No 96. Pigeons. pb 8thy July, 2011.

A long time ago, but yesterday too. Rain On My Window (Tears in My Eyes) will be an ongoing tale of my early memories of life shared by my younger brother David on Whitehall Farm in Stronsay, Orkney, of our childhood on a working farm in the 1930s before we lost our innocence.


No 97. One for the pot!!.

Today shooting is not so accepted as once it was but these were the times we lived in long ago. The old phrase “One for the pot” applied to many things, a salmon from a river pool, a deer off the heather hill, a pheasant out of a tall tree on a dark night. Pigeons were one of them but they were, though not domesticated, to some extent farmed.
Most farms and all large houses had a doocot for pigeons. At Whitehall it was at the far end of the sheaf loft, partitioned off and with a small door for entry. In the gable end were an array of pigeon-holes with a series of nest boxes inside along the walls which you can still visualise if you look in at any Post Office sorting office. The word will stay with us forever in daily usage though few might now know its origin.

Pigeon lofts, or doocots, were a feature of most farms and most large houses. In Caithness there is one at Freswick Castle but I believe the roof has now fallen in on this historic old building. The last time I saw it there was a wonderful heap of very old organic fertiliser inside. That must have been made good use of in bygone days in the Castle kitchen garden. There is one at Brabster House well away from the rest of the buildings, one at Dunbeath Castle just to seaward of the main road South, one at Stemster Mains up from the House. There is one on Stroma at the old Cemetary in the upper part of the famed Kennedy Mausoleum, beautifully built in stone. There is one at the Mill at Westerdale where I have shot pigeons as they escaped from the doocot. Fast work too while it lasted. There are many more scattered round.

At Cleat in Westray our Uncle Bill had a doocot, part of the farm steading. We had an adventure there. Our cousin Dave was home from studying Medicine at Edinburgh University. We were visiting and we had an evening after dark catching pigeons for the pot. A herring net was let down to close off the pigeon holes, then with tiny torches we caught our dinner. Today I would not, but this was how we lived long ago, and it should be recorded.
We take a different view now of these birds, they are not with us in the same vast numbers and we farmers have much to do with that. Modern farming has become much more efficient as we feed ever-growing numbers of people. The grain that sustained pigeons among so many other birds is swept efficiently up by combines and immediately into vermin-proof containers so the stooks and stacks and weed seeds that fed so many birds in my early days is long gone. There are some who would have us go back to the binder and stook, indeed there are schemes existing to be paid to grow grain and not to harvest it, to leave it for the birds. And there are people who are deadly serious about it, would have it increased and would indeed make it obligatory.

At Isauld in days long gone away we had flocks of blue rock pigeons sweeping across the Bay from Sandside Head on their way to feed on Upper Dounreay, or anywhere else. On occasion there would be one white one among the throng. They ran to their own clock, a predictable time in the mornings and a certain time in the afternoons on their way back to the Cliffs of Sandside where they dwelt in the caves. Called rock pigeons but just the same kind as the homing pigeon we still have. Or cluttering up Trafalgar Square for the tourists to feed, and adorning the adjacent buildings and Nelson’s Column in the usual manner!!! Fast fliers.
There were similar flocks at the back of Holborn Head, unfortunately featured in a really bad accident some years ago when three men I knew lost their lives on a pigeon shooting expedition into the caves with a boat. It was thought an unexpectedly big swell lifted their boat up against the roof of the cave and smashed the cabin with fatal consequences. The pigeons are no longer there.

We had our own litttle window on the pigeons. In the Whitehall straw barn pigeons at times would nest between the couple legs. There they laid their two white eggs which we would watch until they hatched. The chicks grew rapidly under our eyes till fully fledged and then out into the wide world. The pigeons were quite tame and not easily disturbed though we did not touch the nest nor come too close nor touch the eggs. Our vantage point for viewing was the sheaf loft looking out at a partition opening into the straw barn.
We could make friends, well, sort off, with a few pigeons. There was often some recognizable touch, a bit of white here, a mottled wing, a red or pinkish anyway pigeon or some other indivdual characteristic.
There were the ones that stayed close with us in winter, usually in the straw barn. A few grains of oats or some small titbits of bread were enough to make them quite friendly. Not to touch but to come down and pick our offerings off the ground. We tried to get them to eat out of our hands but, close as they came, we never quite succeeded. One would appear at the back door now and again for a few crumbs or to pick at a bit of stale bread thrown out for it, strutting proudly around with one eye cocked towards us, the other on the cat.

General feeding for the pigeons in winter was the stack yard. Blue clouds would descend upon the corn stacks, particularly when there was snow. Equally they descended upon the steadles after a stack had been taken in for threshing, cleaning up with many other birds, particularly blackbirds and sparrows. They would cluster on the barn roof, quite happy to share a bit of space with us. They would descend upon a field to pick up I know not what. They did not like the turnip field though an abandance of weed seeds were usually there. Landing among the turnips shaws I think was not to their liking.
Clover was, and both the rock pigeon and particularly the wood pigeon would take their share of the sweet leaves. The wood pigeons from the woods at Achvarasdal were lethal to young turnips at Isauld, sitting on the field dyke before swooping down for a good bite. Thankfully the young turnip plants grew fast and were soon beyond too much harm, though the headrigs took a battering.

There were some who had homing pigeons and now and again one would go AWOL and join up with the wild bunch. A ring on the leg denoted where from if one by mischance appeared among the shot ones. The owner was interested in finding out it’s fate and where found, but not in getting it back!! A homing pigeon that did not come back home was a dead loss in more ways than one!!!. You could not really blame one for joining up with it’s country cousins anyway.