Heavy fog at the farm this morning. Decided to open the loft and the birds did not hesitate to fly. The birds quickly disappeared from sight. Apparently the fog mutes or softens sound because the birds zoomed by and I could barely hear them.
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So where do the birds go and how do they know how or when to come home?
Hi Diane! These are racing/homing pigeons, they are superb flyers and navigators. When loft flying the birds will fly near their home, however they do sometimes route or range, where they will disappear and fly over and explore the countryside. When the birds are taken for a training toss we pack them up in a crate and drive them to a release point that can be a few miles from home or perhaps 100 miles from home (actual race distances are usually 100 to 500 miles). This is where the pigeons navigational abilities come into play. You can take a homing pigeon 100 miles away from home to a place they have never seen and release the bird and it will circle for a minute or two to get it's bearings and then it will fly straight home.
No one agrees on exactly how the pigeons do this but it appears that they use a combination of senses including vision, hearing, smell, internal clock, sun position, and magnetic fields. One study determined that pigeons can hear infrasound frequencies 11 octaves lower than what humans can hear.
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