Free Republic

[snip] The curious incident happened in Columbus Park... The park itself is one of the more intriguing gathering spots in Manhattan. All day, elderly Chinese men play a Chinese version of chess as crowds gather to watch. There are other clusters of Chinese women playing card games. Little English is spoken. [snip] It was among this crowd that a burly white man in a blue shirt sat down. He threw some crumbs on the ground in front of him and almost immediately, a flock of pigeons was at his feet. Then, with a quick thrust of his right arm, he...

Pigeon's epic journey back to her owner Last Updated: 2:42AM BST 19/06/2008 A racing pigeon has flown back to her original owner, 10 years after he gave the bird away. 'Boomerang' turned up at the home of pigeon-fancier Dino Rearden on Father's Day, a decade after he gave her to a friend. The 13-year-old pigeon had already made a name for herself in 1998, when she made a 1,200 mile trip from a pigeon breeder in Algericas, Spain, back to Mr Rearden's home in Skipton, North Yorks. The 76-year-old, who bred pigeons for the RAF during the Second World War,...

SHOOTING TAKES HIT: Public shooting opportunities in national forests are disappearing, and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill Ritter proposes to do something about it. Ritter says several previously isolated forest shooting ranges have been shut down because of homebuilding nearby, and shooters have been forced into dispersed shooting activities. Now the Forest Service is considering closing down some dispersed-shooting areas because of development and increased non-shooting recreational use. Ritter says he would make recreational shooting improvements a priority if he is elected governor. He wants Colorado to take the lead in establishing more shooting ranges, beginning with a pilot program he...

The abandoned monkey who has found love with a pigeon Sept. 13, 2007 They're an odd couple in every sense but a monkey and a pigeon have become inseparable at an animal sanctuary in China. The 12-week-old macaque - who was abandoned by his mother - was close to death when it was rescued on Neilingding Island, in Goangdong Province. After being taken to an animal hospital his health began to improve but he seemed spiritless - until he developed a friendship with a white pigeon. The blossoming relationship helped to revive the macaque who has developed a new lease...

Often derided as disease-ridden “rats with wings,” pigeons are little loved by many urban dwellers. Sakura Adachi, a furniture designer in Milan, is not among the haters; she admires pigeons for their ability to create private nooks in public spaces. That avian talent inspired her to create a bookshelf called the Cave, which allows readers to curl up in a form-fitting seat, surrounded by their beloved books. The Cave features a blob-shaped, human-size recess at its base. Sitting in this upholstered niche is supposed to make a reader feel secluded — akin to being lost among a college library’s dusty...

This pigeon has micro-electrodes planted in its brain at the Shandong Science and Technology University in Qingdao, east China. Scientists say they have succeeded in controlling the flight of pigeons with micro electrodes planted in their brains. Professor Su Xuecheng said : "It's the first successful experiment on a pigeon in the world. "We hope the technology can be of practical use in the future."

Bird-brained China scientists learn to fly pigeons Tue Feb 27, 12:53 AM ET BEIJING (Reuters) - Scientists in eastern China say they have succeeded in controlling the flight of pigeons with micro electrodes planted in their brains, state media reported on Tuesday. ADVERTISEMENT Scientists at the Robot Engineering Technology Research Centre at Shandong University of Science and Technology said ther electrodes could command them to fly right or left or up or down, Xinhua news agency said. "The implants stimulate different areas of the pigeon's brain according to signals sent by the scientists via computer, and force the bird to...

SUFFOLK - A naked man clutching a pigeon was arrested over the weekend after beating the bird against a car. Two Whaleyville residents had just pulled into their driveway Friday night when Juan Lopez, 30, of Kellam Road in Virginia Beach came up and repeatedly pounded the pigeon on the car, police said. The people got out of the car and went to a neighbor's house, where they called the police.

A worker at a Downtown steam plant who brought a pellet rifle to work to shoot pigeons was mistaken for a sniper Wednesday afternoon, prompting police to shut down part of the city for about two hours. Richard Wills, of Dawson, Fayette County, a maintenance worker in the Pittsburgh Allegheny County Thermal building, brought the weapon to work to chase pigeons away from broken windows on the building's roof, said PACT President Robert Fazio. Someone apparently spotted him - and his rifle - when he stepped out onto the roof for a few seconds, Fazio said. At least three witnesses...

Robin Williams has presented a Peace Plan that will work. gotta love Robin Williams...... Even if he's nuts! Leave it to Robin Williams to come up with the perfect plan. What we need now is for our UN Ambassador to stand up and repeat this message. Robin Williams' plan...(Hard to argue with this logic!) I see a lot of people yelling for peace but I have not heard of a plan for peace. So, here's ! one plan." 1) "The US will apologize to the world for our "interference" in their affairs, past &present. You know, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Tojo,...

22 July 2005 PIGEON IS HOME NINE DAYS LATE A RACING pigeon sent on a nine-hour flight home took nine days - and even then needed lifts in a helicopter and courier's van to complete its trip. The bird was released at Chermont in France and should have simply headed straight across the English Channel for its loft in Bridlington, East Yorks. Instead, it flew through Belgium, Holland and Denmark before eventually flopping on to the deck of Lomond North Sea oil rig off Aberdeen. After being stranded on the platform for a week because of fog, it was sent...

A pig of a pigeon by BILL MOULAND, Daily Mail 08:59am 1st March 2005 He flies through the air with the greatest of difficulty and the bird table gives an audible sigh when he lands on it. Meet Hercules, the bird who puts the pig in wood pigeon. Since he arrived in photographer Chris Balcombe's garden, none of the other wild birds has had a chance to sample the peanuts on offer. Hercules simply hoovers them up and sits there waiting for more. Mr Balcombe, 44, gave him his name because of his size, strength and the fact he...

Papers have been flapping with new headlines about the latest in a long line of alleged dinosaur ancestors of birds. This one is claimed to be a sensational dinosaur with feathers on its hind legs, thus four ‘wings’.1 This was named Microraptor gui—the name is derived from words meaning ‘little plunderer of Gu’ after the paleontologist Gu Zhiwei. Like so many of the alleged feathered dinosaurs, it comes from Liaoning province of northeastern China. It was about 3 feet (1 meter) long from its head to the tip of its long tail, but its body was only about the size...

LONDON, (AFP) - A Royal Air Force pigeon who delivered the first news of Allied success from the Normandy beaches on D-Day is to be recognised as the greatest pigeon to have served his country. Gustav, a grizzle cock pigeon, known to the Air Ministry as codename NPS.42.31066, will be honoured in a special London exhibition at the Imperial War Museum's 60th anniversary show. During his mission, Gustav was reportedly buffeted by a headwind of up to 30 miles per hour (48 kilometres per hour) and his view of the Sun -- his primary means of navigation -- was obscured...

The roof of a house in Chile has collapsed under the weight of accumulated pigeon droppings. Ana María Bustos said the roof crashed down into her living room in Santiago because pigeons had been using it as a roost. She said she ended up with around a year's worth of pigeon droppings on her floor. Mrs Bustos added there were also feathers and worms everywhere, and that the smell was disgusting. She told newspaper La Cuarta that her neighbours are now worried the same thing will happen to them. Residents are asking the authorities to allow them to eradicate the...

LONDON - When Glen and Melissa Brown's home got too crowded, their son flew the coop — er, to the coop. They fitted their pigeon loft as a bedroom for their son, complete with bed, TV, video and DVD player. On Friday, the couple refused a request by local officials to pull down the loft, a wooden structure which was built without permission and which social workers say is unsafe for a child. Officials were alarmed to discover that 12-year-old Glen Jr. has been living in the loft for the past two years. Glen's stepbrother Xyron, also 12, had been...

Pigeon-lovers still battle each other in skies of Beirut Hobby lives on in gardens, rooftops, and coffee shops ­ despite hard times and dwindling numbers Abu Mohammed paced the street for a quarter of an hour before storming the coffee house demanding the purchase of his pigeons back from Abu Khalil who, an hour ago, had managed to lure them to his rooftop in a war between the two. The whole coffee house was grinning as Abu Khalil handed the pair back to their owner. Abu Mohammed, the narrator, went on to say he drew his pocket knife and slit...

The technology behind Google's great resultsAs a Google user, you're familiar with the speed and accuracy of a Google search. How exactly does Google manage to find the right results for every query as quickly as it does? The heart of Google's search technology is PigeonRank™, a system for ranking web pages developed by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University.Building upon the breakthrough work of B. F. Skinner, Page and Brin reasoned that low cost pigeon clusters (PCs) could be used to compute the relative value of web pages faster than human editors or machine-based algorithms....