Gone in Seven Seconds

I’d never really thought about how fast pigeons can fly—until I read Matt Joyce’s feature in Texas Highways. “Pigeons’ average flight speed is 40–50 mph,” he writes. “The world’s fastest human, Olympic sprinter Usain Bolt, once clocked in at 27 mph.” In this delightful piece, Joyce shares a short history of messenger pigeons across the ages. On the ground in Amarillo, Texas, he introduces us to the Amarillo Pigeon Racing Club, one of 40 such clubs across the state, on the day of a big race. One group of birds, released earlier that day in Texola, Oklahoma, was expected to fly more than 100 miles. Accompanied by Sean Fitzgerald’s striking photographs, Joyce’s story highlights the passion of pigeon fanciers in Texas—and the incredible feats their trained birds are capable of.

Breeders have cultivated pigeon bloodlines over millennia to accentuate the homing instinct that guides them miraculously back to their origin points. Numerous studies have sought to determine how pigeons pull off this trick. Most scientists believe they rely on a combination of factors for compass cues, including the sun and the Earth’s magnetic field. Near their loft, they recognize visual landmarks and can even smell home, according to a 2005 study by Charles Walcott of Cornell University.

In her book Pigeons, zoologist Dorothy Hinshaw Patent describes how Aristotle wrote about the Greeks using pigeons as messengers during the fourth century B.C. In 13th-century Baghdad, sultans developed a postal system based on pigeons. When Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo, pigeons delivered the news to England four days faster than horses and ships.