birding-aus

Re: Tail Feathers

To: <>
Subject: Re: Tail Feathers
From: "Robert Berry" <>
Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 20:14:22 +1100
Mauro wrote

>...I wonder if in fact spots in > the eyes are also used as a cue by
either partner, just as iridologists
> look into our eyes.  

 and Susan replied

>... but you say you want serious discussion, then
> bring up the topic of iridology, of all things! Iridology has been
totally
> discredited by the medical professions and has no basis in science.
>... - apart from the science of pigeon fancying.

Believe me Pigeon Fancying is no science. My sainted pommy father was into
the racing pigeons in a big way and one of my jobs as a kid was cleaning
mountains of guano out of the lofts. The Eye Sign fad hit England in approx
1971 having already swept continental Europe. The thesis was that by gazing
into the pigeon's eye you could tell how good it would race. This is
actually bull guano. Nonetheless, if it worked in Belgium it had to be good
and many a good racer had its head pulled off because its eyes were less
than perfect.

I attended one auction where a bull guano artist spun a line about the eyes
of a particularly scrawny bird which promptly fetched the princely sum of
fifty quid. It died on the way home to its new owner's loft.

After a few years it was noticed that the races were being won by those
people who stuck to the old fashioned method of breeding lots of pigeons,
training and racing them hard and then pulling the heads off the slow ones.

Iridology makes about as much sense as posting this topic Re: Tail
Feathers.

Rob.

Melbourne, Victoria.

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