Vincenzo Esposito loved pigeons and other animals all his life, and wishes kids today had more opportunity to care for animals and learn how to be better human beings from having the opportunity. 

"They understood life and love.  That is missing today. "

Vinnie raised domestic pigeons when he was a boy but it wasn't always easy.

"Starting  back during the WWII, at that time the men in Black use to come to our lofts and take what ever Homing Pigeons they wanted for the military.  Since I was a kid, I use to buy as many as I could before they were drafted lol.  However, I was only a kid and money was even scarcer than today.  My grand parents every now and then had to kill my birds for food.  I would not and could not eat them.  My brothers and sisters use to make fun of me while they were eating my birds.

My mother felt sorry for me, and would let me buy more.  But, the same thing would happen over and over again.  I also raised rabbits, chickens,  dogs and cats.  Thank God they didn't eat the dogs and cats.

Later as finances got better, the family stopped eating my pets.  So, I started to fly my birds.  I've had pigeons worth up to $5,000.00 but most of my birds were from $60.00 to about $500.00 each.

Sounds crazy, but there is a lot of money in racing pigeons.  I've raised many fancy pigeons also because I enjoyed their colors and looks and the way some of them fly.  Some pigeons fly as high as a plane.  Some roll hundreds of feet in the sky.

I used to go where feral pigeons nested, under railway trestles, under bridges, etc., and trade my fancy pigeon eggs for the feral pigeon eggs.  Then the feral pigeons hatched out fancy pigeons, who lived wild, in the parks, and people really noticed them, where they might not have noticed the 'ordinary' checkers. 

I used to run youth organizations back in Staten Island when I was a police officer, but now I'm out in Vegas, and they have a pigeon sanctuary out here...where they take the feral pigeons, capture them, and bring them to a sanctuary where they can live in safety.

This is the loft I built where I care for sick and injured birds (photo by Vincent Esposito)

I learned a trick a long time ago.  People are used to seeing the banding of protected birds,  etc. on T.V. So, what I have been doing is placing a band on all the feral pigeons I catch.  This does not stop all the pigeons from being killed, but if someone finds a banded pigeon, it's like finding something of value.  They stop to wonder................ "Why is this pigeon banded"?  "Is it a protected bird"?, "Is it a valuable bird"?  So they have a better chance of being let go by the Pest Control people or the general public.  It works, trust me.

When my daughters Debbie and Lisa were about 12 and 13 years of age, they wanted a pet pigeon of their own.   I gave them each a young Silver Racing Homer.  I was amazed at what they accomplished with them.   Debbie trained her pigeon to fly at night.  You could hear the bird flying but could not see it.  This is not the norm for a pigeon.  She would call out to the pigeon “Sparky, Sparky” and the pigeon would land on her arm, over and over.  My daughter Lisa’s pigeon, Sperky, didn’t fly at night, but would come to Lisa anytime Lisa was in the back yard near the loft.

Sometimes Sparky would be chased by a hawk.  But he would always out fly the hawks.  Well, not always.  One day the hawk flew head on with Sparky and that was the last of Debbie’s bird.  I’m not sure about Sperky, but I believe she may have met the same faith.  One day she never came back, and that is not like a Racing Homer.

Point being that pigeons can be good pets.  Pigeons are very smart.
Since that time, I’ve trained 4 other pigeons to come down and land on my hand when I call them.

Blue Bar Racing Homer Pigeon (photo by Vincent Esposito)

Even now I have hawks in the back yard hunting the feral pigeons. 

Cooper's Hawk in the back yard (Photo by Vincent Esposito)

When I lived in LA I had a war with the city officials, who wanted to catch pigeons and gas them to exterminate them.  I offered to release them in the desert, which they said was inhumane.  I thought gassing them was more cruel than letting a hawk eat them.  One day an unusual pigeon landed on my balcony and after some research I realized it was a Band-tailed pigeon, native to North America, unlike the feral pigeons, which are descended from non-native birds, and are thus not protected by law.  I went to City Hall, and asked them how they would tell whether they were capturing Band-tailed Pigeons, which can be anywhere , especially in the southwest, and they realized they couldn't sort the native from the non-native species, so they couldn't move forward with the pigeon extermination without possibly breaking the law, because the Band-tailed Pigeons, as native species are protected by federal law.  All they could do was put up signs telling people not to feed the birds.  So I figured out how to stop the pigeon extermination in LA.

Sometimes I have to educate people about pigeons, because they just don't know.  I ask them...Are you aware that 25 pigeons received the Medal of Honor from the US military for all the 1000's of troops they saved.  People don't know.  And I ask them..do you know what they used to find the football player who was lost in the Gulf of Mexico?  They used a pigeon, because the pigeon can see something in the water that is a possible landing place and gives a certain cue and make a commotion when they see something. 

I ask people, do you know that the feral Rock Pigeon is the only bird which doesn't get the bird flu...do they know that?  They could get bird flu from domestic canaries, parrots, etc, but never from Rock Pigeons. 

I have an human interest story that happened to me with a pigeon recently.  I was taking care of a pigeon that someone shot in the upper wing.  I did the best I could to save his life.  But he would never fly again.  So, I had him running around my yard like a chicken.  One day I left the gate open for a couple of hours before I realized it.  I looked around for the Red Pigeon, but he was gone.  I checked the area around my house but was unable to find him.  Well, about an hour or so later, I looked at my gate and outside the gate was the red pigeon. I walked over and opened the gate.  The pigeon looked at me as if to say “Why did you lock me out”.  He walked past me and went straight to his spot in the loft.  I couldn’t believe that a pigeon would roost like a chicken.  I found a home for him with a female pigeon that was also unable to fly.  They are now a pair and raising young ones of their own.You can see where he was shot.  As I said before, I saved his life, but he will never fly again.  My wife misses the Red Pigeon.

Even now, I keep pet white doves in my workshop. 

I have a real pigeon loft.  Here is a sign on the loft. 

It doesn't take much to make a bird comfortable. 

Pigeons and doves make great parents.Here is a pair of my White Doves sitting on their eggs. (photo by Vincent Esposito)

I found  a Racing Homer last year.  She was living with the feral birds.
I returned her to her owner via the band on her leg, which provides numbers by which you can trace the bird to the owner. 
 

I built a pigeon coop for the kids who live across the street from me.

I want to get back being involved with kids and pigeons, and create a project that gives kids some incentive to raise pigeons and take care of animals, because it's good for them. 

Why Raise Pigeons? 

Most people picture a boy or man when they think about pigeon-raising.    Not true.  For example, my wife and daughters cared for and flew the birds.  Seems that the only thing they didn’t like to do was “Clean the Loft”. So, I did it.

Pigeons mix well with humans. You can pick up any pigeon and never have to worry about the bird biting you.  If you take the time, you can teach and train them to come to you right out the sky.

I would sit for hours at a time in the pigeon loft and watch what they did as a community.  I found pigeons act like humans in many ways.  They will mate for life.  The male sits on the eggs in the day time and the female sits on the eggs at night.  When the birds hatch, both male and female feed and raise the young.

There is a funny side of watching the pigeons.  While the male is sitting on the eggs, the female will hang out with the other females and sometime flirt with other males that are not with a mate.  It also happens the other way at times.
 
Why should children raise pigeons?  Think of it this way.  The child will learn responsibility, learn to love a living thing,  be involved in the hatching of young pigeons, and would be doing more than watching T.V. and video games.  In my time as a young boy, I and my pigeon-raising friends would never think of joining a gang, looking for trouble, drinking or drugs.  We would talk pigeons, visit each other's pigeon lofts and get involved in buying, selling, and racing with each other.  It was a great life for many years. 

In my family of pigeon lovers, 5 of us went into the military, came out and became Police Officer, Firefighters, Tug boat captain managers and supervisors.  None of us ever got in trouble with the law, and always helped our parents.  We also volunteered in the community.  You’re thinking “What does that have to do with raising pigeons”?

We learned to care at a young age.  We also raised chickens, rabbits, ducks, cats and house birds.  This continued into our adult lives to pass on to our children and grand children.