the wild pigeons of Salisbury beach part 34

There are now three very large dark pigeons that come to visit my back deck in the morning and in the afternoon. I throw seed out there to encourage their visits.

I just recieved my book in the mail ,"The Flying Vet's guide to Pigeon's Health and Management". It is a nice big book with lots of color photos.

According to the book, my pigeon should be weaned by 35 days. He is almost at that age already but he appear a big slow in growth and maturitiy. He (now) demands to be fed 3 times a day through his hand-feeding bottle. He literally attacks my lime green nail polished nails. He equates my nail colour with his warm kaytee food! I need to cut back to 2 feedings very soon to force independance. I leave seed, grit, corn meal and crushed cheerios out for him.(All babies love cheerios. My cockatiels nibbled cheerios as their first "big bird' food when I was weaning them as well)

He is slow at sucking the seeds up. He doesn't peck at the seeds like I've seen birds do. He sucks a seed up one at a time like a lizard using his tiny skinny whip-like tongue. In contrast, parrots have fat stubby tongues like little balloons.

Using the book as a guide, I checked him closely for feather mites and lice. So far, he is A-OK. I inspected his poop for odd colour and worms. Thankfully, he is still A-Ok in that department.

*I know that sounds gross but a daily poop check with birds is a major determining factor in monitoring their health.

The one thing that is a bit off with him visually is that he has a noticeable scab on his beak. From checking a photo in the book to see if this is 'normal" it looks to me like he is recovering from "pigeon pox". When I first spotted the words "pigeon pox' and vaccination" in the book my heart stopped. Oh my God, what is this? Is this deadly? Can I contract it?

It appears that this pigeon contracted this virus probably at birth. It scabbed over causing only a little bit of deformity denting his beak with a yellowish crust. Pigeon breeders vaccinate their racing birds after 6 weeks of age. The birds get scabs at the innoculation spot just like this bird has. Some birds who aren't vaccinated can be blinded and deformed depending on the severity. Since he contracted the virus at such a young age he is pretty much self inocculated. I think he made it under the wire so to speak. I wash him regularly and I constainly wash my hands not to spread any germs to my other birds.

He flaps his wings alot for exercise. I bought a small stand-up perch for him to perch. However, he isn't too interested in it. He does like the long door lock pole to perch on instead as it holds the screen door from opening up. He is quite happy observing the birds that hang around on the deck. He is still bald under his wings and around his neck. Even though he is chronologically over 4 weeks old he is physically only 3 weeks old by way of growth, still.

He is sitting by the screened door watching his pigeon friends eat.

* The photo above is from my camera phone. The pigeon in the fore-ground is the baby. The one in the back-ground is one of the visiting pigeons on the deck.