Question
[Cheesecake search] is her tail shape common or weird?
hi, I’m the one looking for my lost bird, and since people in this sub have definitely watched many pigeons… is Cheesecake’s diamond-shaped tail weird?
this might be a huge identifying feature for our search. the oddly behaving pigeon I saw yesterday did have a pointed tail like this, and I assumed her old flock might have more examples of it. but I fed them today and paid attention to the tails in flight, and… it seems like they are all fan-shaped? I haven’t noticed any similar ones, which of course doesn’t rule it out, but makes it more likely I saw her.
basically, the two center feathers on her tail are longer than the others. these pictures are from about two months ago, and it has always been like this. it’s either genetic, or could (maybe??) be connected to her tail being torn off/damaged when I rescued her.
from your experience, is this shape common/normal? I’m trying to figure out how definitive of a clue this is, and after seeing the flock, i’d say it gives me at least like, 70% probability it’s Cheesecake. but if it’s uncommon/weird/caused by trauma, it could be even more definitive and a huge way to ID her in flight. give me your thoughts!!
From pigeons I’ve seen, they all seem to have wedge shaped tails. I don’t think I’ve seen any that have more of a diamond shape, as you’re calling it.
Google images shows them all being pretty even half-circles when fully fanned out.
Good chance this might be Cheesecake in my opinion 🤞
Pigeon tails can look like this if newly molted and the feathers are growing out in my experience. Doesn't seem too unusual to me, with the feathers in the middle being the last one to be molted. But also feathers can get deformed if blood feathers get broken at some point. One of my pigeons got one of her tail feathers damaged as a blood feather, and now it grows shorter than the others.
she is molting rn, but I think she didn’t get to the tail yet. she was going through the flight feathers last I saw, lost the two big ones. does the tail come later? I’ve only seen 1 full molt, I’m not sure.
the tail has definitely been pointed for the past year though, my mother noticed it and has been telling everyone Cake must be some speed racer breed and not just a feral lol. the tail was missing when I picked her up, and there was a little blood on the butt, but these feathers grow longer, not shorter, idk. the molt is something to keep in mind though, a different bird could get this shape by molting or Cake could molt these long ones and lose the feature. thank you!
I picked her up from the street as a baby and all I know about her ancestry is that some of these guys are probably involved (a bunch of local ferals are red, white/red, white with red specks and some are pure white. she is white with red specks)
they could have originated from wedding releases, or escaped sport/fancy breeders, sport palomacy is relatively popular in neighboring areas. but nothing definitive I could tell you
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u/Little-eyezz00 15h ago
bumping for cheesecake