Helping pigeons with injured feet. Injured pigeon needs rescue.

My friend Barry, who worked in the same building as me and is also a pigeon lover, took over the feeding of the ferals when I retired. Very occasionally he will find an injured pigeon and telephone me for help. He has been transfered at his own request to another location so I promised to look after "his" birds.

One day last week, just before his last day, he telephoned me to say he had found two pigeons in need: a squeaker that was crouched outside the bank and an adult that had probably been injured by a car and was lying in the middle of the road.

When I went to pick them up I found the adult lying down in the box with its head slumped and had to warn Barry that it was in a bad way and would probably not make it.

When I got home I put both pigeons in my "hospital" in the attic. The adult went into the proper, heated, hospital cage where he fell into a deep sleep lying on his side. When I went to check him later he was bright eyed and fully recovered!

Today I released the adult pigeon. I took him to the top floor of the St Giles car park and opened his carrier. He stepped out , took in his surroundings in seconds and flew off strongly, curving with some other pigeons to land on the roof of City Hall. Very satisfactory! I wish that all rescues were as little trouble as that one turned out to be...and there was me worrying that he would be dead before I got him home!

I met a friend for lunch and then did the rounds, feeding the flocks at 4 locations. There was a pigeon with its legs tied together with thread. I managed to cut off all the thread and then did the same for another pigeon in the market place. Unfortunately when a third landed with its legs still undamaged but tied together someone scared them off (probably accidentally). I was a bit concerned to hear someone say "I didn't think there were pigeons here anymore"...why not???? I decided to throw what was left in my bag down into the Memorial Gardens, which have been closed to the public for something like 5 years while they fall into disrepair awaiting a promised facelift.....sadly there was a pigeon there that had to lie down to eat because of the thread round his feet and I couldn't get to him I will have to try to catch him, but at least I know that he has a full crop.

Cynthia

I'm so sorry to hear about the string injured pijjies, Cynthia.

There seems to be a lot of them in your area. Do you have any idea what might contribute to this?

to you for taking over Barry's feeding route.

Cindy

This is awful. Why would there be so many with the same problem in one area? The poor things. I hope you are able to catch that one you mentioned. You'll have to keep us updated on that. I wish you luck.

NiteOwl wrote:

This is awful. Why would there be so many with the same problem in one area? The poor things. I hope you are able to catch that one you mentioned. You'll have to keep us updated on that. I wish you luck.

I understand it is a huge problem in the san Francisco Bay area.

I don't know why, but a large percentage of the pigeons have their feet tangled in black cotton thread. There must be reams of the stuff about but I have no idea where it is or why it is there.

Today I went to feed the pigeons again, there were a number that had already lost toes or a foot . One fairly young one was holding a string-injured foot up, I tried to catch it but it just wouldn't get close enough. I had to settle for liberating two other pigeons from fairly recent thread that hadn't done any damage yet.

I am always expecting criticism from the general public, but the only person that showed any interest was an oriental gentleman with a child in a push chair, who was eager to have the child enjoy the sight of pigeons. Very heartwarming!

I was also gratified to see shredded bread and biscuits at various locations, presumably deliberately put down for the pigeons.

Cynthia

I was told, that in the SF Bay area, most of the string injuries were form the garment district. The

birds would get the string and thread from material reminents that had been thrown into garbage

dumpsters. As the garment busainess has been out sorced to other countries, the string injuries have

decreased.