Pigeon fancier

German Camera Pigeon, WWI, licensed under Creative Commons.

 

Poorly pigeon in Block D, yesterday. Photograph by Rachael Marshall.

We've got to know the pigeons of Blocks C and D quite well while working at Bletchley Park. There's a group of three, one brown, one white and one grey, that is always in the room next to the 'rat room' in C, on a ledge in a corner that gets a chink of sunlight through gaps in the window hoardings. You get used to them flying around and scurrying unseen in ceiling voids above your head and I like to to think they're used to our visits. 

Inevitably some floors in both blocks are pigeon toilets and graveyards. We really have to watch where we're putting our feet and tripod legs. Tiny eggs, mostly broken, are scattered around too. The deterioration of the dead birds is fascinating once you're over any squeamishness. Yesterday I found a near-perfect skeleton in a corridor, arranged as if it was in flight. The beautiful full-feathered wings of a white bird looked like they'd been left behind by an angel. 

Caroline told me about the little chap in the photo above when I arrived yesterday. He'd been in the same spot for a few hours, barely moving, just blinking and panting. Later on in the day a shaft of sunlight came through the skylight and this seemed to revive him (or her?) a bit. He moved around a bit and reacted more to my presence. I doubt he'll live long and it was awful to see him suffering.

Pigeons were crucial to intelligence operations on both sides during the first and second World Wars. Bletchley Park has an exhibition about them in Hut 8 and you can read more and see some photographs inside Hut 8 here, on Alan and Pat Machin's site. Perhaps the pigeons of Blocks C and D are descendants of the wartime birds? 

(Bletchley Park staff are aware of the poorly bird - seemed a bit daft to tell them when the place is littered with bodies, but horrid to see an animal struggle).