Doves and weddings

Recently, we have had two visitors in our Hillandale neighborhood. For about two weeks now two lovely snow white pigeons had taken up residence on our street. One of them is very fancy with small flanged wings on his feet. They mostly hang out together around our neighbor's bird feeder. Watching them got me interested and my wife did a little research on them.

Apparently, it has gotten to be a big summer wedding experience to release white doves (pigeons) during the ceremony. It is a big time business and can cost quite a lot of money. But of course, weddings are supposed to be silly and extravagant so why not release some birds and piss some more money away. There are legitimate companies that use white pigeons that are trained to "home" back to their roost and I suppose that this is not too bad of an idea but not all of them make it back. Also, there are a lot of fly-by-night operations that actually release white doves (not able to home) and don't care where they go afterwards because they charge enough up front to write off the bird. Then you have your really cheap yahoos who go out and buy doves to release at the wedding on their own.

The problem with white doves and pigeons (who are not smart enough to make it home) is that they are not equipped to survive in the wild. First and foremost is the white color which is just about the worst thing that an animal in the wild can be wearing. It is like a soldier in Iraq wearing day glow orange. Even the occasional white wild animals do not last long in the wild as predators can spot them too easy. (Darwin knew of what he spoke.) Aside from the lack of camouflage, domestically raised doves and pigeons do not have the built in survival skills. They don't fly very well and have no "street" sense. Once on their own they are bound to become table fare for hawks, dogs, cats and anything else in the mind for a slow, pretty meal.

So, in short, don't do this. If you are getting married why not just skip the dove thing altogether. Use the money you save to buy some more of those silver and white almonds wrapped up in ribbons and mesh that everybody throws in the trash afterwards and spare the doves....