AN carrier pigeon survived an extraordinary 8,000-mile journey across the Pacific Ocean from the United States to find a new home in Australia. Authorities now consider the bird to be a quarantine risk and plan to kill it.
Kevin Celli-Bird said on Thursday that he found that the exhausted bird that arrived in his Melbourne backyard on December 26 had disappeared from a race in Oregon in the United States on October 29. Experts suspect that the pigeon that Celli-Bird named Joe after the US President-elect took a ride on a cargo ship to cross the Pacific.
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Joe’s achievement attracted the attention of the Australian media, but also of the notoriously rigorous Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service.
Celli-Bird said the quarantine authorities called him on Thursday to ask him to catch the bird.
“They say that if you are from America, then you are concerned about bird diseases,” he said. “They wanted to know if I could help them. I said, ‘To be honest, I can’t get it. I can reach 500,000 (millimeters or 20 inches) of it and then it moves.'”
He said quarantine authorities are now considering hiring a professional bird catcher.
The Department of Agriculture, which is responsible for biosafety, said the pigeon “was not allowed to remain in Australia” because “it could compromise Australia’s food security and our wild bird populations”.
“This poses a direct biosafety risk for the lives of Australian birds and our poultry industry,” said a department statement.
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In 2015, the government threatened to sacrifice two Yorkshire terriers, Pistol and Boo, after they were smuggled into the country by Hollywood star Johnny Depp and his ex-wife Amber Heard.
Faced with 50 hours to leave Australia, the dogs managed to get out in a chartered jet.
Pigeons are an unusual sight in the Celli-Bird yard in the suburb of Officer, where native Australian pigeons are much more common.
“He rocked at our house on Boxing Day. I have a fountain in the yard and was having a drink and a shower. He was very emaciated, so I kneaded a dry cookie and left it there for him,” Celli-Bird said.
“The next day, he rocked back in our water fountain, so I went out to look at him because he was very weak and he didn’t seem to be afraid of me and I saw that he had a blue band on his leg. Obviously he belongs to someone, so I managed to catch him “, he added.
Celli-Bird, who says he is not interested in birds “other than my surname”, said he was no longer able to catch the pigeon with his own hands because he had recovered his strength.
He said Oklahoma-based American Racing Pigeon Union confirmed that Joe was registered as an owner in Montgomery, Alabama.
Celli-Bird said he tried to contact the owner, but failed.
The bird spends every day in the yard, sometimes sitting side by side with a native dove on an pergola. Celli-Bird feeds him with pigeon food a few days after his arrival.
“I think he decided that since I gave him some food and he has a place to drink, it is my home,” he said.
Australian National Pigeon Association secretary Brad Turner said he heard of cases of Chinese carrier pigeons arriving on the Australian west coast on cargo ships, a much shorter trip.
Turner said there were genuine fears that pigeons in the United States could transmit exotic diseases and agreed that Joe should be destroyed.
“Although it sounds harsh to the average person – they would hear it and say, ‘This is cruel’ and everything – I think you would find that AQIS and that type of person would give their full support to the idea,” said Turner , referring to the quarantine service.
The largest long-haul flight recorded by a pigeon is claimed to be the one that started in Arras, France, and ended in Saigon, Vietnam, in 1931, according to pigeonpedia.com. The distance was 11,600 kilometers (7,200 miles) and lasted 24 days.
There are some known cases of long-haul flights, but whether they are punctual by marathon runners in the pigeon world or if they are made that could be reached by a common pigeon is unknown.