Free Republic

Brussels -- A star racing pigeon named Armando has fetched a record 1.25 million euros (about $1.4 million) in an online auction, Belgian media reported Sunday. The prized bird -- Belgian's best long-distance racer of all time according to those in the know -- was snapped up by a Chinese buyer for the princely sum that caused a flutter of excitement among fanciers. Armando had been expected to break the previous record of 376,000 euros ($425,000) paid for a pigeon called Nadine -- but not by such a wide margin. "Earlier this week it became clear that Armando would be...

It’s reviled by city slickers, but revered by chefs. A vintage postcard of a pigeon plant. Wikimedia Commons ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Brobson Lutz remembers his first squab with perfect clarity. It was the 1970s at the now-closed French restaurant Lutèce in New York City. “I came from North Alabama where there was a lot of dove and quail hunting and I knew how tasty little birds were,” the fast-talking Southerner recalls. “I’m not even sure if I knew then if it was a baby pigeon or not. But I became enamored with them.” When he returned home, however, the New Orleans-based physician...

The extinct Passenger Pigeon, once the most numerous bird species in the world, has had its closest living relatives identified by DNA extracted from museum specimens.The Passenger Pigeon was a forest nomad, breeding in vast colonies and following sporadic crops of acorns and chestnuts around the dense deciduous forests of the eastern and central United States. the forests were once so vast that they could support tens of millions of the birds, which were known to form flocks so huge that they darkened the sky when dispersing. This made them easy prey for hunters' guns, and the greed and over-exploitation...

SHOOTING TAKES HIT: Public shooting opportunities in national forests are disappearing, and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill Ritter proposes to do something about it. Ritter says several previously isolated forest shooting ranges have been shut down because of homebuilding nearby, and shooters have been forced into dispersed shooting activities. Now the Forest Service is considering closing down some dispersed-shooting areas because of development and increased non-shooting recreational use. Ritter says he would make recreational shooting improvements a priority if he is elected governor. He wants Colorado to take the lead in establishing more shooting ranges, beginning with a pilot program he...