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Pigeons hearing.


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Hi all.

 

We all know that pigeons have excellent eye sight, and that they can seemingly see you from about eight miles away if you are not concealed, but what is their hearing like??

 

I have a work colleague who wants to get in to shooting - I took her on the clays earlier in the summer and am now taking her up to the pigeons at the weekend. I have never shot from the hide with anyone else being there and am wondering if we will have to stay completely silent or if we will be able to converse quietly. There are no main roads close so the place is pretty quiet.

 

Thanks all...

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  • 2 weeks later...

Two weeks ago I built my hide over a field of cut OSR. I was worried that the pigeons were seeing me as a few pulled away from the pattern, however a huge buzzard flew in to eat a dead bird, shot earlier. So the buzzard didn't see me, but later another hawk I could not identify, flew in and settled 15 or 20 feet above me in the branches. I sat watching it and listening to its call. I began clapping my hands and making noise to observe it as it flew away. No luck. It sat on for a minute or so before taking off. Maybe their hearing isn't so good.

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I reckon their hearing and eyesight are a damn sight better than mine, the number that get into the pattern that I don't see, or the low flying buzz bombs that woosh past 10 feet above my head and are out of range before I even see them, Isn't growing old sh****, I have to put in ear plugs as the constant banging gives me a headache, I have to wear glasses as I couldn't hit a barn door without them and I have to shoot sitting down as my back is so bad I can't stand for more than a few minutes without being in agony, sod it wheres the nearest old folks home :yahoo::yahoo: !!!!

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The pigeon has side-mounted eyes, unlike humans and owls which have forward facing eyes. As pigeons have monocular vision rather than binocular vision they bob their heads for depth of perception. The pigeon’s eyes function much better with stationary images and therefore as the pigeon takes a step forward the head is temporarily left behind. The next step jerks the head forward again and so on. This allows the bird to correctly orient itself.

 

Despite extensive investigation and experimentation, science is still baffled by the Pigeons uncanny ability to navigate as it does, so I'm interested to know how you (the OP) come by that statistic of an 8 mile vision capable of seeing a person standing :hmm: Honestly, I truly amazed if thats true…..

 

As a retired Pilot I could see a runway that far out, but only my mate 'Superman' could see people walking on it :innocent:

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  • 3 weeks later...

I'd have thought the noise of the air rushing past the pigeon's ears as it flies or dives down to decoys would prevent it from hearing talking in a hide, which is a pretty soft sound, compared to the switch of a safety catch, a gun breaking, etc.

 

I naturally would stop talking or whisper if you see a pigeon coming into the pattern.

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The pigeon has side-mounted eyes, unlike humans and owls which have forward facing eyes. As pigeons have monocular vision rather than binocular vision they bob their heads for depth of perception. The pigeon’s eyes function much better with stationary images and therefore as the pigeon takes a step forward the head is temporarily left behind. The next step jerks the head forward again and so on. This allows the bird to correctly orient itself...

 

I 've often wondered how they do their "landings" - especially on branches so accurately. I've always thought that their eye position would lead in a massive 3d blind-spot in front of them. Some birds have been shown to have pretty good echo-location (cave swifts etc.) and I wondered if pigeons had a rudimentary version for landing? This would indicate that the birds had quite a sophisticated hearing system - as another role for the "set up" of hearing is balance; in birds this is very important - so perhaps it's more complex than we think.

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  • 4 months later...
On 01/09/2017 at 01:33, motty said:

I am not of the opinion that pigeons eyesight is particularly amazing. I often talk and laugh loudly when in company. I manage to shoot pigeons in spite of this.

See if you didn't talk and laugh when in the hide you would shoot more :yahoo::yahoo::whistling:

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Just been surfing the net and found this article from someone who obviously knows what they are talking about, may be of interest to all,so apart from the well known 'ultra violet ' vision the last paragraph is also quite interesting and explains how they can find a perch in a tree as they are able to 'switch vision ' from side to front. I have noted that a pigeon on approach to the decoy pattern is very aware of any movement , but once committed to land they seem to be far less likely to see movement at distance as they concentrate on the 'landing zone'. 

Pigeons simply "see" differently than we do in a number of ways. 

  • Field of view (FOV, a.k.a field of vision): in humans, the FOV is around 180 to 200-degrees horizontal and about 135-degrees vertical, asymmetrically oriented with more vision below than above the normal line of sight. Pigeon FOV is around 340-degrees horizontal and about the same 135-vertical degrees as humans, but their vertical field is even more asymmetrically oriented toward the ground.
  • Binocular vision: Humans have about a 114-degree of horizontal binocular vision, with the central 5% or so being the field of highest visual acuity. It is difficult to express the binocular field of a pigeon, as the field varies greatly on the vertical plane. It is "generally" stated that pigeons have a 24-degree binocular field, measured at the beak level. Below the beak, however, that field is as wide as 40-degrees. It also seems that the pigeon has separate frontal and lateral (side-viewing) visual systems and that these differences are due to the placement of the fovea and the refractive characteristics of the cornea vs. the lens. This means that the pigeon can process other kinds of visual cues from their monocular lateral vision that aids them in determining things like distance and 3-dimensional interpretation of objects. While humans do use other cues, such as relative sizes and relative motion, we use primarily our binocular vision to determine position in 3-D space and to determine distances to/from objects.
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