Pigeon spies and the flutter caused by these unusual undercover agents

In October 2016, a seemingly innocuous pigeon from Pakistan flew into Pathankot in Punjab with a note tied to its leg. A message written in Urdu read, “Modi, we’re not the same people from 1971. Now each and every child is ready to fight against India.”

It was enough for Indian authorities to mete out the “pigeon-er of war” treatment to the aberrant bird.

The suspected spy was taken into custody after it landed at a Border Security Force outpost. The police sent a report to the home ministry that included the bird’s X-ray results, which did not reveal “anything suspicious”. After being jailed for two weeks, the intruder was shifted to an animal husbandry hospital, and its wings were clipped so that it couldn’t fly back to Pakistan.

Another pigeon was captured by people at a border village in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kathua district last week. Police logged it as a suspected Pakistani spy, their doubts fuelled by a ring with a “coded message” that was tagged to the bird.

A Pakistani villager, who lives 4 km from the border, claimed to be its owner and made an impassioned appeal to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to return the pigeon. The “code” is actually his mobile number, he said. The bird was set free on Thursday.

As these and reports of similar detentions in 2010 and 2015 reveal, “spy” pigeons have occasionally ruffled feathers in India. But they haven’t led to any revelation other than the simmering tension between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.

People on either side of the border have found mirth in them. In 2016, the Pakistan daily Dawn milked its spoofing potential by publishing a report with “proof” — photos of a spy pigeon named Ghutarghoon Khan carrying out clandestine activities in India.

The latest “spy pigeon” has white wings with a patch of pink (or a bright hue of red on its left wing, depending on your point of view). It is certainly unlike the more common wild pigeon, which is distinguished by familiar shades of grey and blue. “It appears to be a hybrid,” says ornithologist and conservationist Bikram Grewal.

Pigeons are known to have a homing instinct — an innate ability to return to their home territory no matter how far they fly. And so they were used as couriers or messengers for centuries.

Carrier pigeons are now a thing of the past. In India, Odisha police runs one of the last surviving pigeon post services, although the birds now are mostly ornamental. The Odisha police website notes that the current lot of pigeons are “weak flyers and mostly admired for their physical features rather than their homing”.

A more visible traditional practice is pigeon racing, also known as kabootar baazi, in North India. In a game that is often viewed as cruel, hybrids are prized candidates among enthusiasts. “It seems very doubtful that pigeons would be used as spies. They may simply be homing pigeons or ones trained for racing,” says Grewal.

Undercover animals including pigeons are not a figment of the imagination in the modern world. In 1907, a German apothecary named Julius Neubronner invented an aerial photography technique involving pigeons. But as advances in aviation quickly knocked the avian vigilantes off their perch, pigeons became valued for their role as military messengers and were awarded gallantry medals.

During World War II, American behaviourist B F Skinner launched Project Pigeon — an attempt to develop a pigeon-controlled guided missile in which the birds were trained to peck at a screen on seeing the target. The project was cancelled in 1944, revived by the US Navy in 1948 and cancelled again.

Other animals have also been experimented upon and viewed as suspects. A CIA project attempted to fit listening devices inside inscrutable cats, while during World War II tests were carried out to arm bats with bombs to attack Japanese cities. The US has also trained dolphins to retrieve lost objects and spot underwater mines, and used California sea lions to keep tabs on swimmers.

Soviet Russia was known to have trained military whales. Last year, fishermen in Norway found a beluga whale strapped with a camera mount bearing a St Petersburg address. It was unusually friendly.
 

It is not known if the “spy” pigeons are friendlier than the rest. But all of them coo.