 The flight from the Citadel in Halifax, Nova Scotia to Sable Island, for example, was difficult for the pigeons to complete.From 1894 to 1898 pigeons carried mail from Avalon across the Santa Barbara Channel to Los Angeles.Two pigeon fanciers, brothers Otto J. and O. F. Zahn, reached an agreement with Western Union where it would not build a telegraph line to the isolated island so long as the pigeons did not compete with it on the mainland.