Un-Homing Pigeons Turn Up All Over
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They’re turning up in barns. Under bird feeders. On window ledges. And sometimes just standing out in the rain.
After a week of disastrous homing pigeon races in which thousands of birds became lost up and down the East Coast, some of the birds are turning up in Washington area yards.
On Monday, 1,800 birds were set loose in New Market, Va., for a 200-mile race to Allentown, Pa., but about 1,500 never made it. In another race, from western Pennsylvania to suburban Philadelphia, 700 of 900 pigeons went missing. Since those and other disastrous races, organizers say people from Oklahoma to Delaware have reported finding leg-banded birds.
No one knows for sure why the birds suddenly lost their navigation skills. Owners have been looking into possible explanations from sunspot activity to interference from cellular phones.
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