Pigeons have been put on trains/boats/planes and carried for
hundreds/thousands of miles, including overwater... When released thay
usually find their way home...

I personally, not due to any published articles feel that their magnetic
field sensing is far more sophisticated than simply saying, "North is
thattaway"... I suspect that they sense magnetic patterns analogous to the
way that our eyes do with reflected light - pattern recognition that allows
you to walk to the front door and put your hand on the knob - and our ears
do, in that we can track the sound of the dripping faucet... They live in a
world of rippling, flowing, magnetic currents that they sense and track,
like following the echoes of the faucet through the house at night...

denny

"Dan Luke" wrote in Most likely the pigeons
are able to sense and store the route they
travel to the release point, and then retrace it home.