leaving her to roost, she seems happy enough, although we saw a hawk take out an adult blackbird in the garden (which is pretty much open moor) a couple of weeks ago, so that's a concern. Plus the weathers a little tricky at the moment.

The union have got in touch but are communicating by post. We have been given the owners full name and address, but no contact telephone, which is pretty pointless (we could send it back pigeon post, I suppose ;D ) and doesn't really protect the owner from the scenario you described above. Letter says the owner has been given our address and will correspond in due course. I assume they have been provided our telephone number as well, but don't know.

it's been fed on standard mixed bird seed for about three days, is this okay for them?

harryjacko · June 7, 2007

hi broughcut, the birdseed will be fine and the union should have given the owner your phone no. whereabouts are you?, as there may be a fancier nearby who could take it off your hands