Very Wily Birds

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 239, 29 December 1927, Page 1

Very Wily Birds

PIGEONS REFUSE TO DIE Pantomime at St. Paul’s

THE St. Paul’s pigeons are wily birds, for whom sentimental Londoners have a deep affection. Thus, when the “compleat trappers” arrived, full of optimism, with corn to entice the birds to a gilded cage, the pigeons held a mass meeting around piles of corn and bread which had been distributed in safer places by elderly spinsters, who withered the trappers through poised lorgnettes. The result was that no birds were caught; but the trappers, urged by warrant of the City of London, re-

By Cable. —Press Association. — Copyright. Received 9.5 a.m. LONDON, Wednesday. •JHE Christmas season witnessed an openi air pantomime around St. Paul’s, where 2,000 surplus pigeons, which had been conijTj demned by the city dignatories, resolutely refused to die.

appeared on a holiday, and rounded up hundreds. These birds turned out to be the healthiest and most adept at hustling the weaker birds aside, and obtaining the corn. This was not desired. Thus to-day there were new methods of luring away the decrepit pigeons and seizing them, until two bags were filled with the lame and the halt. This method will take years, but the Londoners seem determined that no pigeon shall go into the cage.—A. and N.Z.