A modern version of the device, based on specimens held at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, has been developed by musician Nathaniel Mann.
[When] the birds fly the wind blowing through the whistles sets them vibrating, and thus produces an open-air concert, for the instruments in one and the same flock are all tuned differently.
[2][3][4][5] Traditionally they were made from lightweight bamboo or from gourds and attached to the pigeon by a toggle fixed between its tail feathers - causing no harm to the bird.
[2] The carrier pigeons used by banking houses in Peking to carry reports were fitted with particularly intricate whistles carved with animal head designs and capable of emitting a number of different tones at once.
[3] Whilst in the 1970s there might have been 5–6 people in each street of Beijing keeping pigeons with whistles it is said to be rare to find even one person doing so in a whole district of the modern city.
[3] The modern practice has been documented by Colin Chinnery, a British consultant who has made sound recordings for exhibitions at a museum about traditional Beijing cultures in Dongcheng District.
[3] The Oxford-based Pitt Rivers Museum contains examples of traditional Chinese and Indonesian whistles (including one mounted on a taxidermy pigeon) as well as more modern types.