The importance of visual cues in pigeon homing has received little attention compared to that given olfactory and magnetic cues. Perhaps this is a result of some early experiments in which pigeons equipped with frosted contact lenses were found to home well and were able to locate their home lofts with excellent accuracy when denied access to visual information (Keeton, 1974). Given these results and the fact that pigeons are able to home from unfamiliar areas where there are no apparent familiar landmarks, experiments naturally focused their attention elsewhere. Recent experiments, however, have shown that visual landmarks are an important aspect of the pigeons' spatial map of the familiar area (Chappell and Guilford, 1997; Burt et al., 1997). Using an indoor, food searching task Chappell and Guilford investigated the pigeon's ability to use visual landmarks to locate food. They found that pigeons were indeed able to use visual landmarks in such a task, but only if these landmarks were three and not two dimensional. Because use of two dimensional visual cues all together prevented the pigeons from acquiring the task, it seemed that the pigeons were not able to use magnetic field information in this experiment. These results suggested that pigeons can use visual cues in a spatial learning task without access to the sun. The authors further suggest that their findings lend support to Wallraff's conclusion that anosmic pigeons are able to home from familiar sites due to their ability to use visual landmarks to navigate home (Chappell and Guilford, 1997). Burt et al. (1997) also found that pigeons use visual information when released from familiar sites distant from the home loft. This experiment allowed the experimental pigeons visual access to the release site for five minutes prior to the actual release. The homing speeds of these pigeons were then compared to those of the control group which was not allowed visual access to the site before release. It should be noted that both groups of birds were allowed access to olfactory information during the previewing period. The experimental birds homed, on average, sixteen percent faster than the controls indicating that their previewing experience allowed them to home more efficiently. Visual landmarks, then, seem to be a component of the pigeon's ability to discern the homeward direction at a familiar release site. The types of landmarks and the specific features of those landmarks that are used to form this visual map, however, are not known with any degree of certainty.