Meet Peter the Spanish Pigeon!A week ago, as Kristina from Parks Canada was wandering in Sable Island National Park Reserve, she came across a pigeon. You may not think that a pigeon is an unusual thing for a park employee to find, but there were two things that were unusual about this pigeon. First, he had two leg bands, which often mark a bird as a domestic animal. The second thing that was unusual is that Sable Island is 290 km southeast of where we are — way out in the Atlantic Ocean!
Peter was very tired, quite thin, and Kristina did an awesome job of caring for him until he was able to catch a flight back to the mainland courtesy of pilot Debbie from Sable Aviation. He’s now being fed and cared for here at Hope for Wildlife.You may be wondering about those bands. So were we! It turns out that we traced Peter back to the Federation Colombophile Internationale in Spain. Peter is likely a Spanish racing pigeon. We’ve reached out to them to let them know we have Peter, but we haven’t heard anything back yet.
Kristina tells us that during storms, cargo ships often wait out the bad weather behind the island, so it’s very likely that Peter found himself out to far out at sea, hitched a ride on a cargo ship, then hopped off for a visit to a Canadian park.
He is far from home. Catching a lift on a ship is plausible. I saw a lot of migrating birds land on the ship when I was out around Sable Island. Also of note is that, ships are transporting invasive species. There was a report today that ships\boats are perfect for spreading termites worldwide. Not something we want here.