Lone pigeon on a college campus - unable to fly

[Lady Tarheel]

Hey Jamuko

HERE'S WISHING YOU A VERY HAPPY BIRTHDAY

[Victor]

Just stopped in to wish you a Happy Birthday Jamuko. Hope things are well with you and your Pidgey.

[Lin Hansen]

Happy Birthday Jamuko and thanks for looking out for this pigeon.

Best Wishes!

Linda

[Jamuko]

Aww, thank you everyone

Not much new with Pidgey yet, but I do have kind of a weird question. Do pigeons... sneeze? XD

He's been making sneeze-like sounds now and then and it made me wonder. At first I thought maybe it was a sound from that gland he uses when preening, but it's hard to tell if he is actually preening when I hear that because he always stops whatever he's doing when I come to look at him.

Is there any other reason he could make a sound like that, or does poor Pidgey have a cold or something? (He also shivers sometimes, which logically shouldn't be from the temperature because he sits on the heated side of the box and it's a nice temperature in here to begin with...)

[Aias]

sir duchess sneezes also, but he looks and acts perfectly normal. i am curious about this also.

oh! and happy birthday to you! duh!

[alvin]

Happy Birthday.

And in a word. Yes.
Pijies do sneeze.

[Lady Tarheel]

They sneeze some when preening - guess the dust gets up their nose. As to the shivering, a lot of times they do this, I think, just to get their feathers situated like they want, maybe to get some of the dander off them. Ernie posted some pictures of Pijjimoto in the General forum and one of those pictures shows what I'm talking about. If your Pidgey is doing this when laying down or not preening I would keep a close eye on him.

[Larry_Cologne]

Jamuko,

A happy Birthday, retro-active.

Pigeons do sneeze, for much the same reason we do. They have narrow lungs, and do not have a diaphragm like humans.

I have had several pigeons grow up in my one-room apartment, so have had opportunuty to observe them.

If you got a feather up your nose, you would sneeze. If you inhaled a soft downy feather you would cough. I saw my pigeons on a number of occasions sneeze after they had preened, especially after doing the soft feathers on their back between their shoulder blades.

I have heard some of them sneeze violently, fifteen to twenty times quickly, in a row (within the space of one or two minutes). Normal, or not normal? When I sneeze violently that often, it is normal (that is, it is a normal response) and it is also not normal (that is, it is a response to an unusual or abnormal situation).

Pidgiepoo, my first hand-raised pigeon, would occasionally (once or twice a week) start sneezing and keep at it off and on over a period of hours, durng the night. He would sneeze five or six times. Then, ten or fifteen minutes later, repeat. Then, a half hour later, the same. Kept me awake, and woke him, also. I tried some "cough medicine" for pigeons ((a German brand, Th. Backs GmbH, Schnupfenmittel für Brieftauben = the Theodor[e] Backs company cold medicine for "letter" (homing or racing) pigeons), containing peppermint oil and chinosol = Chinosol Fungicide (8-hydroxy quinoline sulfate) powder, a prophylactic against coryza pathogens and mucus membrane diseases of the upper respiratory tract. My wife also made some peppermint tea for him to drink on occasion. It didn't seem to make all that much difference, since he didn't seem sick or weak otherwise, and he wasn't crazy about drinking the stuff. He just had these periodic sneezing fits.

I would occasionally heat up some water on the kitchen stove and carefully let him inhale some of the steam, to see if it would loosen up any thick slime he might have. (Once in a while he would sling some mucus from his nose). This was different from him slinging water out through his nostrils after taking a deep drink (male pigeons stick their beaks into the water deeper than the females do, generally. They go for the gusto, so to speak).

What I found to almost always work was this: I would scoop him up, take him to the kitchen or bathroom sink, and with a warm cloth -- I used a micro-fiber cloth -- I would give all of his surface area a quick wipe-down (a quick swipe over the back, a swipe under each wing, and a swipe underneath, the breast, and perhaps both legs. Once or twice I gave him a five- or ten-second bath under a warm shower spray. These quick wipe-downs happened so frequently that after a while he no longer struggled or resisted, because he seemed to recognize that a sneeze was followed by the usually-post-midnight "treatment."

My conclusion: since he was an indoor pet who spent several hours a day outdoors on the street in the vicinity of other pigeons, and he was handled a lot by us, and went places with us while perched on our shoulders, he picked up some stuff on his feathers that made him sneeze. Maybe -- and probably -- it came from our hands. Maybe it was paprika powder dusted on potato chips, or fine-ground white pepper I used on salads and home-made pizza, or some other spice. Maybe it was the perfume that is in soaps (even commercial items advertised to have no smell have neutral-smell additives, according to an article years ago in a National Geographic magazine article on "Smell." We were careful with household cleansing agents, perfumes, fumes, and such dangerous things. It could be household dust.

Another couple of our pigeons seemed to have a tendency to sneeze when they had spent some time on only one of the three wardrobes we had in the apartment. We didn't use mothballs. We had some pieces of cedar for that purpose against clothes moths. This wardrobe was in a corner, and I think there may have been an updraft carying dust or some fume from a long-term decomposing preservative used in wallpaper (grass-cloth, or reed-woven wallpaper) or in the cellulose glue used for grasscloth wall-coverings, perhaps something against termites. Perhaps a minute trace of formaldehyde.

One of the pigeons so occasionally affected was a wild feral female, Mamieke, mate to our hand-raised Wieteke, so I never caught her for a rub-down or wipe-down, and she has always seemed and continues to be in the peak of good health.

So, sneezing makes me alert. Other additional symptoms make me wary.

Larry

gotta go now.

[Ashbel]

Happy Birthday to you, Jamuko!

Best birthday wishes! Your progress on Pidgey has been great and it's been fun reading along. ^^ Take care!

[Lady Tarheel]

Larry, that was a good, informative post. Our vet told us to keep a humidifier going during the winter months to help our house birds. It keeps things from being so dry which can affect their breathing.

[Larry_Cologne]

Maggie,

In regards to air humidifiers, I have to throw in another two cent's worth -- maybe even a nickle's worth. (I may just spend the whole day today typing). i shall try to explain in a manner anyone, any one, can understand.

I'll lay out some basic facts, first, which will help one understand what I am saying.

I have cystic fibrosis, which for me means mostly lung-related and breathing problems. (I might interject that I've had it so long and learned to deal with it. I don't waste time on regrets or wishing it were otherwise, any more than I regret not having wings or having only two arms when three might be nice. It doesn't bother me to talk about it unless I bore the listener. It has brought good things and not-so-good things into my life, when I bother making comparisons). (I don't have much problem, yet, with pancreatic problems or the need to take enzymes to assist food digestion). But it allows me a slightly different perspective on some things. So, one effect of the CF is that I have had recurring nasal polyps (a small growth, usually benign and with a stalk, protruding from a mucous membranes. Think mushroom shapes, or blobs, or stalactites and stalagmites in the moist cavern of the nose and sinuses) since I was a kid, and have had numerous surgeries, some minor, some major, to remove them. Nasal polyps are one indicator to check a kid for CF, or mucoviscidosis. Nasal polyps tend to grow, and eventually can block the airways. When the airways are narrowed or obstructed or the airflow is impeded, the diaphragm (the dome-shaped, muscular partition separating the thorax from the abdominal section in mammals) pulls air into the lungs during inhalation. This air is normally humidified and warmed on its way in. If it has to rush through narrowed passageways during inhalation and exhalation it tends to have a drying effect on their mucus membrane walls. People with CF have thick, viscous mucus because of genetic defects in the cell walls. This mucus collects in the lungs, bacteria grows and colonies build, the metabolic by-products (sh*t) of the bacteria is removed, not efficiently by the rhythmic waving of fine hair-like ciliae, but by coughing. Pockets, cul-de-sacs, bulges with stagnant air and accumulated debris expedite lung damage. There is not a smooth laminar air-flow as would happen in a smooth network (think of a young, growing tree, or free-flowing river), but turbulence (think of a gnarly old oak, or a swamp).

The human body is a furnace; burning food (sugars) produces energy but also excess heat. This excess heat is dissipated or carried away from the body through convection (heat transferred by circulating fluid gases and liquids) such as cool air flowing over the body and through the lungs), by sweating, urinating, defecating, exhaling moisture (you can fog your eyeglasses with your breath to clean them), through conduction (a warm and a colf object touching), (such a touching cold metal or sitting on a cold toilet seat) and to a very small degree, by radiation.

Dry air rushing through a tight airways such as almost-blocked sinuses, asthmatic windpipes and bronchi, dries them out, irritates and inflames, and sets a stage for infection to develop when the protective moisture lining is gone. Heat is not dissipated efficiently, and I tend to feel too hot upon exertion.

During the 1980s I used and went through several humdifiers at home and at the office. Some were ultrasonic, some centrifugal. All used filters. Sometimes I used a pot of boiling water. (Earlier, in Texas, I used a large wide-mouthed pot of boiling or simmering water on a small gas indoor heater. The wallpaper in my old duplex apartment, glued to cheesecloth tacked over the wallboards, sagged in the winter, and was taut when dry in the summer).

My health got worse, and I went on disability retirement.

In Germany the public transportation used electric heaters, and the air was dry. I would climb the single flight of stairs to our apartment in the winter, get hit by the blast of hot, dry air, rush to the window, throw it open and stand in the cold refreshing air for five or ten minutes, until I relaxed (even though cold air holds less moisture than warm air, relatively). I liked hot steam showers because the air was moist.

It occurred to me one day that maybe the air wasn't as dry as I thought it to be. That maybe I perceived it to be dry simply because I felt overheated for a short time before cooling off. When I wasn't physically active, when I was sitting or resting, and my breathing was easy, wasn't labored, the air humidity and temperature felt okay. That maybe it wasn't the air that was too dry, but my perception of the lack of humidity was false.

I bought a small, not too expensive, battery-powered hygrometer (measures moisture) combined with a thermometer, with a digital output (LCD display). It was intended to measure relative humidity and temperature measurement to indicate whether the ambient environment was comfortable (not too hot, not too cold, not too dry, not too wet) for a human being.

I found out my latest conjecture was correct, and my earlier ones false. The relative humidty fluctuated with the weather and the barometer but it was usually in the comfort zone (if I didn't take it into the bathroom or a steamy kitchen or near a steam radiator). I did not need to control the surrounding air humidity and temperature so much; I needed more to pace my level of aerobic exertion and activity, and thus control my rate of breathing.

A couple of times I was in a large, high-rise hospital with closed ventilation, the air was so dry that the hygrometer read "LL," meaning the air was too dry for accurate display of actual humidity. I felt extremely uncomfortable in that environment, and used an oxygen nasal cannula (2 liters oxygen output rate per minute) because there was an attached water reservoir for humidifying the air.

The hospital kept the circulating air humidity low so as to prevent mold and mildew from growing in the air ducts. (Do you remember Legionnaire's Disease, which killed a number of ex-solders' convention attendees who died after inhaling spores growing in the dark, damp air ducts of a hotel?).

I haven't found it critically necessary to use an air humidifier at home in years. We have hot-water radiator heating (radiators wall-mounted under the windows), water heated in a natural-gas basement unit.

You might want to monitor the air temperature and humidity with such a measuring device. It can help you control the extent of use of air humidifiers. If you don't need one for the pigeons, you can save on filter replacement expense, and possibly avoid mold build-up. Battery-powered digital devices are fairly accurate, and responsive enough if they are where the air circulates a bit. If you breath on one, you will observe the readings are too high, off the scale. There are also analog, liquid and bi-metallic spring operated devices. All purport to show if the ambient (immediately-surrounding) environment is in the human comfort zone (unless you are an Eskimo, I suppose).

After a while, you find you rarely need to refer to a hygrometer. You develop a general feel, verified from feed-back provided by frequent reference to the meter, when the air is too dry or humid.

Larry

[Lady Tarheel]

Larry, thank you for that wonderful post. I know CF is debilitating but did not know as much as you have explained. I will have to confess that while we operated a humidifier for a number of years, I stopped using one 2 years ago because I started worrying about bacteria building up even though I cleaned it frequently. I now try to boil water on the really cold days to add some moisture because I can tell by how dry my nose gets that some moisture is needed.

You made one statement that really threw me. I never have thought of bacteria defecating - to me, they're like invisible. I'm going to have to read up on this.

Thanks again.

[Larry_Cologne]

I've never seen bacteria defecate, either.

Supposedly it is feces of house-dust mites that is allergy-exascerbating. When I was a kid and had allergy tests and shots, it was labelled house dust. Then I suppose the electron microsocope came along and was ussed to photograph the house dust mite.

And I suppose these photos helped define the creatures in Star Wars and in Gary Larson's "The Far Side" cartoon series.

It was a few years ago that I read it wasn't the bacteriae themselves causing lung damage (bronchiectasis). It was their metabolic by-products, their feces.

Makes sense.

Invite people into your house. Have no sewers or toilets or plumbing. Let the stuff pile up. Youll have problems, too.

So, I tend to think of me and my long-dwelling indoor neighbors, these bacteria, as one big happy family. Like dogs and cats and humans, we are different and sometimes have confllcts, but we don't much like strangers moving in. My dog, yes, he can come inside. He belongs. But the guy down the street, needs to stay put.

So, am I anti-social, preferring the bacteria I know (and whch causes me some problems) to the humans who want me to change for the better (their "better")?.

Enough silliness.

Larry

[Jamuko]

That was some really informative stuff! O_O

Right now I'm getting worried about Pidgey. =( His shivering isn't that kind of ruffled "wet dog" shaking (although I hear him do that on occasion too); but little tremors or twitches in his wings or head. That, along with his sneezing, and a new problem I noticed: it looks like he is plucking out some of his feathers... not just the occasional one here and there, but a bunch, and something definitely seems wrong... poor Pidgey. >_<

I also feel really bad now because my roommate complained about his smell :/ and that I need to get him out of here soon. I'm trying to contact a wildlife care center ASAP...

[Pidgey]

A bunch of feathers in one spot or just all over? What kind of a smell?

Pidgey