Pigeon Games

Life in Christian County, Kentucky... More About Birds and Animals...

Our homemade pigeon trap

We made a pigeon trap today. As you can see, it's nothing fancy. It's just a box with a flap cut in the up-side (that is, in the former bottom of the box.)

The idea is that you prop the box up with a stick. When the bird goes under the box to eat the grain, you pull the stick out with the attached string. The box drops over the bird. Then you reach through the flap and hold the bird.

A helper then lifts the box a little and somehow, between the two of you, the bird is put into a cage. My idea is that we should slide something flat under the box and carry it to an enclosed area before making the transfer. We haven't reached that step yet because we haven't caught the bird.

He came close to the box a few times but he didn't go under it. He is finding fallen seed from the feeders and also the rice we threw on the ground for him yesterday. He doesn't seem interested in the grain under the box.

Tomorrow morning, I will rake that area and try to remove some of the extraneous food. Maybe then he'll be more interested in the food in the trap. I hope we can catch him soon because I have other things to do!

This afternoon, he was sitting on the roof (photo below.) I don't know where he is roosting tonight. I don't think he's in the tree where he spent the last two nights.

Dennis and his brother Steve had pigeons when they were kids. They didn't have racing pigeons, but they had rollers and tumblers (named for their distinctive flight patterns), kings, and fantails. Grandpa Netz fixed a pigeon loft in the barn, and the boys took care of them every morning before school.

That's why Dennis immediately realized this stray was a lost homing pigeon. I had no clue. I'd have guessed the bird was banded for some sort of scientific study.

Related post: A Pigeon Is Visiting Us

Lonely bird

Technorati tags: homing pigeon, lost pigeon, pigeon trap

Ferrell's Hamburgers Advisory

Life in Christian County, Kentucky... Life in The Upper South...

If you are interested in Hopkinsville, KY, you might like the Ferrell's Hamburgers wallpaper available at Hoptown Hall right now. It's a free download, compliments of Dr. McCubbin, our great local opthalmologist and forum administrator.

Related post: Friday night in the Heartland

Technorati tags: Hopkinsville, Hopkinsville KY, Ferrell's Hamburgers, hamburgers, diner,

A Pigeon Is Visiting Us

Life in Christian County, Kentucky... More About Birds and Animals...

I'm excited about seeing a pigeon in our yard today. There are several reasons why this is a noteworthy event:

• In 17 years, we've never seen a pigeon in our yard before.
• The pigeon is extremely tame.
• The pigeon has a red band on one leg and a green band on the other leg.
• The pigeon is roosting in the tree outside our living room window tonight.

We think he is a homing pigeon that is supposed to be in a race but has lost his way. I don't know when he arrived, but I first saw him about 2 p.m. He was looking for dropped seed under the bird feeder.

We gave him some water in a dish and sprinkled some sunflower seeds on the ground for him. They are probably not his favorite food, but he ate them.

After pecking around for a while, he nestled against a tree trunk and fluffed up his feathers. He rested there for a couple hours. Then he ate some more. Finally he flew up into the tree late in the afternoon. He's sitting on a little bump on a branch about 25 feet above the ground.

We were thinking about trying to catch him tomorrow to read his legbands, but now I don't know if we should. I've read a page about lost homing pigeons that says the owners want the bird to fly on. Food should be offered just for a couple days, they say.

At least, now I do know what to feed him -- popcorn (unpopped) and rice (uncooked). We'll try that tomorrow.

The pigeon is very jaunty looking -- beautiful, really. He has an irridescent neck, nice markings, and a very smooth set of gray feathers.

I didn't get his picture while he was on the ground. I tried to photograph him in the tree with poor results. So if you want to see what he really looks like, LeggNet has a good photo that looks a lot like our pigeon.

UPDATE (Sunday afternon): We didn't see him this morning and we thought maybe he had flown on. After church, I drove to Murray, KY, to see Keely but my husband came home. He called to tell me that the pigeon was back.

I bought some bird food that has cracked corn and millet in it, and we will try to lure him into a trap with it tomorrow.

Then maybe we can see if any information is on his bands and contact the Pigeon 911 group, as has been suggested in the comments.

There are still several hours of daylight, but he has already roosted high in a tree in the yard.

Pigeon roosting on a bump on the tree branch

The pigeon saga continues: Pigeon Games

Related website: U.S. Navy instructions on carrier pigeon care (from 1912)

Technorati tags: homing pigeon, lost pigeon, pigeon race

Prairie Wildflowers in Kingman County, Kansas

All In The Family... Life in Kansas... More About Trees and Plants

My brother Dwight amid wildflowers (with Sammie and Hank)

Gaillardia and other wildflowers

A variety of sunflower?

Catclaw sensitive briar

Blanket flower,spiderwort, etc.

Just today, I was thinking about the wildflowers on my brother's ranch in Kansas. This time of the year, especially if there has been good rain, they bloom gloriously.

Then one of those strange little coincidences happened. In today's mail, I found a package from my sister-in-law Kathy. It held a CD titled, "Kansas Wildflowers 2007."

I am sharing Kathy's beautiful photos since many of us haven't been on the Kansas prairie to enjoy the flowers during the last few weeks.

Dwight and Kathy live southwest of Wichita, Kansas, in Kingman County. Their place is on the extreme edge of a unique area that's called the Red Hills (or also the Gyp Hills, for the gypsum deposits.) The Red Hills and all of Kansas are in the Great Plains, in the shortgrass prairie region.

South central Kansas has had some rain this spring, and the flowers show it. I hope you'll click on some of these photos and look at the large version so you can see how the flowers stretch into the distance.

The red flowers, gaillardia, are often called blanket flower because of their similarity to brightly colored Indian blankets.

Some of the blue flowers are tradescantia, commonly known as spiderwort. They are related to daylilies. I don't know where I got the name "snakeflower" for them, but that's what I called them until I learned the proper name.

The flowers that look like pink daisies are purple coneflowers and those that look like yellow daisies are some kind of sunflower -- or so I would call them. Catclaw, one of the lavender flowers, is related to the mimosa tree.

If I'm wrong on any of this, feel free to straighten me out, and if you know some of the other names, please let me know.

Purple coneflower and more

Gaillardia (blanket flower) and more

More wildflowers whose name I don't know!

Low-growing wildflowers on Kathy's lawn

Technorati tags: Kansas, wildflowers, wild flowers, Kansas wildflowers, shortgrass prairie

Me? Band?

My Various Hobbies... Not Easily Classified...

As Mom has said, I was in choir for all of high school, and also for two years in middle school (Sixth grade choir was not offered at the school I attended). Also, I took piano lessons for longer than I care to think of. So you can say that I've had musical experience.

Taurus was fixing the computer of some friends of ours a couple of days ago, and I was over hanging out in the meantime. In typical me fashion, I was singing to something in my head, and the friends we were visiting overheard me. They decided executively that I should sing back up in their band. They later also made the executive decision that I should play my lap harp on several of the songs.

So, apparently I'm in a band. And by band, I don't mean like six teenagers who practice in their parent's garage. This band actually gets gigs and payed for stuff and such. It's even a pretty good band. The songs are pretty decent and all original.

And I'm going to be on a CD. Like a real CD. So I have kind of mixed feelings about this whole thing. While I have spent a lot of my life singing, there is a difference between singing in a choir of 120 people, and singing with one other person. Also, there is the nagging fear that I am not doing it right/somehow offending the lead singer/guitarist/author (all of which are the same person).

However, it is pretty cool. And, I'm trying to figure out how to put this on my resume, even though I'm not really sure what this has to do with virology. Unless they decide that they want to throw a lab musical, in which case I'm the woman for the job.

Technorati tags: backup singer, music student, serendipity