# Color awareness



## raftree3 (Oct 16, 2010)

Are pigeons color blind? I need to put some more paint on my loft but it will have to be another color, will this confuse my birds?


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## MaryOfExeter (Sep 30, 2007)

They aren't color blind, in fact they see more colors than we do. It may confuse them at first, but give them a few days to adjust to it before letting them out.


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## conditionfreak (Jan 11, 2008)

When I first saw the title of this thread, I thought it was going to be about something that has puzzled me for awhile. But I see that it is not.

Anyway. What has intrigued me (puzzled is the wrong word I think), is that when I put birds into a new loft, that have not been together previously. I noticed that two fantails mated up, and that white homers mated up with white homers. I only had three fantails (two hens and one cock) and they just happened to mate together. I had five white homers, and four of them mated up to white homers. Even though there were a dozen colored homers in this same loft.

I just found that intriguing. Maybe they are like us and tend to gravitate towards like looking pigeons.

To answer the original posters question. They difinitely are not color blind. That is how the coast guard used them to help locate people lost in water. They could spot certain colors in the water and peck an object in a certain direction when they did, and receive a food reward for doing so. This would alert the pilots of the aircraft which direction to fly, to rescue people lost in the water wearing orange life vests and such.

It is a long story, but those are the basics. It was based on color recognition by the pigeons and their better than human eyesight. They would be in a small glass bubble underneath a helicopter or airlplane and want the treat, but would only get the treat if they "guided" the aircraft to an orange, yellow or red object out in the water.

I don't know if they still use them or not. What with all of the innovative technology now available.

Pigeons are always being replaced by progress.


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## PigeonX (Oct 17, 2010)

I had a time when I worked on the roof of my bird loft and let my birds out for a loft fly and changed the color to blue. When my birds returned to trap, all the birds were very well aware of the roof change and they were nervous to trap in....but eventually they trapped in, so yes, pigeons are very aware of there surroundings and can differ between colors.


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## hasseian_313 (Oct 31, 2009)

yah most birds usally breed with birds that are alike to them if breed openly but than theirs allways mixing evry now and than thats why i keep each breed on its own


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