How can I catch a stray pigeon?

[JJchiknshak]

There is a stray pigeon hanging around my sister's place. They have a small flock of meat chickens, and I think it is living off of what it can find.

I'm sure it belongs to someone for 2 reasons, 1 it has an orange band on it's foot, and it's not totally afraid of me. It acts like chickens do... just keeping out of reach.
It's a nice looking bird seems healthy. Curious how I can catch it.

How can I find out who it belongs to?

Thanks.

 

[nzpouter]

ever saw the cartoon where they use a cage, a stick and a piece of long string...? It actually does work.

 

[fowlsessed]

That does really work and is about the cheapest and simplest trap you could make, just get a cardboard box or something similar and prop it up on one side with a stick attached to a string and take the string inside a window or door and bait the trap, when he goes under to get the bait you just yank the string and it lets the box drop. One word of caution though with this, if your box is too light then it may take to long for it too fall and he'll jump out from under it, but if you make it to heavy then you could hurt the bird if it happens to fall on the birds back. If you want some thing almost as easy and effective look up "arapuca bird trap" on you tube, that trap works while your on BYC chilling. I've made a few before and they work. As for the bird itself, it's probably a lost racing homer, you can look up online how to read his band when you catch him and that will help you find his owner.

 

[3forfree]

When I raised rollers I had a racing homer show up one day and did what fowlsessed suggested about reading the band and located a local racing club. After doing that I contacted the owner and he told me to keep it as he didn't want it if it couldn't come back to it's own home. I found out where he lived and released it and watched it fly into his drop box.