# Feral Pigeons



## King James (May 18, 2008)

Are Feral Pigeons lost Racers? Do feral pigeons home? Just would like to know what ya'll think.


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## plamenh (Aug 11, 2006)

Feral=Returned to the state of wild; so yes and no. Not necessary racing pigeons and some of them are descendant of generations of ferals. Again some of them do have homing instinct and some not.


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## altgirl35 (Sep 5, 2008)

i think ferals have some homing ability, not sure how far away they could be dropped off and find their way home.
i have had them find their way back to my house from a few miles away, i had a single bird that i had raised and released and she just wouldn't leave with the others, so i drove her down to the boulevard where we have a big flock released her, and went off to the grocery store, when i pulled in my driveway there she was!lol
i have since recaptured her and put her in with a late baby i got a few weeks ago, so she's staying for the winter


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## spirit wings (Mar 29, 2008)

I would think that alot of ferals have racing homers in them, If you look at the loss rate of some races and flyoffs and just them missing from someones loft...Im sure the feral population has a heavy dose of domestic homer. They will and can home as others have said. I have ever released any, but I have heard stories from members here who have and they returned.


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## conditionfreak (Jan 11, 2008)

Experiments have shown that ferals do indeed home. Not from as far and not as fast as racing pigeons. True "ferals" home well from 40 miles or so. Some longer and some shorter. But is is hard to classify what is actually a feral. A champion homing pigeon shipped from Belgioum to the U.S., kept as a prisonar and lost here, imediately becomes a "feral" pigeon, because it now is trying to survive in the wild, on it's own in nature.

But in my opinion is not actually a feral. It is a lost homer trying to survive in the wild. If lost homing pigeons do survive and raise young ones, then those young ones might home well from one or two hundred miles.

As others have said previously. There are ferals mixed with good racing blood from lost racers and thus, you never know what homing ability a "feral" has.

One thing is for sure. In the pedigree of every champion racing homer, there are millions of ferals. You just have to go back thousands of years on the family tree to find them, in most cases. Yu can also find some ferals in the family tree of some present day champions, depending on your diffinition of a "feral". 

Just read the story of a former champion flyer (Ludo Claessens) who "found" a lost racing pigeon on his property and it became arguably, one of the greatest breeders of all time. Not a feral in my mind, but could have fit the diffinition technically. Who knows if that bird could have mated up with another lost racing homer and their children would have indeed been classified as ferals, but could have homed from a thousand miles or more.

So, it is a hard question to answer with complete accuracy.

But figure 40 miles or so for a "common" feral. But it could be 400 miles. Who knows?


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## SmithFamilyLoft (Nov 22, 2004)

King James said:


> Are Feral Pigeons lost Racers? Do feral pigeons home? Just would like to know what ya'll think.


Well....at some point in time, way back when....pigeons were released by humans into the USA, since the Rock Dove is not native to North America. Now, in addition to that fact, tens of thousands of homing pigeons become lost each year while racing, and they also become part of the feral population. And yes, a typical feral pigeon does have homing ability, just as the orginal Rock Dove had some homing ability. You could not have selectively bred for homing ability, unless it was there in the first place. 

Without selective breeding however, the modern day racing pigeon, within a relatively few generations, will return to the orginal form as in the Rock Dove.
That was the form Mother Nature produced to survive in the wild, over many tens of thousands of years, and that is the form any pigeon population will revert to, when left to the wild and given enough time.


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## John_D (Jan 24, 2002)

spirit wings said:


> I would think that alot of ferals have racing homers in them, If you look at the loss rate of some races and flyoffs and just them missing from someones loft...Im sure the feral population has a heavy dose of domestic homer. They will and can home as others have said. I have ever released any, but I have heard stories from members here who have and they returned.


Absolutely! I have a feral red bar, "Capuccino", on my balcony, but his behavior and appearance is unlike the rest. He has a homer look, with quite the aerodynamic head shape. He doesn't actually look extra big but when he got a back injury from (I believe) some kind of predator last winter, and I took him in, he weighed almost 450 grams - a heck of a lot more than any other feral I've had in, even after I've fed 'em up well. He comes into the apartment now with great confidence, to eat from his own special pot of food. When I took him up to Feefo's to spend a weekend in the aviary to re-acclimatise him before release, he found the pigeon mix straight away, grabbed a v-perch like he'd just come from a loft and for a couple of nights got a privileged upper perch to himself for roosting. Not one of our big, elder resident males tried any bully-boy stuff on Capuccino 

John


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## altgirl35 (Sep 5, 2008)

i swear the splayed leg piji scooter that ended up being adopted by jay3 has homer in him.
he was such a big baby with a big fat beak and big big eyes, he looked soo different from the feral babies i get


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## cotdt (Apr 26, 2010)

I've actually have yet to come across a USA feral pigeon that resembles the wild rock dove. The wild rock dove doesn't have the ceres around its eyes, or as large a wattle, and it's got a white rump that a lot of ferals don't have. Half the ferals I've come across resemble a homer in looks and are nearly as big. They got big eyes and wattle. They are also in a variety of colors not originally in the wild stock, and they have those aerodynamic-shaped heads.


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## drifter (Oct 7, 2009)

Just a few weeks ago while I waited to have my oil changed at Jiffy Lube a group of pigeons were feeding near the bay door. One stood out like a sore thumb, a white flighted blue check cock. He was a little larger and more broad shouldered than the others and was actively courting one of the hens. I always make it a point to observe the feral flocks. It is not uncommon to the see a white one among them, or see ferals that are a mixture of odd colors.


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