What you have wondered, plainly answered.

Yes. Every Homingpost pigeon, without exception, is congenitally blind. This is not a marketing position. It is an inherited biological condition that has been present in our flock since the original 1847 stock. We have not attempted to breed it out. We have, after long consideration, decided that the condition is not a flaw in the service. The condition is the service.

We hope so. Statistically, no. Historically, approximately 0.04% of messages have arrived at their intended destination, a figure which we are not in a position to improve, and which we suspect is propped up by a series of unrelated lucky accidents in 1903.

Love letters are the exception. Our Romance Division —led by Hortensia and three of her hand-selected understudies—achieves a documented 2.0% arrival rate, a figure independently audited and a full fifty times the house average. We do not understand it. Henrik has theories, none of which he will share.

If receipt is essential to you, we will, with full warmth, recommend the Royal Mail. If receipt would be merely welcome, and the message in question concerns affection, then we believe ourselves to be the appropriate choice.

You get a pigeon released, on your behalf, into the sky at dawn from a stone parapet in Yorkshire, carrying a hand-calligraphed message bearing your sincere words. You get the act of having sent it. You get the conscience-clearing satisfaction of having put the words into the world and given them, at last, somewhere to be.

You get, also, peace from the question of whether they were received, because they almost certainly will not be.

We do not pretend to fully understand it ourselves. Customers cite a wide variety of reasons: ceremony, ritual, catharsis, art, grief, mischief, a wedding gift to an older relative, a confession that they could not bring themselves to send via email. One regular customer uses our Squab tier weekly to send copies of his grocery list into the void as a meditative practice. He says it has been transformational.

We are deeply attentive to the welfare of our flock. Pigeons are released only in suitable conditions, only by trained handlers, and only after consultation with our fleet veterinarian. Birds that do not return are not assumed to have come to harm; carrier pigeons are resilient creatures with strong instincts for survival, and our blind-bred lineage has, over five generations, demonstrated an astonishing aptitude for making a life wherever they land.

Many of our non-returning pigeons have been documented thriving in barns, on ledges of provincial railway stations, and, in one celebrated case, as the informal mascot of a Cornish village pub.

No.

This is a rare and, frankly, slightly embarrassing outcome. In the event your pigeon returns to the dovecote with your message still attached, we will, without prompting, release the same bird again the following morning, free of additional charge, until either the message is delivered or the bird elects to stay gone.

Cordelia, our youngest bird, currently holds the record at six consecutive voluntary returns. We are addressing this with her gently.

No. The pigeon has flown. The work has been done. The wind has been spoken to. Refunds are not given for completed dispatches, including dispatches that did not arrive, because non-arrival is the operating condition of our service rather than a failure of it.

In the rare case that a pigeon refuses to leave the dovecote on the day of dispatch (the “Cordelia condition”), we will substitute a willing bird at no extra cost.

Your message is read once, by our calligrapher, who transcribes it onto parchment. Our calligrapher has signed a confidentiality covenant that pre-dates modern privacy law by some 140 years and which we take with full seriousness. The parchment is then sealed with wax. The pigeon cannot read.

Once dispatched, the message is, in a practical sense, more private than any email you have ever sent.

Within the carrying capacity of a pigeon (approximately 18 grams in our standard tube; 42 grams for Mortimer), we can transport: small letters, locks of hair, single seeds, pressed flowers, gold leaf, holy medals, and, in 2022, on a one-time basis, a single tooth. We cannot transport: rings (the weight, by all means; the symbolism, by no means), liquid, currency, or live insects.

Our pigeons go where they go. Pigeon No. 14 (Hortensia) has been documented in Slough, Krakow, Tromsø, and, briefly in 2023, a small fishing trawler off the coast of Galicia. We will accept dispatch orders from any country in the world, with the firm understanding that the destination of the pigeon is not influenced by the destination of the order.

The site is real. The company is a work of satire. No pigeons, blind or otherwise, are involved in any service offered or implied. No messages are dispatched. No birds are released. The Reverend Cornelius Pidgeon-Whittle did not exist. Eleanor Pidgeon-Whittle does not exist. Henrik does not exist, though we wish he did.

Thank you for spending a few minutes with our small joke. If it made you smile, we are content. If it made you want to write a letter you have been putting off, we are honoured. Send it. By any means.