Pigeons in the Media: Homing Pigeons Mentioned on National Talk Radio Show: The Fax

To: Mike Siegel, c/o Coast To Coast AM From: Scott Redd Date: 10/19/2000 Dear Mike: With respect to the subject of your show tonight, I would like to state the following and then pose a question to your guest, Howard Bloom, author of the "Global Brain" book. I am a flyer of racing homing pigeons. I can say for sure that I've observed a "one mind" type of behavior when the birds are together. They fly together in a tight flock with all birds going in the same direction. When it's time for them to come down to the loft for feeding, they all seem to "decide" at once to descend. They may loiter on the roof for a few minutes, but as soon as one decides to enter the loft (their home), they all go in. And then there's the question of how homing pigeons know to get home. Despite all our advances in science, we still cannot say for sure how homing pigeons know where to go. Some suspect it may be due to a sensitivity to the Earth's magnetic lines of force, or perhaps an ability to compute their location based on the time of day and the position of the sun, much in the way a sailor using a sextant might compute his location. I wonder if your guest might comment on bird's flocking behavior in general, or the homing ability of pigeons specifically. Could they be in some sort of psychic or otherwise "non-local" communication with their home, or possibly with me as their owner and trainer? Please sign me as: Scott in Omaha, Nebraska. Many thanks... Scott redd@interbug.com http://interbug.com/pigeon for more info on homing pigeons

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