 The 1955 book Bird Navigation describes efforts at training homing behavior in species other than pigeons . Bird Navigation mentions Desbouvrie as an early experimenter , and also a passage from Pliny the Elder in which " Caecina of Volterra " ( possibly Caecina Paetus ) used painted swallows to report the colors of winning horses in a race . It is uncertain whether Desbouvrie was aware of the Pliny 's report . 
