PIGEON post has finally been replaced by e-mail and mobile phones.

The 1,400 birds of Orissa’s police pigeon service in India — the world’s last pigeon courier service — have been ordered to flee their lofts.

Courier pigeons earned their corn mainly at times of natural disaster, able to reach isolated communities cut off by floods and earthquakes, but their role has been greatly diminished by satellite communications and they have played no part in recent disasters. They are also difficult and expensive to maintain, officials say.

B. B. Mishra, director-general of Orissa police, said: “Their success during the supercyclone in 1999 was marginal, as some of the pigeon constables had fled their posts, but in this age of instant communication, pigeons are useless. They exercise all day and are of no use except during school functions or Independence and Republic Day functions. We keep them indoors mostly, as birds of prey and sunstroke cut down their numbers.”

The Indian Finance Ministry has been putting pressure on police forces to cut expenditure, and the courier pigeons, which cost more than £60,000 a year to keep ready for an occasional ceremonial appearance, stopped singing for their supper many years ago. A total of 810 well-fed pigeons make up the roster at the headquarters of the Orissa police pigeon carrier service in Cuttack and there are 574 in other stations. Their barracks comprise of 26 lofts, minded by 26 “pigeon constables”. Although they are rarely called into active service, pigeons are still trained to perform a variety of tasks. Some are taught to take messages back to headquarters, others, known as “boomerangs” deliver and return with messages. The most clever pigeons of all are able to deliver messages to a number of addresses.

The first recorded instance of a pigeon post was in AD1146, when Sultan Nuruddin, the Caliph of Baghdad, used the birds to carry mail through his kingdom. The current inhabitants of Orissa’s pigeon lofts trace their ancestry back to Belgium at the end of the Second World War.

The most famous courier pigeon was Paddy, from Northern Ireland, who received a medal for becoming the first bird to fly back with news of the D-Day landings in Normandy in less than five hours. Orissa police were so impressed that 40 pigeons were acquired from the Indian Army and deployed across the region.

Explore World News

• World Agenda

• Iraq News

• US & Americas News

• Europe News

• Middle East News

• Afghanistan News

• Asia News

• Africa News

• Ireland News

Times Recommends

• Tehran cannot live up to its rhetoric
• The new unicycle that will ‘change the world’
• We cannot wish away Iran’s bomb