Group coercion

This in-word is now often used in relation to the excessive drinking of youths. But group coercion is probably a totally natural phenomena, as I observed not long ago at a training flight of my Tipplers.

My 5 Tipplers already flew about 3h that day when they were attacked by the peregrine falcon. They already knew him from earlier visits and deviated quite elegantly. This time he was quite persistent and attacked them several times until they had all hidden. I had often observed such actions from him and I always have the impression that he chases away my pigeon out of pure boredom. From my experience it lasts at least 30-45min after such an attack until the first pigeon flies again. So after 40min I searched the sky for the Tipplers, but to my surprise 6 pigeons flew and landed on my roof. I saw that 5 pigeons were larger than my Tipplers and they were black and hammered and not blue with black stripes like all my Tipplers. I got my binoculars and now I saw that also only one pigeon had a wristband and that was a Tippler of mine, while the other 5 were street pigeons from the neighboring town. 2 days ago peas were sawn on the field next to our house and already after one day the street pigeons had found out. Now I marveled as all six pigeons flew onto the field and picked after food, my Tippler in the middle of it. It was a 2 year old female that had already had about 80 flights. She was a very reliable pigeon, always landed correctly and also instantly came into the pigeonry. And now she was walking along with the street pigeons on the field! Until now she had never landed on the floor. Because my Tipplers fly from the eight floor they never have to fly lower than 30m. if I hadn´t seen it with my own eyes I wouldn´t believe it. While observing through the binoculars I saw that she did not pick as well as the street pigeons. I had the impression that she did it just to do the movement. A male started to court her. Then 2 crows came to join and the pigeons flew up to land again some meters further away. My female did not stand out in the group at all. Now a barking dog came running onto the pigeons and chased them away from the field. They flew several rounds above the field and disappeared in direction of the city. Meanwhile my other four Tipplers also flew again. After about 30min. another swarm of about 10 street pigeons came and also landed on the pea field and my female was still among them. This time they stayed on the field for quite a while and several males courted my female. Suddenly all pigeons flew away. Now I was curious if my female would come back again. At about 8pm I looked after the Tipplers and all 5 of them flew their rounds as if nothing had happened. After one hour I baited them inside, they came into the pigeonry as always. One pigeon had very dirty feet: that was the only thing that was left of the “misstep”. At the following flights she was the “good girl” again and the peas on the field started to grow and were now not interesting anymore for the street pigeons.

When I told this story at dinner my grandchild (10 years old) said: typical group coercion!

Walter Stettler Binningen www.flugtippler.ch