The birds return to their "home." Scientists are still unsure how homing pigeons can find their way home, even from locations where they've never been released before.

JARED SOARES The Roanoke Times

Paul Burke trains approximately 50 white homing pigeons about 15 miles away from their house in Botetourt County.

Near the end of a recent funeral in Roanoke's Blue Ridge Memorial Gardens, a minister eulogized a deceased, distinguished lady by the name of Nell Nienke before a large group of family, friends and one anxious bird.

A few yards away from the graveside service, a wooden box rested beneath a large maple tree sporting spring's new leaves. Inside, a young white dove scratched and thrashed eagerly, waiting for its big moment. The bird pressed an eye to a hole in the box, seemingly looking for its cue.

When that time came, a funeral director removed the dove from its box and presented it to members of the family, who clasped their hands over the bird and held it firmly. The minister recited a verse from Psalms.

"And I said, Oh that I had wings like a dove!

For then would I fly away and be at rest."

The family released the dove, which flew low and fast, zipping just over the heads of the mourners. It quickly rose into the sky, sailed over the treetops and headed for home -- to Botetourt County.

The bird flew more than 10 miles to a small farm outside of Troutville, where it alighted upon a shedlike loft and joined more than 100 other white doves. The bird operation is owned by Paul and Seth Burke, a pair of West Virginia brothers who operate one of the few dove-release businesses in the region.

The Burkes primarily rent their birds for funerals, during which they symbolize a person's spirit departing for the hereafter. White-dove releases have become popular parts of weddings and other outdoor ceremonies.

"I'd rather release a bird than pay $65 for a flower arrangement," Paul Burke said.

It took some convincing

Paul Burke, 38, drives almost two hours from Rainelle, W.Va., to Botetourt County several times a week to train and take care of his birds.

He and his brother grew up in rural West Virginia with an appreciation for the outdoors, fostered perhaps by the fact that there wasn't much room indoors. As boys, they lived in a three-room house.

"We had no inside bathroom until 1981," Paul Burke said.

The brothers hunted, fished, played sports and raised their own animals. Seth Burke, younger by two years, was the first brother to become interested in birds.

"Ever since he was a kid, he kept chickens, pigeons," Paul Burke said. About a decade ago, Seth Burke met a man who introduced him to homing pigeons. Seth started his own business in 2001 and now keeps about 200 birds in West Virginia. The scene of hundreds of white birds filling the sky inspired the business's name, White Flights.

When the brothers wanted to expand the business two years ago, Seth Burke went to the Internet, where he discovered Oakey's Funeral Service & Crematory, one of the Roanoke Valley's oldest businesses and largest funeral operations. He contacted Oakey's president, Sammy Oakey, to see if the funeral home was interested in offering dove releases as part of its service.

Oakey, the fifth generation of his family to run the business, considered the proposal a bird-brained idea at first.

"I'm a big, big animal lover," Oakey said. "I didn't want to do anything that would jeopardize the birds."

Seth Burke called Oakey weekly and invited him to visit the West Virginia operation. Oakey eventually made the trip and was so impressed with the Burkes' business and their care for the birds that he agreed to one complimentary release during a funeral.

The brothers brought two birds to a funeral in Bedford County. After the graveside release, Oakey was convinced.

"Man, it was beautiful," he said. "It was powerful."

The funeral home now offers the dove release as part of its funeral packages. Although not every family requests the doves, Oakey said that his business performs as many as 15 releases a week. The families who release doves have nothing but praise for the service, he said.

"Instead of looking down and being morose," Oakey said, the families leave the grave "looking up."

Most make it home

White doves are actually homing pigeons that are members of the rock dove or rock pigeon families. The birds have an innate homing ability that has been enhanced through selective breeding. Domesticated homing pigeons, such as the white doves, can fly as far as 600 miles a day back to their home bases.

The birds were primarily used as messenger pigeons for centuries, especially during wartime, dating to the days of Genghis Khan. Messenger pigeons were especially useful during World War I when primitive electronic communication often failed.

In fact, one legendary male pigeon named Cher Ami was credited with saving 500 British soldiers in the Argonne Forest by delivering a message to headquarters that pinpointed the lost battalion's location. Cher Ami lost a leg to German fire and eventually died from his wounds, but not before medics provided him with a wooden leg and the French government awarded him the Croix de Guerre medal, one of its highest honors.

Scientists still debate how it is that homing pigeons can find their way home even from locations where they've never been released, although the most accepted theories posit that the birds' inner compasses are based on a combination of solar and magnetic navigations. British researchers recently reported that homing pigeons may also follow man-made routes and landmarks, such as highways and buildings.

However they do it, about 98 percent of Paul Burke's birds return to Botetourt County. The ones that don't make it back likely either found a new home beneath an overpass with other pigeons or they were attacked by a predator, such as a hawk.

A couple of times a week, Paul Burke releases about 20 pigeons at a time from locations around the valley to hone their homing instincts.

"People think we just turn them loose, and they're not getting back home," he said. "I take time training them. I turn them loose in downtown Roanoke, and they beat me home."

One bird took a little longer to get home. Nine weeks, in fact. Paul Burke had just about given up on him.

"He must have stopped off at a bird feeder or some other loft," he said.

Paul Burke didn't find the Botetourt farm as much as it found him. He was in the area while releasing a cage of birds, training them for the return trip to West Virginia, when he was approached by Bernard Odasz, a retired General Electric employee and a missionary. Odasz was curious about Burke's pigeons, and when he learned that the Burkes were looking for property close to Roanoke, he offered them a place on his farm.

Paul Burke converted a storage building into the loft, complete with chicken-wire cages and heat. The birds live on a diet of black oil sunflower seeds and cracked corn, and come and go through a trapped door, and they alight on a neighboring barn and power lines. In fact, with dozens of pigeons flying, cooing and strutting around, the place looks a little like a scene from Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds."

Paul Burke, a father of two who often hightails it back to West Virginia to coach his son's baseball team, said he loves the work.

"I do this full time now," said Burke, who has an electrician's apprentice license. "I make a living, but I'm not getting rich. But I can drop off a bird whenever I want and work when I want.

"I'd rather work outside than anything."