ONE MORE AMARYLLIS TRUMPET TO OPEN... TOMORROW FOR SURE.
The pigeon pictures are better viewed larger... Click on an image to enlarge it.
I have a friend who knows pigeons. When he was a boy growing up in Baghdad, he kept pigeons on the flat roof of his house. When he first told me about raising pigeons, I assumed they were a source of food; but I was wrong. In many places pigeons are raised for food, but my friend and his neighbors kept them for the sheer joy of seeing them fly. Watching anything for the sheer joy of it appeals to me. I did that today when I came across a great flock of pigeons sitting on utility wires above the Mission Valley trolley tracks.
While I watched, at a signal which I didn’t hear or see, all of them lifted in unison from the wires and did what seemed like a choreographed aerial maneuver above where I stood with my bike... and then they settled gracefully down onto the wires again. I was lucky to have my camera ready for the show.

My friend told me that In the early evenings in Baghdad, people would release flocks of pigeons simultaneously to fill the skies of a neighborhood with their acrabotic flight, swooping and rising and turning to the delight of people who watched from their rooftops. He was describing a practice that was common forty years ago. I wonder if it still happens today. I hope so.

While I like the idea of keeping pigeons to watch them fly, I’m not sure I can get excited about keeping them for the same reason some people keep race horses. I read that a champion racing pigeon can be released 400 to 600 miles away from its home and still return within a day. I learned also that all pigeons have the ability to return to their roost, even from great distances. There are many theories about how these birds manage to find their way “home.”
I learned also that pigeons and doves are basically the same bird. They constitute the bird family Columbidae. Most of the “city” pigeons we see all over the world are feral rock pigeons. Baby doves and baby pigeons are called squab. I’ll know how to refer to them when they are hatched next spring in the nest outside my study window.