History Main / InstantMessengerPigeon

* ''[[Film/TheMummyTrilogy The Mummy Returns]]'' featured an Instant Messenger ''Falcon'' named "Horus", used to communicate with the leaders of the Medjai. Apparently, Horus is smart enough to track down the leaders of a group of nomads, then return to a group of adventurers who are wandering all over the Middle East. The bird eventually gets shot out of the sky by TheDragon, though. It's highly exaggerated by the movie, since they generally don't have to do it when the owner isn't staying in one place, but well-trained falcons ''can'' fly long distances and then return to their owner.

* Used rather straight, but [[JustifiedTrope justified]], in ''Literature/HellsGate'' by Creator/DavidWeber and LindaEvans. The messenger birds are super-fast, can be set to any destination, and are quite unlikely to be intercepted -- but they're not pigeons, they're giant humming birds enhanced by powerful magic to be perfect for their role. And they ''do'' move at finite speed, which is Arcana's major disadvantage against their opponents (who must make do with mundane technology instead magic, but do have telepaths).

* The Wizard Derk, in ''Literature/DarkLordOfDerkholm'' and ''Year of the Griffin'' by Creator/DianaWynneJones, breeds very clever pigeons, who are smart enough to know where people are, and very devoted to getting there.

* Averted heavily in ''Film/TheLostBattalion''. Every time the titular battalion tries to send a messenger pigeon back to headquarters, the Germans quickly shoot them down. It's only through sheer luck that they manage to get one through the German lines. In RealLife the pigeon that made it back (the third) was [[{{Determinator}} shot three times]] and lost an eye and a leg. She was awarded the Cross de Guerre for her service.

[[quoteright:350:[[Manga/{{magico}} http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/pigeon_news_8712.png]]]]

This trope gets its name from the concept of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_messaging_&_messengers Instant Messaging]] in computing. Considering that you don't even need a computer to work an InstantMessengerPigeon, it's no wonder the MedievalStasis is still in effect. For another example of animals not quite working that way, see AutomatonHorses.

* Played straight in ''LastExile'', when a messenger pigeon finds Sophia ''aboard a friggin' airship''. Fair enough, pigeon post was occasionally used to deliver messages to ships in nearby waters and other mobile destinations, but it would have been appreciated if the pigeon were looking for the dovecote instead of, you know, ''Sophia''.
* In ''HokutoNoKen'', a traveler pigeon fins Falco in the middle of the Land of the Asura, located across the sea. Somehow.
* ''Manga/OnePiece'' has its newspaper delivered by seagulls, which can reach subscribers even if they're on a ship at sea. However, there are limits to these birds. Amazon Lily, located in the sea-monster infested Calm Belt, is too out of the way.
** The World Government sends out invitations to join the Seven Warlords of the Sea to pirates via ''bats''.

* A recent album of the ''ComicBook/LuckyLuke'' series, ''Lucky Luke vs Pinkerton'', as Pinkerton using an Instant Messenger ''Vulture''. It once delivers a help message to Luke, without any hint of where the cowboy could be. Smart bird.

* Played for laughs in ''{{Asterix}} and the Vikings'', where Justforkix's pet pigeon Shortmessageservix is trained to send messages like a mobile phone. His coos and warbles even sound like touch-tone dialling.
* Played straight in ''{{Valiant}}'', though in a rare case of having done the research there actually were German predator birds chasing the pigeons.
* Parodied in ''WesternAnimation/TheLEGOMovie'', where Vitruvius sends out [[{{Twitter}} blue birds]] to go to internet cafes and e-mail the other Master Builders. [[FunnyBackgroundEvent They literally fall apart the moment he turns his back on them]].

* ''Film/TheMummyReturns'' featured an Instant Messenger ''Falcon'' named "Horus", used to communicate with the leaders of the Medjai. Apparently, Horus is smart enough to track down the leaders of a group of nomads, then return to a group of adventurers who are wandering all over the Middle East. The bird eventually gets shot out of the sky by TheDragon, though.
** It's highly exaggerated by the movie, since they generally don't have to do it when the owner isn't staying in one place, but well-trained falcons ''can'' fly long distances and then return to their owner.

* Parodied in ''Film/RobinHoodMenInTights''. When the Merry Men get some info in Nottingham, they wonder how to get it to Sherwood Forest. One of them then says, "We'll [[IncrediblyLamePun fox it to them]]!" Followed by them attaching the message to a fox, which oddly ran off making dolphin sounds.

* The ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' book ''Discworld/MonstrousRegiment'' appears to use messenger pigeons properly. They are sent over short distances from a traveling remote reporter to the ''Ankh-Morpork Times'' stationary base in Borogravia. The birds are frequently waylaid (especially by the Morporkian military) and long-distance and two-way communication is handled exclusively by semaphore telegraph.

* George R. R. Martin's ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'' has ravens; though they can only reach established outposts like Riverrun or Castle Black, they're still uncannily quick and unerring about it. Martin has admitted the ravens are a product of RuleOfCool. (RealLife ravens are very smart birds, mind, but pigeons have them beat on directions.)
** Slightly subverted in that messenger ravens are shot down regularly by everyone, including people who just want to eat them. It's also hinted that the ravens suffer from the same single-destination limitations as real-life messenger pigeons.

* Well averted in Stephen Donaldson's novel, ''TheMirrorOfHerDreams'', wherein Terisa Morgan, the protagonist from Earth, desperately lectures her Fantasy World interrogator on the limitations of Earth homing pigeons (one-way communication, not two-way); he's never heard of them and suspects her of using pigeons to pass messages, even though SHE alerted HIM to the method. Unfortunately, the only person around who could corroborate this is the Big Bad (who did, indeed, get the idea and the pigeons from Earth, but is unlikely to speak up for her).

* In ''[[{{Nightside}} The Bride Wore Black Leather]]'', ravens bearing messages keep turning up in John Taylor's office, despite its lack of a window. Subverted in that his secretary Cathy thinks it's cruel to use birds this way, so refuses to answer the messages until the spells that compel the ravens have expired, at which point she finds them good homes.
* Literature/{{Safehold}} has messenger wyverns, which are usually bigger and stronger then pigeons (at least some of them can carry small packages). It's also mentioned that they were deliberately genetically engineered by the terraforming crew, and they do have finite speed and the single-direction restriction, though they can be trained to imprint on a new "home base", unlike homing pigeons.

* Used a little more realistically in the ''PushingDaisies'' episode "Pigeon", since the bird in question only had to travel back and forth between two locations.
** Except the bird presumably nested in one location and thus flew there, was given a note, and... flew back to where it had been. They were in theory using one single bird to communicate over the course of years.
** The bird had one of its wings replaced by a stuffed parrot's wing that was attached with a bejeweled harness. Where it nested was the least of its problems.

* Played with in ''{{Blackadder}} Goes Forth''. Blackadder kills a messenger pigeon and eats it to remove any evidence of receiving suicidal orders, in order to have a plausible explanation for not following them. Unfortunately for him, General Melchett is personally familiar with the pigeon, and is able to recognise its remaining feather -- and the message it was carrying was an announcement that shooting messenger pigeons has been made a capital offense due to the number of orders not getting through.

* Parodied in ''TheMonkees'' episode "Monkee See, Monkee Die". The boys are fogged in a haunted mansion and talk about using a homing pigeon to get a message out, and one conveniently lands on the windowsill. The note on it's leg says "please don't attach notes to my leg, I am not a carrier pigeon."
* ''AGameOfThrones'' seems to go back and forth with this trope. In the earlier episodes, messenger ravens seemed to able to come and go at amazingly fast speeds. However, this is averted when Robb sets up camp outside of The Twins, where he has his men shoot down every Raven the Freys attempt to send out to keep them from warning the Lannisters of their presence.
** This trope is actually more an effect of the show's tendency to ignore time. The world's BizarreSeasons mean that there's no change in weather over the year-long time-span of a 10-episode season, which coupled with the absence of a formal calendar, has the effect of allowing the show to cut past weeks at a time of characters traveling from one place to another or waiting for a raven to show up with a message.

* In ''Dungeons and Dragons'' there exists a spell called animal messenger. This spell enables the caster to target any tiny sized animal (ie. cat, rat, pigeon, hawk, squirrel, etc.) to deliver a message to a mentally imprinted destination and tames the animal to allow a small message or token to be attached to it. The animal then waits in the specified destination for the remainder of the spell for someone to take the message. However, this spell is rarely used, as it has no guarantee that the animal finds its way, survives the journey, or that the person who gets the message is the intended receiver.

* In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI'', it's implied that a pigeon could reach a brand-new, secret militiary base without much effort, and carrying silk bouquets from an obscure cave in the mountains and returning is downright overt.
* In the first and second ''StarOcean'' game for the SNES, party members could learn to use messenger pigeons to deliver a shopping list and required money to a store. No matter where the party was, the bird would always return with the requested items, whether the party was in a forest, in a cave, or in another dimension!
** Foiled if you are missing the appropriate perk/attribute/etc. Have a different character send the bird if this happens.
** The second game had it as well.
* ''[=Genesis LPMud=]'', as a fantasy RPG, could get away with {{Instant Messenger Pigeon}}s. And then Instant Messenger Spiders were implemented for the Drow to send quick communications underground. And then the goblinoids got Instant Messenger Slave Children. Like the pigeons and spiders, the slave children could optionally be killed and eaten by the message recipient.

* Done in ''VideoGame/{{Mother 3}}'' with Hinawa's letter to Flint; the pigeon is even patiently sleeping outside Flint's door when he gets to it.
** This is probably too brief a moment to be classified definitively as either being played straight or averted; that pigeon doesn't have to fly far, is only seen once, and given the distance takes kind of a while to get there.
** Another messenger pigeon is seen later in the game, but we never see it reach its destination (and given that the non-plot-critical nature of the message, it doesn't matter tremendously either way.)

* In ''EternalSonata'', Claves sends a dove to Baroque to deliver the message to Prince Crescendo that [[spoiler:Princess Serenade is a Forte spy]]. Not only does the dove make it safely, but it survives the bitter cold to land neatly upon Crescendo's window.
** The dove passes over Polka and company on its way. Polka remarks that it's strange to see a dove flying over a snowy mountain. [[LampshadeHanging Lampshading]], perhaps?
* In the ''AssassinsCreed'' series, this is played pretty straight, as Al-Mualim sends pigeons to the various assassin bureaus (which is also where the feathers come from), and Ezio receives messages from these as plot points and for side missions in an area.
* Understandable in ''VideoGame/GoldenSun: The Lost Age'', where the pigeon is being sent from the house of Piers's uncle to another character's home in Lemuria; there are so few people around, and Piers, [[spoiler: Lunpa]], and King Hydros all seem to be close enough that it's believable they'd have pigeon contacts for each other.
** There is no excuse in ''Dark Dawn'' for Isaac to be sending Kraden's own pigeon back to him, after Kraden sent it to Goma Plateau with a message for Isaac, especially since Kraden was traveling at the time. He later sends it to take a message to Piers, even though Piers is also traveling. Lampshaded when Tyrell mentions he wouldn't know where to find Piers.
* In ''SuikodenIV'', the Gaien Marine Knights Academy keeps several messenger birds for communicating with other islands. According to the game map, there aren't too many places for the poor things to ''land'' during their flights back and forth... Not that it matters much, given that [[spoiler: the whole flock gets slaughtered shortly before a surprise attack]].
** Mister Ramada also has a pet hawk that can act as a messenger. The final war sequence and the climax of the game is kicked off by it delivering a vital message, requiring it to find a ship somewhere in the middle of the ocean [[spoiler: while injured severely enough for it to [[AlmostDeadGuy die immediately]] after delivery]].
* Bird Anime/{{Pokemon}} are used for this all over the franchise. This is more justified than some examples because Flying-type Anime/{{Pokemon}} are much tougher than actual pigeons, and are also fully sapient and understand human speech.
** Subverted in ''VideoGame/PokemonGoldAndSilver''. A guy near Goldenrod City asks the PlayerCharacter to deliver a message to his friend near Violet City. He loans you a Spearow that [[YouHaveResearchedBreathing doesn't know Fly]], so it apparently can't deliver the message itself.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Thief2014}}'', Basso uses a messenger pigeon named Jenivere to send messages to Garret's clock tower hideout. Played more realistically in that it's only flying within the confines of a single city.

* In ''TheAdventuresOfShanShan'', [[http://shanshan.upperrealms.com/view.php?pageid=002&chapterid=2 the messenger is a bird. Presumably magic, thereby evading most of the problems]].

* In ''{{Strays}}'', [[http://www.straysonline.com/comic/142.htm Feral gets a messenger hawk]]. Which can, apparently, track him down personally, since he's on the move.

* Played (almost) straight in {{Hanna-Barbera}}'s ''DastardlyAndMuttleyInTheirFlyingMachines''. Yankee Doodle Pigeon was pursued by Dick Dastardly and crew.
* [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] (in a sense) in ''RockyAndBullwinkle''. Boris needs to get a message to HQ, which is an inconvenient trip across the ocean away. Since he can't reach his radio, he instead writes a message and sends it via a messenger pigeon - a messenger pigeon with a jet engine attached to its back.
* Parodied in ''WesternAnimation/TheLEGOMovie'', where Vitruvius gathers the master builders by sending messenger birds... to an internet cafe, so they can send out e-mails.
* The LooneyTunes WartimeCartoon "Plane Daffy" features a squadron of messenger pigeons whose ranks are being decimated by Axis spy pigeon Hata Mari.

[[folder:Web Original]]
* Literature/TheFateOfPaulTwister has messenger pigeons [[JustifiedTrope specially bred by wizards so they have the ability to teleport.]]
[[/folder]]

* Truth in Television, at least in South Africa. [[http://www.news24.com/Content/SciTech/News/1132/1bc8b09e39b043928317dc769d4196e4/09-09-2009-12-23/Pigeon_beats_Telkom According to this article,]] a homing pigeon beat the main internet provider in delivering 4 GB of data.

* ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'' averted this trope, by actually having the pigeon taking several days to reach its destination.
** One would wonder why they ''didn't'' just send an [[SchizoTech IM]].

* Averted heavily in ''TheLostBattalion''. Every time the titular battalion tries to send a messenger pigeon back to headquarters, the Germans quickly shoot them down. It's only through sheer luck that they manage to get one through the German lines.
** In RealLife the pigeon that made it back (the third) was [[{{Determinator}} shot three times]] and lost an eye and a leg. She was awarded the Cross de Guerre for her service.

* The ''SwallowsAndAmazons'' novel ''Pigeon Post'' is naturally partly about this. The kids have three pigeons, but one of them is unreliable and often takes two days to reach home via a meandering route rather than going straight there, so they don't use it...until the end, when they have to to alert their parents of an emergency, and of course that time it flies straight and true.

* The new BBC ''Series/RobinHood'', not normally noted for realism, got homing pigeons pretty much right in the episode "Lardner's Ring". The fact that a given pigeon always flies to one destination is clearly explained (as is the fact that the destination is the pigeon's nest and mate, leading one of the characters to produce a soppy metaphor about True Love in a later episode), and the villains try to bring the pigeon down with arrows and a hunting hawk. (The natural hazards are somewhat underplayed, however: it's more or less implied that once the pigeon is out of range of the villains, it's home free.)
** Though the pigeon never does seem to get to King Richard, and eventually the outlaws go to the King themselves.
*** The reason for that is the fact that, by the time the pigeon returns home, the city is once again in Saladin's hands.
* ''ThePrisoner'' episode "Hammer into Anvil" has Number Six catching a pigeon, fastening a note to its leg and letting it fly. It wouldn't work to send a message and it wasn't intended to - #6 was playing mind games with #2 pretending to be investigating Village security.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'': TheEmpire uses pigeons as weapons (like a messenger but with bombs), however if there is a change, it will completely miss its target or just go right back to its master...
** TruthInTelevision: the Russians used this little trick in the CrimeanWar, training pigeons to associate men in red coats with food, then attaching a grenade to them and releasing them near British regiments.

* In the {{Infocom}} InteractiveFiction game ''SherlockHolmes and the Riddle of the Crown Jewels'', at one point you have to rent a messenger pigeon. Said pigeon is only interested in shiny objects of a certain color, and furthermore only returns to its owner when released.

* The old Sega game ''Warmonger'' had you communicate with your generals by messenger pigeon. It took longer the farther away they were amd you could, if bored, watch the bird's flight as it went across country. The birds were pretty reliable although if they flew over an enemy army the soldiers would take pot shots at them.

* ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick'': Vaarsuvius develops the spell "Greater Animal Messenger": it sends three messenger birds that couldn't deviate from the path or be affected by illusions, and would verbally repeat a message once they got within five feet of their target. Vaarsuvius made it clear that the absurd amount of time and lost sleep [[TemptingFate has assured success]]. The birds were, [[TVTropesWillRuinYourLife of course]], shot down with arrows and eaten by their intended recipients.
** Earlier averted when Vaarsuvius's familiar (a raven) is being utilised to transmit information on a bandit camp instantly to Vaarsuvius. Unfortunately, the bandits hit it with a thousand arrows the moment it flies over (to Haley's exasperated cry "Oh come on! Thousands of birds must fly over every day!")
* ''DominicDeegan'' does it [[http://www.dominic-deegan.com/view.php?date=2008-09-06 without the pigeon]].
* ''TalesOfTheQuestor'' averts it twice. The first time, the bird gets eaten by a hawk, the second time, a bird refuses to go out into cold weather.

* {{Archipelago}} gives us "poot owls," bird-shaped magical messengers which presumably function much better than an ordinary pigeon but are capable of being intercepted or destroyed by enemy magic, as shown [[http://thesilvertophat.deviantart.com/art/Arch-7-pg-145-196978338 here]].

* {{Lampshaded}} in the ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'' episode "The Runaway", when Sokka purchases a Messenger Hawk only to discover it didn't come with a manual. Telling it to take a message to "Gran-Gran, South Pole" doesn't help, though by the end of the episode it seems to have developed a magical GPS service for Toph's parents, though they at least live in a town and not ''the south pole''. To be fair, there hasn't been any evidence yet that Hawky actually successfully delivered the message.
** Also subverted two episodes earlier when another Messenger Hawk was intercepted by a trained [[MixAndMatchCritters eagle/vulture]]-like bird and the message is destroyed.
** There was also an instant where someone falsely claimed to have sent a message and the person they were talking to was perfectly willing to believe it had been lost, so they said next time they'll send ''two''.

* The Internet Engineering Task Force often publishes [[TheParody spoof]] standards documents on April Fool's Day. One of these was "[[http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1149 A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers]]", ie, a document proposing a standardized way to send Internet traffic via homing pigeon. In 2001, a group in Norway [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers#Real-life_implementation tried it out]] and determined that it had severe problems with latency and packet loss.

----

* In ''Dungeons and Dragons'' there exists a spell called animal messenger. This spell enables the caster to target any tiny sized animal (ie. cat, rat, pigeon, hawk, squirrel, etc.) to deliver a message to a mentally imprinted destination and allows a small message or token to be attached to the animal. The animal then waits in the specified destination for the remainder of the spell for someone to take the message. However, this spell is rarely used, as the spell has no guarantee that the animal finds its way, survives the journey, or that the person who gets the message is the intended receiver.

* In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI'', it's implied that a pigeon could reach a brand-new, secret military base without much effort, and carrying silk bouquets from an obscure cave in the mountains and returning is downright overt.

* Parodied in ''WesternAnimation/TheLEGOMovie'', where Vitruvius sends out [[{{Twitter}} blue birds]] to go to internet cafes and e-mail the other Master Builders.

** This trope is actually more an effect of the show's tendency to ignore time. The world's BizzareSeasons mean that there's no change in weather over the year-long time-span of a 10-episode season, which coupled with the absence of a formal calendar, has the effect of allowing the show to cut past weeks at a time of characters traveling from one place to another or waiting for a raven to show up with a message.

* ''Series/AlloAllo'' used a "long-distance duck". Of course, it's dubious as to whether the duck even made it out of the town.

* Kel's sparrows in ''[[Literature/TortallUniverse Protector of the Small]]'' are often sent to try and find people, and bring them back sometimes. It's once proposed that she carry paper and ink so they could carry messages, but this isn't followed up on. The sparrows are unusually intelligent, and small enough that they just don't ever seem to be intercepted.

** Another had Luke asking whether the bird knew where the White House was, and noticing he still had a message attached. It read "[[UsefulNotes/AmericanCivilWar To President Lincoln: will attack tomorrow. General Grant]]". The shopkeeper claims this is proof his pigeon knows where it is.

* A recent album of the ''LuckyLuke'' series, ''Lucky Luke vs Pinkerton'', as Pinkerton using an Instant Messenger ''Vulture''. It once delivers a help message to Luke, without any hint of where the cowboy could be. Smart bird.
** Another had Luke asking whether the bird knew where the White House was, and noticing he still had a message attached. It read "[[AmericanCivilWar To President Lincoln: will attack tomorrow. General Grant]]". The shopkeeper claims this is proof his pigeon knows where it is.

* The {{Tintin}} adventure ''The Blue Lotus'' showed the villain Mitsuhirato receiving and sending messages by homing pigeon.

** A ''lot'' of the animals in Ankh-Morpork are a bit brighter than they should be. In the case of the rats, and at least one of the dogs, this is explicitly stated as being because of the magical radiation from Unseen University (the in-series version of nuclear waste).