One day of a dovecot

Special photo project "Novaya Gazeta"

Maria Kochubey, 41 years old, biologist, aquarium systems specialist

Maria Kochubey helps city residents who have long merged for most of us with the city landscape: it contains a blue shelter in St. Petersburg. The main contingent of the Orlando shelter is thoroughbred pigeons, which are released for weddings, prayfut and purebred are thrown out of diseases, and contain photographers under poor conditions. But ordinary sizari also bring to Mary - patients who suffered from the hands of people, chicks who fell out of the nest.

There are about two hundred birds in the shelter, but the number flies: someone is taken away, new birds come, seriously ill patients die. Most birds live on a dovecote. At home, Maria is a hospital designed for fifteen pigeons, although it usually fits there twice as many birds.

1. One Sunday day, three years ago, I went to the bird market and in the park opposite I saw three thoroughbred pigeons in a flock of sizari. Then I found out that they could not sell them in the market and simply threw them away. I didn’t even know where I would keep them. They were so frozen and exhausted that they almost did not resist - I put them in a bag and went home on the subway. In the warmth they fell asleep. These were my first pigeons.

2. When a lot of animals at home, it helps well from perfectionism. A person who is accustomed to perfect order will faint when he sees what is being done here.

3. Everyone knows that the fallen chicks cannot be selected, their parents feed them. But this does not concern pigeons. You can take a pigeon on the ground, and when it grows, released.

4. Pigeon breeding is a rare, disappearing hobby. Our pigeons survived, because they are far from residential buildings, in the territory of the gas station, they do not bother anyone there. Since there are few pigeons now, some breeds of pigeons, such as the Leningrad circular, also disappear.

5. For the phrase "flying rats" immediately a bathhouse in their group. I will have a non -browning person who speaks about pigeons. In the urban environment, it is difficult to get infected from them - just wash your hands after contact with a dove.

6. After creating the shelter, I had a motto: "Hurry to do good." This applies to everything, not only birds. When I began to help with one living beings, I began to look at the brothers in appearance more friendly.

7. I believe in the theory of small affairs. If everyone has a small favorite thing, just a small hobby that benefits others, the world will become better.

8. For a shelter, I constantly lack time, money and assistants. Sometimes you need to clean the pigeon (it is difficult alone), crush the grain, repair something. We need volunteers who are ready to take birds to me, which I cannot accept in a shelter due to overflow.

9. Pigeons disabled take root at home well. They can live in a cage, and you can walk around the apartment in special sunset suit for birds. Pigeons can sit in their arms for a long time and strok, not every cat will communicate like that. The most affectionate, of course, are foster. People rarely observe birds next to them and do not know what they really are.

10. I believe that the pet should have a house.