Though everyone, in the urban areas, see them as a bunch of pests, a pigeon in Australia surprised everyone with her ingenuity, after creating a nest out of poppies.
The pigeon have stolen the flowers from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. Ironically, the clever bird used the flowers to avoid getting hurt by the pigeon wire installed on the sill she built her nest. The impressive work has been seen, by many, far from random, given the crucial role pigeon played in the modern history (especially in WWI and WWII) and the significance of poppies (a symbol of endurance for the soldiers).
It took a while, until the staff at the War Memorial figured out, where all the poppies are disappearing. Initially, they had no idea what’s going on with all the flowers on the Unknown Soldier’s Monument, but the innocent thief was soon to be found, when someone spotted lots of poppies next to a glass window. Moments later, the culprit showed on, carrying another (stolen)flower in her beak. Needless to say that everyone was glad to know the poppies’ thief was actually a pigeon.
Coincidence or not, the stained glass window where the beautiful nest was built, illustrates the ‘wounded soldier.’ It was like this pigeon wanted “to remind everyone of the powerful bond between man and beast on the battlefield”.
“Pigeons were actually the most effective way of getting messages up and over,” historian Dr. Meleah Hampton explained. “They [pigeons] are particularly of use in warfare when you’ve got a couple of men trying to get a message from where they are back to the backline; a pigeon can get that through sometimes when nothing else can.”
Even during the WWII, pigeons still played a massive role in communication. As a proof, 32 pigeons was honored with the PDSA Dickin Medal – a distinction given to trained animals for their devotion on duty. One of the most famous pigeons during that time was ‘White Vision.’ The heroic bird has managed “to a message under exceptionally difficult conditions and so contributing to the rescue of an aircrew while serving with the RAF in October 1943”.