Is This Weird Or What?

[Guest Doostalker]

This morning I was speaking with a friend and she told me about her friend who was having a problem with a pigeon. She knows that I keep racing pigeons so asked me if I could help him out.

 

This bird has been at his house on and off since last November. It dive bombs everyone, lands on their heads when they are in the garden, craps all over the place and loves to sit on the cars. So much so that the other day it stayed on top off his wife's car and went for a wee jolly with her for about a mile before getting bored and flying back to the house!

 

I am quite used to getting calls about pigeons or birds from the Police, Scottish Homing Union or Scottish SPCA, so this was no big deal to help the guy out. I went round to his house this afternoon and as luck would have it the bird was nowhere to be seen. He told me about the bird's delinquent behaviour and said that his wee boy was pretty scared of it. He then had to go and pick his lad up from school.

 

I waited in the open garage which is where he said that the bird liked to frequent. About a minute after he left I heard a noise on the gravel behind me. I turned around and there it was about 10 feet away walking boldly towards me. I got down on one knee as it approached thinking that it would take off any second. It didn't. It walked straight up to me and I put out my hand towards it. It pecked my hand and then raised a wing as if to strike with it. I put my other hand out and it never budged. I simply put both hands together and there it was....captured!! Or maybe it was a case of it capturing me!!

 

Now this is uncommon enough behaviour in a homing pigeon. But this was no homing pigeon, it was a WOOD PIGEON!!!! Weird or what???

 

I took it home and it is in my spare shed. It flies toward me when I go in. So tame that there is no way I can release it back to the wild. It looks to be a young bird and is growing in some lost tail feathers. But why so tame? I can only think that someone has raised it since birth. But who, why and where??

 

Needless to say I have never seen the likes of this before. I will now get in touch with a wildlife rescue centre and give it to them. I am sure it will go on to become a firm favourite with visitors.

[Blue Chequer Pied]

Definately wierd! Although they frequent the gardens round me and are far tamer than I remember as a kid. They are often seen at bird feeders here but never had one come that close.

[Wiley]

Wild turtle doves are common to be tame in this area, never heard of a wood pigeon though.

[andyyy]

I raised one last year, My niece found it after been attacked by magpies and when i thought it ready i let him go and i've never seen him since!

But having a woodpigeon that tame is weird!

[Guest chad3646]

aint a young bird young birds dont have the white collar

[Guest Doostalker]

aint a young bird young birds dont have the white collar

Chad I agree with you on that, but I think that it is last years bird. Too early to be this year I think.

[Guest chad3646]

doostalker, years ago when i was young, me and my pals used to go looking for nests

 

 

we found this pigeons nest, it had a blue and a red in it

 

 

obviously someone switched eggs, my father told me of a man who worked in the steelworks and used to put his pigeons eggs under the streeters and let them rear them he won some races with them

[REDROCKET]

Amazing have two that I through a hand full of barley down for when I'm home at the weekends they doddle about the garden around one of my Labradors but as soon as I appear there off its funny how animals trust each other a wee bit but as soon as a human appears the trust is gone. Although maybe not in this case with the wood pigeon excellent.

[billt]

Certainly sounds like it has had some human contact in it's life, I've had a couple over the years and they seem to become tame very easily, the last two I had, a neighbour's son felled a tree with a nest of squabs that were just feathering, his girl-friend was with him so he thought he'd better rescue them, they were easy to rear and when I gave them their freedom one came to hand for several weeks for a feed