Strange looking wild pigeon-PICS

Sometimes I don't know if y'all are trying to be funny or not, but you crack me up.
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A few years ago I had a feral pigeon we had caught. I even hauled it up from Florida to Missouri without a problem and kept him for a couple of months before letting him go. Feral pigeons can be kept.

We caught this guy because he was on death's door. He was huddled up on the ledge of a dock, soaking wet with an oozing eye. I just picked him up and carried him into the car while the guy I was traveling with stared on in utter disbelief (and a little horror).

We managed to keep him for three days inside a hotel without getting caught, then brought him to a posh golf resort hotel for a convention we were going at and let him sleep on the sink. He spent a lot of time staring at himself in the mirror and drinking filtered water.

After we got up here from Florida I kept him in a bird cage for a few weeks before we let him go. By then he had figured out how to eat food (with one eye missing he lost his depth perception and had to learn how to judge distance and whatnot again, so he had trouble eating), had fattened up and was doing more pacing than cooing.

To answering the cooing question, pigeons and doves are almost identical. They are from the same family (Columbidae) and the same order (Columbiformes). Their Latin name, Columba livia, means "a dove the color of lead." More likely than not, a lot of the doves in the Bible were actually pigeons, especially since the words were used interchangeably for a long time.

So...long answer to your question - yes, they coo. My white pigeons look like large white doves, with the same funky flying noises and cooing you hear with doves.

If you want to catch a feral pigeon use the old box-and-stick trap. Put some bread under a box and prop it up using a stick. Tie a string to the stick and hide. When the pigeon goes under the box to eat the bread pull the string, which releases the stick and drops the box.

Just remember, like any animal living out in the wild they can carry diseases. I recommend dusting them for mites immediately. These are also animals that have never been handled by people, so while they are extremely friendly, it may take a long, long time before they calm down enough to be considered a pet.
 
Give them to meh! I love pigeons...(gets out net and grabs coat) I'll be back


**30 minutes later**

NEVER catch pigeons...especially ones with the guns!!(looks though blinds only to see a gun sticking at the window) I'm scared now!

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What a beautiful Brown Grizzle feral.

Ferals are not a native species, so you should not get in trouble for catching/keeping them(besides the "ewwws" from people who consider them flying rats....).

Ferals come in pretty much any colour imagenable. I acctually took a indigo-velvet feral I caught and put it in my homer flock since I could not find anyone with this colour, makes beautiful babies.
I keep seeing creams, opals, Indigo spreads and andalusian blue spreads being fed at our feed store...... the guy keeps assuring me I can catch as many as I want but I just have no Idea how..... I usually just steal the babies out of the nests and handfeed them. I would so love to have those colours.....
 
I swear by the box method. When I was little I used it to catch all sorts of wild birds. Sit down with a book and read while waiting for them to walk under the box. If you want to catch multiple pigeons at once use a larger/longer box and put most of the good food at the very back. If you don't leave catching a pigeon on your first day I'll be surprised
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Tip: Have a lid of some sort below the food. That way when the box shuts all you have to do is secure the lid (duct tape
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, gently flip the box over, and carry off your treasure.
 

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