[Cob] dove cote

[Michael Fitzgerald]

Hi all:

Found an interesting little cob tidbit in a book entitled "The Pigeon" by
Levi. The book is published in the 40's with many pictures from the turn of
the century. In this book was a picture of a dove cote, made in Egypt, that
was a series of mud columns about 20 to 30 feet high into which were
embedded broken crockery jars. The jars were recycled (put in sideways of
course) as nesting boxes for pigeons.

Now one of the reasons for the decline of pigeon raising has been the
possibility of catching loftman's disease from inhaling powdered droppings
and different types of nasty bacteria while cleaning an inside loft. This
type of outdoor loft might lessen the husbandperson's contact with the
droppings. (And the pigeons might even make their own lime render!...just
kidding!)

I am currently considering a dovecote made as a column 4 feet in diameter.
Rising as high as I dare. I would embed 5 gal plastic buckets as nesting
boxes and make a spiral sort of staircase ladder with good sized tree limbs
and maybe some scrap twobyfers. I have seen some pictures of nest boxes set
up like this in Greece where they used broken jars and suspended them from
the eves of the house. I wouldn't be a far stretch to put some dove nests
right into your cob wall by using two buckets...one inside the other. In
this way you could remove the inside one to clean it and then set it back in
it's sleeve.

Do you know you can charge someone one hundred bucks to release two white
pigeons at their wedding. The pigeons fly back to your cob dovecote and you
can do the same thing next week? Hmmmm what some folks won't do with their
money!

Just some wintertime musings for springtime work.

Michael Fitzgerald
Anthropologist/Woodcarver/Puppetmaker