Winkie

She was a blue chequered hen carried aboard a Bristol Beaufort of RAF Coastal Command, one of two pigeons that went with the crew as standard equipment in case the wireless failed. In February 1942 the aircraft was damaged and ditched in the North Sea, about a hundred and twenty miles off the Scottish coast. The crew got into a dinghy. The distress signal they had managed to send gave a position that was wrong. One pigeon was lost. Winkie got out of the sinking aircraft, covered in oil, and flew home — to her loft at Broughty Ferry, near Dundee, not to the base. Her owner found her and telephoned RAF Leuchars. An officer took her arrival time, allowed for the oil on her feathers, the wind and the distance she could have flown in the daylight left, and worked the search area back from it. The crew were picked up within fifteen minutes of the search beginning. The men held a dinner in her honour at their base. When Maria Dickin instituted a medal for animals in war the following year, Winkie was among the first three awarded, on 2 December 1943 — with White Vision and Tyke, both also pigeons. She is kept at The McManus in Dundee.

Honours

• 1942Flew 120 miles home from a bomber ditched in the North Sea, oiled and exhausted
• 1942The crew were found within fifteen minutes, the search area worked back from her arrival time
• 1943One of the first three Dickin Medals ever awarded, on 2 December
• · Kept at The McManus, Dundee

Their kind

Selectively bred from the rock dove for the instinct to return, and raced for centuries before armies used it — a trained bird navigates home from hundreds of miles away by a sense we still argue about.

A life in seasons