I Have a Pet Pigeon?

This morning when I left for work, I noticed a strange sight to my left as I locked the door: an adult Rock Pigeon sitting on the ledge of my screened in porch not more than 2 feet from me. I got up close to it to see if it would fly away and it was obviously intent on staying as it didn't budge as it kept it's eye on me. I thought this was a little strange, but didn't put another thought on it until I came home this evening.

The bird is still here, and it definitely has no intention of leaving. This made me wonder what the heck this bird is doing here. So I began my investigation online. After a while, I think I've figured out what it's doing. It is preparing to nest, though there is no nest yet. The lack of a nest kind of makes me suspicious and I decide to see if this is an adult pigeon or a nearly mature juvenile by looking at its eye color. As I'm checking the eye color, I find something even more curious...it has a leg band. After about 5 minutes of making sure I don't scare it off, I finally am able to make out the entire arm band. The band reads: AU 2007 41903, with the letter 'A' underneath the 2007. I then look up pigeon leg bands and am brought to the site interBUG Homing Pigeon. I learn what the band means and how to read it to learn that the "AU" means that the bird is registered to the American Racing Pigeon Union. After digging around a bit, I finally find the place to report that I found a registered pigeon. After all, someone may own this bird and may want it back, and I certainly don't want a mountain of bird poop on my ledge. So the bird has now been reported. Time will see if I am contacted about the bird, but I'm pretty confident it's going to be here for at least a month if someone doesn't come to pick it up.

So, maybe tomorrow I'll snap a picture and post that as well.