Birds 09 - Messenger Pigeons Poem by Unnikrishnan Sivasankara Menon

Messenger Pigeons

A special breed of pigeons
used in Egypt since 3000 BC
to carry messages written
and attached to their legs.

Messenger pigeons, also called
homing pigeons, navigate
to their home post with the help of
nervous system 'magnetoreception'.

They are guided by instincts and
Earth's magnetic field to ‘return'
to their ‘home post', so they are
often called ‘Homing Pigeons'.

By the turn of Christian Era
use of mail pigeons had become
common across the world, found
useful in wartime communication.

The breed of pigeons, derived from
the wild rock dove, selectively bred
for its ability to find its way home
over extremely long distances.

Mail pigeons fly at a speed of over
a hundred kilometres per hour,
flying distances upto thousand
eight hundred kilometres recorded.

At times when telegram and phones
did not exist and internet was not even
heard of, messenger Pegions reared
for human communication, now no use.