Hunt and Peck

A flyer has bailed out over open sea. A rescue helicopter circles the area, looking for a sign of pilot or plane. Anxious minutes pass until--eureka! An unlikely crew member sights a life jacket below and alerts his fellow searchers. The pilot is saved, thanks to the quick, keen eyes of an official U.S. military pigeon.

The incident is imaginary, but the bird is not. It belongs to a five-pigeon rescue detachment the U.S. Coast Guard has been testing for three years. Each member of the squad is harnessed into a separate compartment in a transparent observation chamber mounted on the side of a helicopter. All have been taught to peck at an electrical switch when they see anything orange, red or yellow, the conventional colors of emergency equipment. In test flights the pigeons spotted a floating target on the first pass 90% of the time; the score for humans was 38%. When both birds and people saw the target, the pigeons were the first spotters six times out of seven. The Coast Guard plans to begin using the pigeon system this fall for real search-and-rescue missions. If a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, the pigeons' commanders hope three in the chopper will be worth the $160,000 spent so far on the scheme.

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