If Pakistani pigeons spy, do locusts too?

The arch-villain Goldfinger had memorably told superspy James Bond, ‘Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, the third time is enemy action.’ Given that the pigeon apprehended in a border village in Jammu and Kashmir this week on suspicion of being a Pakistani spy is the third bird of the same species to be nabbed — others being in 2015 and 2018 — Indian officials cannot be faulted for their prompt action. But if the plan was for this unmanned avian vehicle (UAV) to slip in unnoticed, why its handler(s) decided to daub it with a splotch of pink is unclear; perhaps the intention was for it to mingle with flamingos in Mumbai but went off-course. It may have been easier for it to sneak in behind the swarms of locusts now invading India from hatching grounds in Baluchistan.

Of course, using pigeons is devilishly clever: if caught, they cannot sing like canaries. And though a Pakistani villager with no obvious connection to Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has claimed ownership and said the coded message on its foot tag was just his phone number, India should not lower its guard just yet. After all, only last year, the CIA declassified files of its Cold War spy-pigeon missions that included them photographing sensitive sites in the former USSR. As CIA also trained ravens and dolphins, Pakistani locusts should merit closer examination too.