Bonsall man finds joy in his flock of white pigeons

Michael Casteneda doesn't raise and care for his white pigeons because he hopes to make a buck. He doesn't do it for the competitions.

He raises his 40 or so birds for the sheer joy of it.

"They are a joy to watch," he said. "They give you calm feelings. My neighbors are always stopping me when I'm out in front. They tell me how beautiful and how much they enjoy coming home in the evening after work, you know, fighting with the public and doing whatever they do at work. And my birds are usually roaming around the house. They enjoy watching and they just bring a lot of joy to the earth when there's so much garbage out there."

First, there's one thing to clear up. While white pigeons are often called doves, they are in fact, pigeons.

"They're tougher, they're a little bit larger than a dove and they fly much farther," Castaneda said. "They have this GPS system in their brain that leads them back home. Mine are called homers because they always come back to the same nest.

"If you ask the breeders that do this for a living, they call them doves for a couple of reasons: they are in the dove family, but they're a little bit different bird. And they don't want to say that the symbol of love and peace and joy is the pigeon. So, we call them doves. But, technically speaking, they're pigeons and I breed only the white ones."

He began raising the birds after a friend of his gave him a male and female when he lived in San Marcos.

"I enjoyed it quite a bit because I interacted with the babies and I hand feed them; they're all hand-fed," Casteneda said. "They started growing in number and I moved from San Marcos to Bonsall about five years ago. We did some improvements to the backyard, I built a large aviary for them, because I had about 15 at that time. When I came to Bonsall, it was the ideal place. It was in the county without so many restrictions and the neighbors loved them."

While Casteneda realizes that his birds could become racers or show birds, he chooses to keep it simple.

"Mine, I wanted them to be free," he said. "Every day they fly and of course they're subject to all the predators and other problems that are out there. They have a rough life, really. I raise the doors, at first they fly and then they come back because they are going to eat. I feed them first thing in the morning. They fly for 10 or 15 minutes, they come back and then I feed them, and they just eat seeds.

"They're not scavengers, I want to quell a couple of myths that people have, that they smell bad and they attack other animals. They don't kill other animals. They don't eat bugs, spiders and all that. These are strictly seed eaters and their poop is not that bad either. It just cleans up with water real quick."

Casteneda said they are beautiful flyers.

"They're very delicate and they're very majestic in flight," he said. "Every part of them is created so beautifully. They all have personalities. As they grow, and like I said, I hand feed every one of them as babies. So, they begin to develop their own personality and some of them were grouchy and some of them were kind and thoughtful."

Casteneda said that since he feeds them all by hand when they are young, he knows each of them well. Once they get a little older, they don't want to interact with him as much.

"Once in a while, I'll get one that stays with me, you know, I can just put my hand down and call them and they'll come to my hand and that's kind of rare," he said. "But if it's feeding time, they all come around me. But there's a couple of special ones that just like to eat out of my hand. I had one that would not eat from the feeding tray. He would only come to my hand, so it was unusual."

Casteneda said he keeps tabs on the local red tailed and Cooper hawks and falcons in the area, but he doesn't worry too much about them. He knows that is part of the cycle of life of a pigeon.

"That's kind of how I keep the numbers at bay," he said. "A hawk will come and take one every couple months or so.

"There's a falcon around and he's a real smart guy. He's agile and fast and he'll come up over the fence and spook them on purpose and they'll fly and he'll catch the last one in the bunch."

While he doesn't raise the birds as a business, Casteneda said he does favors from time to time like a neighbor who requested he fly his birds at the neighbor's brother's funeral.

No matter what, they always come home.

"I've taken them to Julian and Ramona and the other day I went to my brother's house in Mission Gorge and just to have a little talk and release them," Casteneda said. "Usually they beat me home. My brothers took the two that night and the next morning they came home.

"They have this instinct, whatever it is inside their brain. There's been a lot of scientists who have tried to determine exactly what it is that the birds have that takes them home and most of them say it's the magnetic field around the earth. They've done a lot of experiments, but it usually comes back to we really don't know.

"It is quite an amazing thing that they have that they can come back to their home."

Jeff Pack can be reached by email at [email protected].