My pet bird blog: Harley, a Timneh African Grey; Cinnamon the Spice finch; Ginger the Society/Spice hybrid; and Peanut, a green-rumped parrotlet who died in 2006.
Not to harp (too much) on those pigeons sent to Iraq as sensors, I thought I'd mention an article on Wired today: Coal-Mine Canaries on a Chip. The article describes several research projects that use single cells or bacterium as modern-day versions of the 19th-century trick of bringing canaries down into coal mines.