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I've had a couple turn up in the US damaged. Couple sent to Europe and just never arrived.

"Feeding the Pigeons" ~ Joseph Caraud #pigeonsky

Oil painting depicting an elegant woman in 18th-century style dress dropping breadcrumbs to birds while holding an armorial plate.

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Agapit Stevens~ "Young girl with a dove" #pigeonsky

Oil painting of a girl with a dove/pigeon on her shoulder.

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"Feeding the Birds" ~ Jan Frederik Pieter Portielje and Eugène Rémy Maes. #pigeonsky

Oil painting of a woman sitting on a large window sill with a pigeon on her hand and a group of pigeons feeding below.

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I've lost a few to Royal Mail.

Of course, in Darwin's day, they didn't know about the genetics, they didn't even know the work of Mendel. So it was all visual breeding, making it all the more impressive.

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..a bird will express the desired colouration, or not, as the case may be. This was the challenge. This aside from the challenges of breeding correct form and character.

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Considered by many at that time as the peak of selective breeding in domestic pigeons. The Almond colouration, effected by the stipper gene, a dominant sex-liked modifier, is not a "fixed" expression. It begins light, then with consecutive moults it becomes darker. In around their third year...

Derived from performing tumblers, so same origins, Darwin kept these. I think the Short face tumbler club is one of the oldest breed clubs in the country.

...proletariat, as opposed to the extreme fancy varieties such as Jacobins, English pouters, Almond tumblers, very much the realm of the gentry and nobility.

Really popular in that part of the country, tumblers, rollers, tipplers, so of course different types are named after the various places of their "origin": Birmingham roller, Macclesfield tippler, Wolverhampton tumbler and of course the hugely popular West of England tumbler. Product of the...

Graeme Boyd @graemeboyd.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

Wolverhampton tumblers have "pearl" eyes but they are modified with a recessive gene that makes them dark. Cedric has the dark eyes as he is homozygous for that gene, the youngster is heterozygous so has visibly "pearl" eyes.

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Graeme Boyd @graemeboyd.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

Cedric is a Wolverhampton tumbler. He has a pied factor seemingly linked to a variant known as undergrizzle, as well as kite bronze. This bird appears to have these modifiers too, though heterozygous.

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Graeme Boyd @graemeboyd.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

I think this could very well be "Son of Cedric".

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Graeme Boyd @graemeboyd.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

Wondering what this might be. I'm inclined towards modified ash red, maybe just smokey on ash red. Ash red is dominant sex-linked basic colour. Smokey is recessive autosomal modifier.

Graeme Boyd @graemeboyd.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

Reckon they are just looking for a spin on the whirly-gig, wondering how to make it go.

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Graeme Boyd @graemeboyd.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

I'd say that blue bar is pretty close to wild type. Looks to be feeding young.

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Graeme Boyd @graemeboyd.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Being as it is St Swithin's day today. I post this a lot, I know. Pre-Raphaelite artist William Holman Hunt painted this sometime between 1866-75. His sister began the work but abandoned it and Hunt completed it. I think it's awesome. "The Festival of St Swithin" #pigeonsky

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This pigeon has the Dirty modifier (Symbolized V-German Verschmutzt) hence why it is darker than a regular blue cheq. Pigeons with (V) often have that little white feather behind the eye too. Not always, but often.

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You can already see a tiny bit of adult plumage coming through, where the green iridescence on the neck is visible and a patch across the wing slightly more blue than grey.

...bleached it to some extent. Juvenile feathers aren't as durable as adult feathers, the pigment will fade quite quickly. That has a lot to do with what you are seeing on this youngster. Once it moults it will look more like regular wild type blue, maybe a slight shade lighter.

Pied is there, with the white primaries and toenails. Juvenile plumage, so it will change. I think the reason it looks a bit different is the absence of the darkening modifiers like Dirty (symbolised V-German Verschmutzt). It maybe has kite bronze there but it's possible that sunlight has...

Graeme Boyd @graemeboyd.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

It's one of my favourite things about the wildflower meadow, these are on a thistle:

Graeme Boyd @graemeboyd.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

This is a photo of a bee napping on knapweed:

Graeme Boyd @graemeboyd.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

What if they don't? What if the Bin wins? What a laugh. I loved CEEFAX.

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Graeme Boyd @graemeboyd.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

German Statice among my wildflower:

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Graeme Boyd @graemeboyd.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

It's an extremely broad and multi-faceted subject. You might need more than one person. I can tell you lots about the histories of specific breeds. Pigeons are embedded in human culture in so many ways though.

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Graeme Boyd @graemeboyd.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

Yeah it kills them, that's why I don't really like to do it.

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Graeme Boyd @graemeboyd.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

I don't like to do this, I prefer to leave the ants to their own devices generally. Just when I see a plant "suffering", like this rose was, and I did the same with my honeysuckle. At least it's not horrible chemicals and it is more "mechanical" in the way it works.