Public Eye

This morning at the end of our run Charlie stopped short at the tailgate of a pickup truck on Parkview Avenue.

"That a bird dog?" August Culver asked.

"Not hardly -- he's a sheep dog," I said. "Whatcha got back there?"

Pigeons is what he had -- dozens of them. I made what must be the classic mistake of calling them carrier pigeons, the extinct species. August explained that they are racing pigeons, and that he brought them to the edge of the Arroyo for release, 40 miles due west of his house in Ontario. They would be home before he was, he said. We watched dozens zoom out of his hands, dip down over Brookside Golf Course and then head straight east down the line of the foothills -- well, mostly. A few went a little bit north or south for a time.

"Sometimes they'll just totally go the wrong way at first," August said. "Especially if there is a female around." One, in fact, flew no farther than the back of his truck, where he took up a roost. Most were brilliant in their focus on flying.

While some fellows in his sport are into serious wagering, August says his buddies in the American Racing Pigeon Union are just hobbyists who enjoy the sport of it.

These were young ones, less than a year old, raised by hand. When they get older and deeper into their training, they fly to a place he has up in Oregon. He says he knows their personalities sometimes before they've barely cracked their egg shells.

How many pigeons does he have? "Too many," August says.

He also uses them to help ADHD kids calm down and focus by learning how to gently treat animals, he says.

How do they navigate? No one really knows, he says. But August's theory, based on a federal study that showed pigeons can't find their bearings when their ears are stuffed with wax, is that they have extraordinary hearing. They can hear, he believes, the winds in the mountains and the waves on the ocean, even from dozens of miles away. By triangulating the quality of those sounds, they find their way home.