Hi, Andy.
 
   First, will you be at the San Luis Obispo CA beekeepers meeting?  I will
be there for a couple of days to interact with old friends.  (I know you
don't like that sort of thing but thought I would ask anyhow.)  Also, did
you see my Part I in the American Bee Journal (October issue)?
 
Many thanks for your input about pigeon homing.  I buzzed your message off
to Leo Turley in western Australia in reply to his extensive message.  Here
is what he sent to me (I am sure you will appreciate it):
 
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X-Sender: [log in to unmask]
 
Adrian,
 
Thank you very much for that and I like what you have to say.  I am getting
some excellent stuff from the Bee keeping fraternity and all of it cements
in place what I have (almost) always known arising from more than 47 years
of hands-on experience with racing pigeons.
 
Much of what has been put forward by the academics over the years is plainly
not so.  I have been working on a manuscript dealing globally with racing
pigeons for about 5 years and now I am retired (retired 18 months ago aged
54 - self funded retiree and feels marvelous) I want to go all out and
complete it.  The homing section dealing with the multitude of theories is
very important and I want to take the opportunity now to put it right.
There is so much that researchers have overlooked and moreso taken for
granted. I find elaborate theories built on very tenuous foundations and
presumptions that are way over the top.  The opening paragraph of Cornell
University's overview on Pigeon Navigation, for example, at
http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/bionb420.07/eorcutt/PIGEON.HTM is
immediately misleading, viz: "The ability of homing pigeons to navigate back
to their 'home' loft from distant and unfamiliar release sites has provided
an excellent means by which to investigate the importance of various
external cues in spatial navigation.  When reared in a particular loft, a
young pigeon can be transported hundreds of miles away and successfully find
its way home from the release sight." How wonderful! It misses a very
important factor that unless young racing pigeons are educated from a very
early age and that this training is continued on, well into adulthood, and
that it is extended away from the home loft, at ever increasing distance,
they will not "home" from one kilometre, let alone 500 and 1000 kilometres.
In reality, young racing pigeons have the capacity to learn and it is up to
the fancier to teach them.  It is well known that unless this process is
started around the home loft in the first 3 months of life, then they have
more than likely lost the opportunity, certainly young pigeons left too long
before being shown the outside world become too strong on the wing to remain
in the immediate area for sufficient time to take in its surroundings and
become lost.  Many of our new pigeon fanciers take this process for granted
and then wonder why they have lost them all on their first time away from
home and often only on a very short little hop of say 2 - 3 kilometres.
 
The recent publicised racing pigeon losses in the US is precisely based on
this problem.  Too many fanciers relying on other fanciers' hard work of
putting birds through a reasonable education program and expect them to show
inexperienced birds the way home. It is classic stuff. Pigeons learn very
quickly and providing there are enough educated birds in a flock, it is a
successful method and has its own terminology called 'jumping'. Saves a lot
of time and works well most times - providing nothing unusual happens in a
race to make the task a little harder than normal. When too many fanciers
try to 'jump' at the same time you get a flock with no idea where it is and
a little bit of adverse weather makes for a disaster that is
"unexplainable". Many scoff at this, but it is a fact and happens all the
time and there are variations of the same condition. This US incident was a
young bird race, I understand from 200 miles - and was simply a matter of
too many young birds without sufficient experience. Classic example. 200
miles is also a long way for young pigeons. Most long time fanciers know
about jumping, but are not quick to admit it. It is not quite as simple as
what I have related, other factors come into play, like the classic
over-optimistic programming of races, coupled with say a spate of inclement
weather that has hampered individual's own training plains leading up to a
race promotes "jumping" for too many birds and to too far a distance.
Fairly simplistic stuff and too simple to be taken into consideration by many.
 
I am glad you mentioned magnetic orientation.  For years this has been a
stumbling block away from more feasible explanations.  By good fortune this
year I have made use of the IPS Space Forecast Centre for Geomagnetic
disturbances.  They even have a service whereby they notify by e-mail as an
alert of periods of unsettled conditions and is measured in a scale called K
Indices. See: http://www.ips.gov.au/asfc/aus_geomag/index.html#bestview
Interesting stuff and I received 13 alerts at an average of one per week and
while only two periods covered precisely our race fixtures, much of our
training was done during the alerts and the long and short of it is that it
didn't make any difference.  All in all I am now becoming more convinced
that simple memory coupled with other innate issues are the only issues
involved. By innate I mean such things as the ability to wheel and turn in a
flock without colliding, there are leaders and followers - long time pigeon
fanciers can see which ones are calling the shots in daily exercise and the
role changes according to fitness - a survival trait for a colony of
pigeons. I know large releases of pigeons, such as in races, are made up of
leaders and followers and over the top of this are the birds who remember
the area from previous journeys and it is these birds who set the direction
for the others to follow. Most of this is all too simple for the academics
and I have always wondered if bee orientation and pigeon orientation
principles were the same and I am now fast coming to that conclusion that
they certainly are. Finally, just to finish off, Tinbergen, 1951. The Study
of Instinct. Oxford University Press, London, (Manning, An Introduction to
Animal Behaviour, E. Arnold) documents his experiment on home location by
digger wasps at: http://salmon.psy.plym.ac.uk/year1/ETHEXPT.HTM#Digger and I
find that very relevant too.
 
Adrian, as I said, I like your comments and the above is simply to add and
agree with your noted sceptic overview of many of the theories that abound.
Thank you again and please come back if you think of anything else.
 
Kindest regards,
 
Leo Turley
Perth, Western Australia
http://www.nw.com.au/~lturley/
 
Adrian M. Wenner                    (805) 963-8508 (home phone)
967 Garcia Road                     (805) 893-8062  (UCSB FAX)
Santa Barbara, CA  93106
 
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* "...in the drift of the years I by and by found out that a Consensus *
* examines a new [idea] with its feelings rather oftener than with its *
* mind.  You know, yourself, that is so.  Do those people examine with *
* feelings that are friendly to evidence?  You know they don't."       *
*                                                                      *
*                                                Mark Twain            *
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