Surprise Guest: A Tired Racing Pigeon

Wednesday evening, we noticed this guy on the power line over our yard. I don't normally pay attention to pigeons, but something about him caught my eye, and I remember I said, "Hi pigeon," or something similarly brilliant - and he flew down off the line and landed on our car. One of the kids, who were in the car already, opened the car door and scared him off, but Barry noticed that he was banded and wondered if he were a pet or something, maybe blown off course in the storms. We were on our way to Lil Miss A's softball game at the time, but we tried to find him again when we returned, and could not.

Barry and Master K were working in the garage this evening when all of a sudden, in walked this pigeon! They picked him up and stuck him in a spare cage and offered him grain and a drink while they checked his bands. He's a racing pigeon. I tried to look him up at pigeon.org, but either his tag doesn't have a club code or I am just reading it wrong. I put a message out on the 911pigeon list at Yahoo, and hopefully someone will do a better job at tag reading than I did.

For the record, in case anybody can help, his tag says ARPU (American Racing Pigeon Union) and then AU 2007 (meaning he was banded and probably hatched in 2007), and then his other leg has a plastic tag with BR7 on it. There is no club coded BR7, but maybe that's something else.

In the meantime, he's fairly happy in his cage, getting spoiled by the kids and by Barry, who seems immensely pleased at having been chosen as Pigeon Rescuer by an important pigeon like this one.

The bird is really beautiful. Pretty, pretty colors in his feathers. He's very tame. When I was trying to read his bands he hopped right up onto my hand to make it easier.

Update: Oh no. He has a name. Barry named him Racer X. First he wanted to name him Speed, but then he thought Racer X would be better since we don't really know who he is.