Whats your opinion

[barrie0]

Pigeons 'May Have Followed

Roads Since Roman Times'

By Roger Highfield

Science Editor

The Telegraph - UK

7-27-4

 

Pigeons have taken the easy route home and followed major roads and other human thoroughfares for thousands of years, researchers claim.

 

The study, published yesterday by a Swiss team, provides "statistical proof" that the carrier pigeon's uncanny ability to find its home coop depends a great deal on trunk routes, suggesting that the birds have probably relied on human directions as long as people have been changing the landscape.

 

The study of birds released from sites around Rome to their loft in Testa di Lepre, 12 miles west of the city, showed that the pigeons do not travel as "the crow flies".

 

They followed SS Aurelia, Italy's old coastal highway, and preferred this route to a greater extent than the newer and larger highway A12, or the railway.

 

The SS Aurelia traces the ancient imperial Via Aurelia, which was begun in 241 BC and connected Rome to what is now southern France, providing a hint that the birds have relied on human directions for more than two millennia.

 

Pigeons may well have always used rivers and coastlines to navigate, even before the road network was created, because they evolved from rock doves, coastal birds that are known to use coastlines.

 

Yesterday, in the journal Current Biology, the University of Zurich group headed by Prof Hans-Peter Lipp reports what it believes is the best evidence yet of pigeons following roads.

 

"The question of road following has for the first time been addressed experimentally in a way permitting statistical proof that it contributes significantly to the ability of pigeons to fly home rapidly and safely," said Prof Lipp's colleague, Dr David Wolfer.

 

 

I think it's a load of c**p myself . Unless they carry round an AA road map under the wing .

[Fisherman Mike]

I saw an interesting programme on TV a couple of years back which demonstrated how a pigeon uses the earths magnetic fields to navigate from distance until it recognises the locality from various land marks it has mapped.

 

When I kept racing pigeons I never was too keen to kill surplus squabs so I used to occassionally keep the young bird cooped up until I was going somewhere on business and I used to let them go in unnatural surroundings. You would be suprised how many of them made it home even not having any real knowledge of the area they were raised in.

 

I raced a couple of birds from france on several occassions and it always filled me with admiration how they navigated their way home in all weathers to a little village in the middle of nowhere.

 

I can agree to some extent the theory you posted Barrie particularly as I once had some good pigeon shooting near Cirencester in Glos were the birds were flighting along a disused railwayline stretching 20 miles or more to the North.

I was convinced that the birds were roosting in a wood to the North and flighting to this rape field early evening and morning. One day I shot at and missed a bird whose tail feathers were missing all but the two outside and it had a big notch in its right wing. I swear I saw that same bird at a roost shoot 7 miles away 2 days later.

 

Unless we can teach the ******* to talk I supose we will never know

 

FM

[barrie0]

I have always thought the magnetic field theory is the way they found there way around also geese swifts,swallows which migrate across oceans . There's not to many roads on these .

 

Over the last six months there has been a lot of talk about a magnetic field reversal from many scientist's this is just one such article .

 

 

 

Southern Africa is experiencing weird vibes, according to scientists studying one of the more profound upheavals awaiting planet Earth.

 

This forthcoming revolution is a reversal in the Earth's magnetic field, an event that occurs every 500 000 years or so.

 

Signs that the reversal is about to happen again are nowhere more apparent than over Southern Africa, according to Dr Pieter Kotze, head of the geomagnetism group at the Hermanus Magnetic Observatory in the southern Cape.

 

Satellites in low-Earth orbit over Southern Africa are already showing signs of radiation damage suffered as a result of the Earth's magnetic field weakening above our part of the planet. The field forms the magneto sphere, which, like the Earth's ozone layer, protects the planet from the sun's harmful radiation.

 

Other symptoms destined to become apparent in the years ahead include the aurora australis, or southern lights. Usually seen only over the South Pole, these will become visible closer to the equator as the Earth's magnetic field weakens and disappears. Eventually, on past form, the field will reappear but with magnetic north and south pole changing places, as they have done for billions of years.

 

According to an article in the New York Times this week, the change will be devastating for migratory animals such as loggerhead turtles, which use the Earth's magnetic field to migrate 8 000km around the Atlantic. Bees, swallows, cranes, salmon, homing pigeons, frogs and eagles may also lose their way between breeding and feeding grounds.

 

Humans will suffer, too. The (temporary) disappearance of the magnetic field ahead of its reversal will lead to increased occurrences of radiation-induced cancer, Kotze said.

 

Commenting on the New York Times report, Kotze said that the decay in the Earth's magnetic field was becoming increasingly apparent in "the South Atlantic anomaly", a huge deviation in the Earth's magnetic field discovered with the help of the Hermanus Magnetic Observatory.

 

This month, the European Space Agency (ESA) approved a multimillion-euro space mission, called Swarm, to measure the anomaly, which stretches from Southern Africa towards South America.

 

The ESA's scientists believe that this anomaly, as revealed by the occasional "geomagnetic jerk" to which our part of the world is prone, will provide a clue to predicting the next "flip" in the Earth's magnetic field, now 250 000 years overdue - as these things go. Three ESA satellites, flying in low-Earth orbit (400km to 500km up) after their launch in 2009, will measure the variation over Southern Africa.

 

The observatory has also recorded a faster-growing deviation between true north and magnetic north over Southern Africa during the past 10 years, drifting steadily westward. Taken together, the blip and this drift point to an imminent reversal in the Earth's north-south magnetic alignment.

 

"W e should be able to work out the first predictions by the end of the [swarm] mission," Gauthier Hulot, an ESA geophysicist and a colleague of Kotze's, told the New York Times.

 

The discovery of the "anomalous field behaviour over Southern Africa" drew wide attention, reported the US newspaper, because "it seemed consistent with what the [ESA's] computer simulations identified as the possible beginnings of a flip".

 

Kotze said that, "these are all indications that we have conditions similar to the last reversal, 780 000 years ago. So it means that we are due for another one soon." In geological terms, however, "soon" could mean anytime between tomorrow and the next 3 000 years.

 

Kotze said the anomaly was the result of "things happening" far below the Earth's surface.

 

At the boundary between the mantle and the outer core (more than 3 000km below Southern Africa) disruptions were occurring in the flow of the Earth's liquid outer core (mostly iron), he explained. This created "a reverse dynamo situation", which is becoming increasingly apparent as variations in the magnetic field above the Earth's surface.

\

http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/2004/07/18/ne...news/news14.asp

 

 

Dont forget the post I made last week about the missing swedish pigeons maybe there's a connection .

 

 

More links http://www.magneticpole.com/info/mpr/

 

Although I do think there is a correlation between magnetic fields and solar winds as there has been some strong solar ejections from the sun during the last few years even though its solar cycle is supposed to be fairly quiet at the moment . About a year ago I saw the aurora here in Gloucestershire , This was even seen as low as germany,france and spain .

 

http://www.spaceweather.com/

 

all the best

[lurcherboy]

Very interesting Barrie 0, but what does it mean to our pigeon shooting, good or bad

 

LB

[jimdfish]

LB

very interesting???

Only joking

The fact that a swallow can migrate to africa. gad about with hippos and the like and every year still find their way back to a one inch hole in my sand store is incredible. Even armed with sat/nav and a-z's i still get lost on almost every journey over five miles

there is more on heaven and earth than we know

jimDfish

p.s swallows would make fantatsic taxi drivers ( where to guv? Nigeria please. No Worries, north or south, youll never guess who i had in here last week)

Think about it

[barrie0]

Sweet fa probably , just a load of confused pigeons

[lurcherboy]

good confused pigeons may fly into my shot string, and pigs might fly :(

 

LB

[white fox]

Saw a TV program this year where they attached tiny cameras and transmitters to racing pigeons, and yes they followed railway lines, roads and electricity lines, the route was not at all as the crow flies

[lurcherboy]

Jim, no sane person goes north of the river, they eat babies don't you know and they support foreign football teams.

 

LB

[Fisherman Mike]

Jim, no sane person goes north of the river, they eat babies don't you know and they support foreign football teams.

 

LB

Bit like your average Westham fan then LB. :(

 

Cmon the Irons.....

[lurcherboy]

@ Fisherman Mike.

 

Come on you lions

 

LB

[The Big Red Fox]

Go on the mighty Gers gers