On Memorial Day, thank a pigeon.

Tampa Exotic Pets Examiner
On Memorial Day, thank a pigeon.
May 24, 7:39 AM

Where there are humans, there are companion animals. Even in war zones. During World War One, the 'state of the art' method for sending messages was by pigeon. Some pigeons even earned medals, although I don't know if this impressed the pigeon at all. Historically, camels, mules, and horses have transported soldiers and supplies. Soldiers also kept animals simply because they liked them, including tortoises, doves, larks, thrushes, blackbirds, and rabbits.

Right now in Iraq, despite all our modern technology, we depend on dogs for finding dangers, dolphins to find underwater mines, sea lions to patrol for enemy divers, and pigeons to serve as early warnings of chemical attacks. According to the website (www.travlingdogs.com) the dolphins are smart enough to avoid the mines once they've found them.

The more I study and learn about different species, the more I realize that humans do not have any truly unique capabilities. Everything humans do, at least one other species does, if in its own way. We are not the only species whose conflicts expand until they harm others who were in no way involved in the original conflict. Human war is, however the most extreme example of this behavior.

You want soldiers to have everything that will help them survive the hard work they're doing. Anything that makes their lives a little easier or safer is good. On the other hand, you have to seriously question what the dogs, sea lions, pigeons, and dolphins have to do with human political problems, and why they should be taken from their own business or put at risk over human wars. For now, the best solution I can think of is to 'pay our debts forward'. Protect habitats for sea lions and dolphins and birds. Go out of your way to make life good for domestic animals. Most important, try to find ways to keep all conflicts and the damage they cause under control, instead of letting the conflict control us.

For more info:
www.greatwardifferent.com/Great_War/Animals_at_War/Animals_at_War_00.htm

www.awm.gov.au/kidshq/animals/animals.asp

www.travelingdogs.com/wariniraq.html

Why Pigeons Are Able to Navigate so Superbly!

The Magnetic Organ

In 1975, a researcher noticed that the bacteria he was studying always clustered at the north side of their culture dish. Even if he turned the dish so that they were at the south end and left it overnight, the next morning the bacteria were back at the north side. Each bacterium contained a chain of tiny magnets! The magnets were actually crystals of the natural magnetic mineral magnetite, the original lodestone of preliterate peoples. Somehow, the bacteria absorbed the soluble components from the water and put them together in their bodies as the insoluble crystalline chain. In 1971, another researcher reported on a lengthy series of experiments with pigeons. He found the same crystals of magnetite, as a submicroscopic mass located on the surface of the pigeon's brain. He found that the mass of crystals was full of nerve fibers that seemed to go into the brain. The magnetite crystals "tell" the pigeon's brain the exact direction of the Earth's magnetic field, and the pigeon uses this information to navigate with its amazing precision. The salamander has two separate magnetic navigational systems. One provides a simple compass, so that when traveling "cross country," it will go in a straight line. The other system enables it to return to the exact spot where it was hatched from its egg in order to mate and lay more eggs. The human "magnetic organ" has been found in the posterior wall of the ethmoid sinus, just in front of the pituitary gland. Humans have an innate ability to sense the direction of magnetic north, and this ability can be blocked by placing a bar magnet against a person's forehead for only fifteen minutes! The directional sense is disturbed for as long as two hours after application of the magnet. It is a sense organ that informs the organism of the direction of the Earth's magnetic field. Nature has provided us with yet another organ that also senses the field and extracts even more significant information from it.

Read the entire article here.

Pigeon King Bankruptcy Leaves Birds in Limbo

Latest developments

Pigeon King Bankruptcy Leaves Birds in Limbo

Submitted by Editor on Fri, 06/27/2008 - 10:51am.
Lancaster Farming
Chris Torres
Staff Writer

Information is still sketchy on what will happen to thousands of pigeons in limbo as a result of the bankruptcy of Pigeon King International last week.

The company, which sold expensive pigeon breeding contracts to prospective buyers, filed for bankruptcy in Canada, with its controversial owner, Arlan Galbraith, declaring the company "dead."

Thousands of producers throughout Canada and the U.S., including many in Pennsylvania, are now left with hundreds if not thousands of pigeons they will have to either sell or destroy as a result of the filing. Many others have likely lost thousands of dollars as a result of their investments in the company.

Live bird markets in Pennsylvania have been inundated with calls from producers who want to get rid of their pigeons.

"We’ve been overwhelmed," said Lisa Laucks of Gingrich Animal Supply, Fredericksburg, Pa. She said the company has gotten requests to sell more than 20,000 pigeons to the live bird market. "There are way too many out there," she said.

The company sold multi-year contracts to prospective investors, some in the range of $250,000 or more, for the right to raise pigeons on the farm with the promise they would be paid for their offspring. The company stated it was stocking pigeons for the lucrative squab market and even trademarked a company, Hinterland Squabs, with the hopes of entering into the market.

But critics, including one former salesman for Pigeon King, claimed the company was operating a "Ponzi" scheme, recruiting new investors to pay off old ones, because they didn’t have a clear market for the birds.

Laucks said many of the pigeons she has seen lack the quality and size to be sold into the squab market.

"They are poor quality pigeons," she said. "The information (Galbraith) gave to producers about selling them as squab was not right."

A handful of states, including Iowa, Maryland and Washington, banned the company from doing business in their states.

The Waterloo Regional Police Department in Canada has opened up an inquiry into the company’s dealings.

But even in the face of bankruptcy, Galbraith defended his business practices in a letter sent out to producers last week. He claims the company was in good financial shape, paying out more than $12 million to purchase pigeons from its contract producers in 2007. He also claimed the pigeon business gave him strength in his fight against Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a form of cancer.

He blamed many factors for the company’s downfall, including the weakening economy, high feed costs and increased building costs.

But he placed most of the blame in the hands of his critics, describing them as "fear mongers" and claiming they prevented the company from recruiting new investors.

"Had the fear mongers not targeted us, we would still be a thriving company establishing the first of several squab processing plants. Instead we have been reduced to ashes by fear. Fear is the strongest weapon in the world and it has been used since the beginning of time to manipulate and control people," Galbraith wrote in his letter.

He added that producers are free to do whatever they want with their pigeons and that a bankruptcy trustee has taken over the company’s dealings.

"This means my hands are now tied and that the trustee is responsible for everything," Galbraith wrote.

Apparently, not all of the company’s producers received his letter.

Robert Leister of Wellsboro, Pa., said Monday he was shocked to learn the company filed for bankruptcy. He had just ordered supplies from the company and was expecting a shipment any day. He even received the company’s latest newsletter, which contained a description of a slaughterhouse they were planning on building.

Leister spent $10,000 on 100 pairs of pigeons and thousands more on renovating a building to house the birds. He said the company honored the contract, but claims he has not made enough money to cover his initial investment. Now, he is left with hundreds of pigeons he doesn’t what to do with.

"I guess there will be a lot of pigeons flying around," Leister said.

Noah Peachey, a Plain Sect farmer from Belleville, Pa., said he knows many other producers in his community that made investments in the company. Five of his nephews bought birds from Pigeon King, all of whom, he said, have no idea what they will do now.

"There are people that are very devastated," Peachey said. "What can you do? We tried to warn them."

According to Dr. David Griswold, acting executive director of the state’s Animal Health and Diagnostic Commission, producers can legally incinerate, render or bury their animals, so long as they do it in a "humane fashion."

Griswold said pigeons carry few diseases and are extremely resistance to avian flu.

Chris Ryder, spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, said there are at least six markets in the state exclusively for live birds, all of which are located in the Philadelphia area, that could take the pigeons. But he added the markets can only handle between 200 and 600 birds at a time.

Ryder said there are also other markets in the state that could possibly take some of the pigeons.

Source: Lancaster Farming

Army Retires Carrier Pigeons

ARMY RETIRES CARRIER PIGEONS
Published 7 April, 2008
Spain News

The Army bade farewell to its last carrier pigeons last week when the five members of the Army’s now defunct Carrier Pigeon Section released 300 birds, who promptly returned to their lofts on the army base at Pozuelo de Alarcon on the outskirts of Madrid. They were delivered the next day to the Spanish Pigeon-Fancier Federation. The Spanish Army started using carrier pigeons in 1879 and they played an important role in Jaén during the Civil War. Two hundred Guardia Civil who had joined Franco were holed up with 1,200 people in the Sanctuaury of the Virgen de la Cabeza and survived a 256-day siege by Republican forces thanks to the pigeons who were used to send information about needed food supplies to the Military Government in Government. One bird, No. 46.415, was wounded by a bullet but managed to get her message through before dying. She received a posthumous award for bravery and her corpse still reposes, somewhat desiccated, in the Army Museum.

Harvard Psychologist Dr. B.F. Skinner, Ph.D. Studies of Pigeon Intelligence

Mankind has been teaching birds to talk for thousands of years. Man has also been using birds to deliver messages for just as long. But new research on the intelligence of birds suggests that they might be more intelligent than we suspect.

Researchers studying pigeons have learned that they can read all of the letters of the alphabet and they read them in a way similar to people. Scientists became convinced that pigeons see the world in much the same way as we do when they discovered that pigeons tend to confuse the very same letters that people do. What's more, it took only four months for pigeons to learn to distinguish all the letters of the alphabet. For years pigeons have been used to spot and reject defective items on assembly lines, where they have better records than human beings.

Scientists recently announced that they have discovered that the human brain is laced with tiny magnetic particles made of magnetite. Magnetite is the same mineral that occurs naturally in lodestones. While the particles are distributed throughout the brain, they seem to be more concentrated in the membrane that encloses the brain. Scientists said that they had not seen the particles before because they are so tiny. The smallest are about a millionth of an inch in diameter while the largest are a hundred-thousandth of an inch in diameter. Added together, all the particles in the average brain amount to only one millionth of an ounce.

The particles are identical to those found in many bacteria, pigeons, salmon and whales. The particles help those creatures navigate using the earth's magnetic field. Scientists are not prepared to say that they serve the same purpose in humans. Instead, they continue to study the particles to learn what purpose they serve.

Based on evolutionary theory, scientists naturally conclude that the recognition of abstract forms such as letters of the alphabet requires the larger brain. But this is an assumption and we might be reminded of the work of Harvard psychologist B. F. Skinner who made extensive use of learned behavior using pigeons. Brain size has little to do with intelligence. Real science and experience show this and disprove evolutionary views. The only alternative is that it is the Creator who gives His creatures their intelligence.

Source

Dr. B.F. Skinner, Ph.D.
American Psychology Association:

This month marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of influential behaviorist B.F. Skinner, the first psychologist to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from APA and a key shaper of the evolution and practice of psychology in the modern world.
"[His work on behaviorism] opened a completely new approach to psychology that nobody had ever heard of," says Charles Brewer, PhD, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Psychology at Furman University. "The work he did with pigeons and rats in the laboratory has been applied more widely in real-world applications than any other psychologist's," he adds.

After receiving an undergraduate degree in literature and trying to make a living as a writer in New York City, Skinner went to Harvard University's psychology department for his graduate studies. He worked closely with the university's new department of physiology because he was more interested in animal behavior than in internal mental processes.

Skinner built on the behaviorist theories of Ivan Pavlov and John Watson as he studied the connection between stimuli and observable behavior in rats, which led to his eponymous Skinner box. With its levers and food pellets, the box allowed precise measurement and control of experimental conditions.

Skinner received his PhD from Harvard University in 1931 and spent several years at the University of Minnesota and the University of Indiana, but he returned to Harvard in 1948, remaining there for the rest of his career. During World War II, Skinner convinced the military to fund his research--the famous Project Pigeon--to train pigeons to guide bombs and torpedoes. Skinner favored pigeons over rats because they live longer and he found them easier to train and handle. He believed the methods could be used to train humans--by presenting new subject matter in a series of graduated steps with feedback at each step. Modern computer-based instructional methods are based on his findings.

According to Michael Wertheimer, PhD, emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Colorado at Boulder, "The main spotlight on Skinner's work was during the period from about 1950 to about 1980, but ever since the late 1970s it has shifted to cognitive phenomena and theories." That behavioral analysis like Skinner's has been marginalized in recent years is detrimental to the field, in the view of Donald Dewsbury, PhD, a psychology professor at the University of Florida.

Still, the fact remains that B.F. Skinner is a household name, and his theories will always be an important part of psychology, says Brewer. "If you want to know whom students will be reading about in another 100 years, it will be Skinner," he says.

--M. GREENGRASS
PsychNET®
© 2004 American Psychological Association

Recruit Woody Allen for National Pigeon Day!

Michael Clancy - mclancy@villagevoice.com
Recruit Woody Allen for National Pigeon Day!
Posted by Michael Clancy at 12:30 PM, February 21, 2008

Yo, Woody Allen. The New York Bird Club is calling on you to atone for your slurs against pigeons, by making a personal appearance at what organizers hope will be the first ever National Pigeon Day.

The president of the New York Bird Club Anna Dove wrote to her members:

Please contact the list below and request that Woody Allen make an appearance at National Pigeon Day on Friday, June, 13th (details forthcoming) to make right the horrible disservice he’s responsible for by causing our feral pigeon population which are being persecuted and annihilated because of cavalier remarks like "rats with wings" (Stardust Memories, 1980, written and directed by Woody Allen) .... For nearly 30 years this 'racial slur" has and is presently being perpetuated by the media who use it to ridicule and degrade pigeons so that they have no respect in our society and, therefore, are treated with contempt and hatred by the general public."

Organizers hope to hold the first National Pigeon Day on June 13th to mark the anniversary of the death of Cher Ami, a homing pigeon credited with saving the lives of 194 U.S. infantrymen in France during WWI.

The impetus to create a National Pigeon Day came as part of the backlash against two City Council bills seeking to curb the pigeon population.

C'mon, Woody, it's the right thing to do.
--------------------------------------------
Naomi Semeniuk on Woody Allen"

"Woody Allen and His Derision of Nature"

Woody Allen has given the cinema world many creative moments of unstoppable laughter and cinematic satirical musings that have won him accolades, but Woody Allen isn't one to get involved with nature or any life threatening environmental issue.

No question this man has the versatility to make hilarious witty films about the absurd inanities and ludicrousness of human nature that makes audiences laugh so hard that tears unfold. He was born to make movies and that's what he does best. Development beyond that is NOT in Woody's life's script, nor is pigeon reverence nor is divine solidarity with nature nor is the conservation and preservation of all species and their protection.

Allen also has the promethean ability to make a dark morbid film noir like "Matchpoint" in which the protagonist literally gets away with murder and acts of the most depraved evil. Films like these mirror his darker side which I believe he explores through the genre of his films as he magnifies and explores his inner demons through his art. I sometimes squirm unapprovingly at such films because they send a dead wrong message. Even though life imitates art and vice versa, no villain should get away if there's any justice in the universe and its mysterious forces yet we see this happening, and each time it tugs and gnaws at us with it's jarring effect throwing us off balance as we grasp for answers that aren't there.

Woody is as non involved with nature as severely autistic patients would be about the world around them. Many churches and clergy in our society are also autistic zombies in denial about the rest of the beings on the planet and elsewhere when it comes to the suffering plights of these beings. Woody like so many billions out there are nature's self made autistic non supporters and non involvers. They have nothing to say or feel about any natural animal species, nor do they care about Larsen shelves melting in the Arctic or the disappearance of 165 species and counting.

In Allen's neighborhood there's a pet farm with live farm animals but that's a place he would never visit. The black painted walls of Elaine's, a restaurant which gives me the hee bee gee bee creeps is the hangout which has made its mark of distinction because it's Woody's hangout. If Dracula was an interior designer he'd design "Elaine's" as the restaurant of his trademark. The ghoulishness of Elaine's restaurant lingers in my memory so that one visit there was enough for me. I expected Dracula to walk in any minute. Being there was a dining experience fit for the color blinded that only see the black and white colors of the earth and no other colors of the planet come into focus with them. I'm stupefied as to why a creative mind would want to dine in an artless ghoulish atmosphere such as Elaine's. I'd prefer the Dr. Jekell and Mr. Hyde restaurant because at least it has zany humor and unpredictability made to laugh at oneself.

I recall how Mr. Allen once said that when he went to the country he really couldn't stand it because he really can't stand anything having to do with nature and that accounts for his nefarious ignorant statement describing pigeons as winged rats in his 1980 movie "Stardust Memories". I don't know if Allen would know the difference between a rat or a swan or vice versa. Allen sees no beauty in anything outside of his one dimensional world view purview. It's the female specie that he's taken a fancy to at the moment that he wishes to devour and devour he has. His latest film "Cassandra's Crossing" came and went with the wisp of the wind. That was also a dark film with no laughter in it and characters trying to beat the system with their lack of moral convictions.

Woody broke Mia Farrow's heart after a long time relationship with her when Mia Farrow found nude photos of her then young adopted daughter, who Allen is currently married to. Their world toppled and Farrow and Allen went their separate ways permanently. Unlike the clinging long face lugubrious looking wives' of fallen politicians who are disgraced as a result of their own uncontrollable boudoir carnal vices and getting caught doing them, Mia has been a woman very much in control of herself and has held her head up high with a smashing tenacious dignity since she doesn't need to hold on to Allen's coattails of movie power, or any power for any reason. Her power is developing in quantum leaps forward as it gets more polished and defined from thinking and flying out of the box like a pigeon navigating the earth's magnetic fields in a headlong dynamic flight pattern. Mia has thrown the book at Woody dropping this, the man in her life, like a piece of rotten rancid food that's been in the refrigerator for too long. Mia Farrow has become the world's spokesperson and UN emissary for the humanitarian crisis in Darfur and has campaigned for an end to the holocaust in Darfur.

Woody never married Mama Mia, and when Farrow said that Allen molested their seven year old at the time this accusation was dismissed and put in a back burner. Woody's depth of field is like having only a frontal vision of the world without the peripheral views and the views from beyond those views. He has never been known to walk with a dog or even own one as far as I know. Can you imagine Allen going to rescue any animal let alone a pigeon? Allen would never have the guts to hold a news conference on catching bird netters, stopping pigeon hunts or any other form of blood splattered animal canned hunts. His Hollywood heart does not bleed for them. He would never lend himself to any outside cause except the success of his cinematic creations.

Moviemakers have to be responsible for what's on the screen and the more they steer themselves into those unexplored magnetic fields that pigeons understand so well, the more film makers will diversify and make precise statements through the power of film about social and environmental issues. I would think that Woody Allen would have an apoplectic conniption if a pigeon landed on his shoulder. He's nature's buffoon lampooning at himself and blurring the wonders of nature.

"Pigeon Genius" the National Geographic Special is a knockout documentary on the fascinating vagaries and natural gifts of pigeons. This ornithological tour de force of a documentary seen on the National Geographic Channel recently should be included in every school curriculum and also in the churches whose congregation and clergy are also autistic zombies where the only souls that matter are always predictably human. With these stale zombie minds all around us, there's never a synergy with all the dynamics of nature and the universe, but this documentary about the film "Pigeon Genius" is electrifying and an epiphany for many who never knew the wonders of pigeons.

In his position Allen, a long time resident of the upper east side where I also come from, is one to never be a green visionary for the neighborhood. Saving a tree or birds or any non human species is not in his train of thought. I think he'd be terrified of our fine feathered friends and he'd cringe and avoid them with an adamant passion even if he saw one in pain. It takes one with a spiritual impetus and spiritual intelligence and foresight to save a helpless animal in the street, but in Allen's case it's all about an ego trapped in a Petri dish grabbing its one cell and multiplying it tens of millions of times over and over again waiting to say "cut" or "print" on his films. That door inside him that's eternally shut has never been opened to venture outside himself to seek something more majestic than himself.

If the mind is like a parachute, and that it works better when its opened, than so is the dramatic paradigm shift in the mind of the pro nature-pro animal activist whose doors within are opened to a matrix of nature that's bleeding and in need of those minds that are opened like parachutes but keep their brains in touch with those feathered and furry creatures everywhere in the planet who are crying out for help. This is not Woody's world. The earth cinema circle is also not his world. We know what to expect when we go to a Woody Allen film. Humans inhabit the world. No, Woody Allen isn't about to fight for humanitarian causes nor climate change causes or green causes or animal abuse causes. His focus is on self gratification and ego stratification and on to the next movie project.

As in so many of his films Woody Allen is portraying himself and the inner fragments of himself are scattered out there on the giant screens in every one of his films. Lately his direction of his two recent films "Matchpoint" and Cassandra's Crossing", has Allen in a film noir state of mind where his darker side has been mirrored. Woody Allen is very much the pre-eminent nerd who made it in the film world but one who cannot shape shift into a crusader of something other than his latest movie project. Like so many of his elk, Woody's world is the one world where he's succeeded and continues to succeed. There're no other world other than the one he creates on camera and off camera and they're no other beings or subplots or major plots other than the females he can have and can't have. It's an endless insatiable quest for the insatiable conquest of his carnal giddy mind. Woody does not have eyes for the causes outside other than his cinematic agendas and his private agendas. Woody in some ways is just like the main character in Lolita where the mature man played by Jeremy Irons and the late Peter Sellers has a fatalistic manic addiction for beautiful little girls. Now years later, his wife formerly his adopted daughter, goes everywhere with him. Mia Farrow on the other hand turned to the humanitarian crisis in Darfur and made that cause her overarching social cause for justice. She's championed this cause for the UN and the world and has been a Hollywood whistleblower for the atrocities that are happening there.

In one of his recent movies "Matchpoint" the protagonist gets away with the premeditated bloody murder of his paramour, and in this movie Mr. Allen sends a message of societal unaccountability which happens when civilizations collapse. The Best Bird Club wants Woody Allen to see the error of his ways since he coined the damning phrase "winged rats" in his 1980 movie "Stardust Memories" and to redeem himself and make peace with the nature he abhors so much, but unfortunately it's not about to happen. London's "Save the Pigeons" and other organizations like them are fighting for the lives of these precious birds who are always in the line of fire. The bird wars with the human adversaries making war against these most graceful, beautiful indomitable spirits that all pigeons possess must be dealt with.

We hope that Governor Patterson will take up the gauntlet and become aware that the presence of bird netters ravaging our neighborhoods and butchering pigeons for black market businesses should be one of the priority issues that needs to be on the frontline battleground of black market atrocities and businesses that need to be crushed for good.

Some time ago I took it upon myself to write a snail mail letter to ex Governor Spitzer about the escalating business of bird netting in New York State to which I never received a reply since whoring and selling New York down the path of perdition and degradation was at the top of his agenda. Let's hope the tide will turn a full 360 degrees and that our wildlife will be saved and the netters will be netted out of business for good.

Auction Recalls War Hero Pigeons

Auction recalls wartime pigeons
1/4/2008,
By JILL LAWLESS

The Associated Press
LONDON (AP)

They were a secret airborne force who worked undercover during World War II. Those who were discovered were shot — or eaten by falcons.

A London auction this month has revived memories of the war's animal heroes, including pigeons who flew dangerous missions to bring messages from behind enemy lines.
Several pigeon portraits from the collection of a wartime bird-breeder are included in the "Gentleman's Library" sale, an eclectic array of items being offered at Bonhams auction house Jan. 15.

The paintings are owned by Jack Lovell, a pigeon breeder who was approached by British intelligence services in 1939 to provide birds for covert operations. The avian unit, overseen by military intelligence, was housed in secret pigeon lofts in the coastal city of Dover.

Pigeons' homing instinct make them excellent messengers, and more than 200,000 served with British forces during the war. Thousands were placed in containers fitted with parachutes and dropped by British bombers behind enemy lines, where they were picked up by Resistance fighters or sympathetic locals and used to send messages back to England.

Others worked as double agents, fitted with tags identical to those worn by Nazi-owned pigeons in the hope they would be given coded messages which they could bring to British code-breaking headquarters at Bletchley Park, near London.

"When it came to the D-Day landings a lot of soldiers were sent off with a pigeon which they kept under their coats, because there was complete radio silence," Bonhams spokeswoman Charlotte Wood said Friday. Those who survived brought back intelligence about German gun positions on the Normandy beaches.

It was dangerous work. The Germans deployed falcons to pick off the British birds. Domestic predators were also a threat.

Thirty-two pigeons were awarded the Dickin medal, Britain's highest award for animal valor. They include an American bird named GI Joe, credited with flying 20 miles in 20 minutes with a message that stopped U.S. planes bombing an Italian town occupied by British troops.
The portraits at Bonhams, painted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, depict champion racing pigeons owned by Jule Janssen, a Belgian breeder whose birds were the ancestors of Lovell's wartime flock. They are estimated to sell for between $600 and $1,400 each.

The sale also includes a silver candlestick inscribed to Jet, a German shepherd awarded the Dickin medal for finding survivors in the rubble of bombed London buildings.

Bonhams said the auction features "a wide range of typical accessories for a gentleman's library," including furniture, bronzes, busts, lamps, walking canes and humidors.

Other items set to go under the hammer: a tiger skin rug with mounted head; a Boy Scout hat once owned by the movement's founder, Robert Baden-Powell; a pair of glass cucumber straighteners and a lock of hair belonging to Catherine Parr, sixth wife of Henry VIII.

Bonhams director Robert Bleasdale said the items were intended to reflect a sense of "comfort, nostalgia, the unusual, fun."

"It's more of a gentleman's indulgence, really," he said.

Related Articles:
Photo: WWII Pigeons Mounted With Cameras Took Aerial Photos
GPS-Equipped Pigeons Enlisted as Pollution Bloggers (October 31, 2006)
Video: D-Day Plane Returns to France (November 21, 2007)

Video: Pigeons in Combat

War-HERO Pigeon Paddy is Remembered

War-hero pigeon is remembered. A County Antrim pigeon who received a medal for his war-time bravery is being remembered at a special ceremony in England.

Paddy the pigeon was bred in Moyleen, Carnlough.

He was decorated for being the first bird to fly back with news of the D-Day landings in Normandy in World War II.

Paddy is one of 62 animals who received the PSDA Dickin Medal, the animal equivalent of the Victoria Cross, for bravery in the war.

Like many homing pigeons, he was "volunteered" by his owners in response to an appeal by the government to support the war effort.

As radio signals could compromise operations, carrier pigeons were used to ferry important messages back to Britain. The pigeons formed the National Pigeon Service.

Paddy even had his own number - NPS.43.9451.

The Germans rumbled the importance of the winged courier service and stationed a flight of hawks at Calais to intercept the Allied pigeons.

Paddy, however, wasn't only a brave pigeon, he was also incredibly quick.

He received the PDSA Dickin Medal on 1 September 1944 for recording the quickest time to return with information from the D-Day landings at Normandy on 6 June that year while he was serving with the RAF.

Dogs, horses, pigeons and a cat received medals because they helped save thousands of lives in the war.

They are buried at the PDSA animal cemetery in Redbridge, Ilford and all are being remembered at a special ceremony.

Veteran military personnel who served with the animals will stage a march past and a bugler will sound the Last Post.

A fly-past by pigeons will commemorate the 32 birds who were honoured for their bravery.
Actress Jenny Seagrove is to formally reopen the cemetery. Restoration work was carried out over the past year with the help of a £50,000 grant from the Big Lottery Fund's People's Millions.

Paddy's medal was sold to a pigeon fancier for almost £7,000 at an auction in Dublin in September 1999.

Story from BBC NEWS:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/7141013.stm

Published: 2007/12/13 07:21:39 GMT© BBC MMVII