Dove relatives

Usage examples of pigeons.

As long as Tony had kept pigeons, which was for almost all of his seventy-nine years, he had never been late to feed them, and they began complaining the moment he opened the screen door.

The white pigeons finally took their perches, which were small plywood boxes lining the walls, but in their panic they had displaced each other, violating customary territories and upsetting altogether the pecking order, which led to a final round of fussing.

He gazed at the white pigeons, really doves, which he found so beautiful.

Tony worked hard, helping his father in their olive groves and with the pigeons, spending all his time in the company of birds and old men, having no time, or finding no time, for the frivolities that consumed others.

When he first met his wife, he was doing one of these chores, hauling their pigeons by cart to a shipping for the race on Saturday.

The beast pulled the cart gamely, and in back of the cart the pigeons cooed, called, and beat their wings in their wooden cages, sending pinfeathers into the air, transforming the assembly into a swirling cloud of dust.

The pigeons knew they were being shipped to race and anticipated the event as much as they felt fresh despair at having left their mates behind.

His concerns were his family, his olives, and his pigeons, and he practically walked backward as he led the pony so he could make sure no birds fell off the bumpy cart.

I have already delivered my pigeons and must return home before they do.

When he got there he fell to his knees, gasping for breath, as his pigeons struggled to free themselves from their wrecked cages, injuring themselves.

Forty pigeons, all slate-gray colored, skated on air currents only they could see, circling just once as Tony had taught them, so as not to waste time, then heading south.

Judy got the impression that as many pigeons as could be caught were killed, brutally.

She had no idea how many pigeons Pigeon Tony kept, but she counted seven dead.

That morning Tony repaired the battered cages as quickly as he could, watched only by the pigeons roosting and cooing in the loft, and when he was sure his father had gone to market, he washed his face and hands and rode his chubby brown pony north across the provincial border and into the main street of Mas-coli, the Via Dante Alighieri.

Tony did this for fourteen nights, the same gift every night, until the next shipping of the pigeons, when he loaded his cart for the trip to Mascoli, on the road he knew by now by heart.