RACING PIGEON NEWS ISSUE 264

Welcome issue 264

In This Issue:

Bubba has a $5,000 pigeon

Jo Sains 1st East Section
Pigeon Flocks

Bubba has a $5,000 pigeon. It’s a racer.
story and photos by Marla Cantrell - The City Wire

Bubba Wilson needed a hobby when he retired.

He golfed, but it wasn’t something he wanted to do every day, so he kept looking. As a boy he kept a few wild pigeons. Racing homing pigeons seemed like a natural progression, so he decided to give it a try.

That was seven years ago. Four years ago Wilson started the Arkansas River Racing Club. There are now nine members in the group. It is one of four racing clubs in Arkansas and one of 1,000 in the nation. According to the American Racing Pigeon Union, there are 15,000 pigeon fanciers in the United States. Worldwide that number climbs to one million.

Wilson, who lives in Alma, had a mentor when he started. An Oregon man helped him learn the ropes and answered questions every newcomer has. It is how the system works: one fancier in a different part of the country will help another, who will return the favor as he advances. The actual training, however, is left to the student.

“At first they’re just like kids, they’re landing on rooftops and in the trees,” Wilson explained. “But after a while they’ll start routing. They fly as a flock. They’ll start circling. They’ll get farther and farther out. They’ll learn where the sun is at different times of the day. ... I go about 40 miles with young birds to train. I’ll come back and start going 10 miles at points around the clock. Once they get trained to the north, I go east, west or south. They can fly 700 miles a day, 55 or 60 miles an hour.”

SMART BIRDS

Wilson said the pigeons are born with a built-in GPS.

“A racing pigeon has three magnets in its head, one on its forehead and two on each side. They can smell, they can hear. If one of our birds is up, they can tell the difference between the west coast and the east coasts by smelling the oceans.”

Racing Homers find landmarks, like water towers or highways, and remember them forever. Wilson said the birds are able to discern minute differences in a landscape. In one study, the birds were shown a series of photographs and given food when they identified a certain face. The pigeons became so proficient at the task, they were able to recognize the person when shown only small pieces of the picture, such as the corner of an eye, or the curve of a cheek.

Club members mark the pigeons by attaching a band, which is approximately the circumference of a pencil eraser, on its leg. Before a race, another band with an electronic ID is added. The birds are taken to a designated start line, scanned, just like at a grocery store, and a portable module, that looks a lot like a garage door opener, downloads race information, wind speed and weather conditions. The races can be as short as 100 miles and long as 700.

Once the birds are released, owners wait anxiously at home for the pigeons to return. Each member’s loft has a scanner pad the birds must walk across to get inside to its food and cage. That pad records the time of arrival. The homing pigeon with the fastest time wins the race.

PRICEY BIRDS

Wilson’s homing pigeons have taken prizes in the loft of the year, average speed, and the bird of the year categories.

The most he’s paid for a Racing Homer is $500; however, he has a few birds that are worth $5,000. One of his more costly pigeons is from the Netherlands, where the sport likely began. Another is from Belgium, where pigeon racing is as popular as football is in this country. But the cost of Wilson’s birds is chicken feed compared to some. Wilson said two months ago a pigeon in Europe sold for $123,000.

Wilson is now breeding his own line, the Bubba Jansen. The Jansen part of the line was developed by four brothers in Belgium. He blended several other lines together and is hoping for a champion one day.

Working with Racing Homers is good for enthusiasts of any age. It’s a great way to teach responsibility to the younger racers, something he said has been lost since the days when children worked with animals on the family farm. Families find common ground in the sport, husbands and wives team up and grandparents learn racing alongside their grandchildren.

HISTORIC BIRDS

It’s a sport that’s been around for a really long time.

“The old English lords had pigeons, the Romans had pigeons and they used them to send messages and in World War I and World War II they were there,” Wilson said. “They were in the Korean war. Right up here in Missouri was a big pigeon raising and training site.”

Historians can trace the birds back 5,000 years. Their role in advancing society is well documented. In the 12th century they were used by postmasters to deliver letters. Later, they carried information for newspapers. In the early 19th century they flew across the English Channel to bring stock exchange quotes to Belgium.

In the beginning the birds traveled no more than 40 miles a day, but breeding has improved the pigeons. The top birds can now fly 15 hours non-stop and travel 500 miles in a single day.

While pigeon racing can be an expensive endeavor — the Queen of England keeps a loft of Racing Homers — it doesn’t have to be. The lofts needed to house the birds don’t have to be ornate structures. All the birds need is shelter from the elements and predators, good ventilation and cages.

Wilson’s setup is much more elaborate than the standard loft. He has three buildings devoted to his birds, including an area for the breeders, an infirmary and sections for older and younger birds. He also has a custom trailer that can transport 750 birds.

The birds live a long time if cared for properly; he lost his oldest bird, a 15-year-old, this winter. He is continually training new birds. There is always something to do, and the next race to prepare for. It’s made retirement much easier.

He never thought he’d know as much as he does about Racing Homers or that he’d been so enthusiastic about the sport. But the birds are like pets to him, and although he doesn’t name each one — he has hundreds — he said they each have a distinct personality. Getting to know the birds the way Wilson does is one of the keys to raising a champion. The possibility that a champion is already sitting inside his loft is what keeps him in the game.

Jo Sains 1st East Section in the BICC Wadebridge - 2006
By Pam Gladwin

Jo Sains 1st East Section and 1st. bird into Essex in the B I C C race from Wadebridge. Once again it is Leigh Club members that I am writing about. The first five places in East section are all Leigh club members.

This is how it reads 1st.Jo Sains 2nd. Dave Wilton & Son, 3rd. John Underdown, 4th. Brian Baxter, 5th. John Brady. It shows that the Leigh club have some of the best flyers in Essex. Jo Sains is a very knowledgably man, who takes the welfare of his birds very seriously. Some years ago Jo wrote a book on Pigeon racing, which I am sure many of you will have read. Jo works very hard for our club, he is Chairman and race controller and ever week spends hours checking the weather to make sure we get a god race and thanks to Jo we get some very good racing.

Jo also runs the Burnham Marking station for our club from his house, I know all the members of the club want me to say well done to him. We lost our Convoyer at the start of this year as he was taken ill, so my other half, John, has been taking the club birds to the race point each week, leaving me to time in from the races. This being the case we decided not to send to Wadebridge, mainly because John fly’s the distance birds and his trap is to high of the ground for me. So until he alters his trap I do not think we will be sending. I asked Jo Sains for some details for his birds, the following is Jo’s article.

The bird is a Flor Engel bred by Frank Sheader raced by E. J. Sains.

Why widowhood hens?

I suppose that I could sum up what I am trying to achieve with my widowhood hens by going back some forty years, when all my fellow fanciers only had one thing in mind. And that of course, was to win. But ultimately, to win at the distance. I remember mentioning once to one of the club’s top fanciers that this nice little blue cheq hen that I owned was my best pigeon. His answer to that was: “Has it flown Lerwick or Thurso? No? Well it’s not a good pigeon then”. This old fancier had no heart for young fanciers, but nevertheless, I ended up buying several good birds from him, which in turn, bred birds that won First Combine Thurso (approximately 5000 birds) and Third Open N. R. C. C. Lerwick at almost 600 miles. I knew later by the look on his face he wished he had never sold them to me.

You may say, ‘What’s this got to do with widowhood hens?’. Well the Lerwick and Thurso performances were won on the natural system. Then in the early seventies I moved onto widowhood after an old Belgium fancier whose pigeon I had returned confided in me about the secrets of widowhood. That year I won everything in the club with brilliant Combine results. Then came my undoing, the boys plied me with drink at the presentation and I spilt the beans about widowhood. It’s not so easy to win a war when you all have the same guns.

After this I got an urge to fly South Road with distance in mind. But of course, I had to start almost again and could not wait for the birds to mature to the distance so I ventured into sprint. When you are sprinting it takes a lot of hard work. First you need to be in a good position. This is foremost. Then you need a good method that keeps the birds fit without boring them. But most of all you need to train and train from the right place. Not too often though - just once a week, close to basketing and around 25 – 30 miles. Perhaps it was easy then, I don’t know. But I toped the old Essex South Road Federation six to seven weeks in succession. So I suppose I can say I have tried everything. My latest venture is aimed at flying the distance again, but in the 21st century. I have seen fanciers on the continent push their one-day widowhood hens on an extra hundred miles, scoring some unbelievable performances at the distance. By this I mean 500+ miles on the day. You need the right method and this is what I am experimenting with.

I am sure it will not be long before Jo is winning the 500+ races. Well done Jo.

Pigeon Flocks Let the Best Bird Lead
By Rachel Ehrenberg, Science News

Even the bird-brained can follow a leader. When pigeons fly in flocks, each bird falls behind another with better navigational skill, and the savviest among them leads the flock, scientists report in the April 8 Nature.

The research suggests hierarchies can serve peaceful purposes in the animal kingdom, where dominance by brute force is often the rule. “A pecking order tends to be just that — a pecking order,” says Iain Couzin of Princeton University, an expert in collective behavior who was not involved in the research.

The research also suggests that for pigeons, dominance isn’t set in stone. While one bird often emerged as the leader, other birds also stepped up. This flexibility in leadership had previously been seen only in some small groups of fish.

From schools to packs to swarms to flocks, collective behavior is widespread among animals. But in many cases, the important interactions are with nearest neighbors, and control of the group’s movement is distributed among members rather than hierarchical.

Biological physicist Tamás Vicsek of Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest and his colleagues studied flight dynamics in homing pigeons, which fly in flocks but conveniently return to their roosts. The researchers outfitted 13 pigeons with tiny backpacks carrying GPS devices that measured shifts in birds’ flight direction five times per second. Flocks of eight to 10 birds flew with the devices during homing flights (a roughly 14-kilometer trip back to the roost) and spontaneous “free” flights near home. Each bird also flew solo flights of about 15 kilometers each.

Analysis of GPS logs showed that for each excursion, the flock had one leader followed by at least three or four other birds. Each of these followers was in turn followed by other birds in the flock. Comparing the solo flight paths to the group flights showed that the birds with the best navigational skills led the flock.

While flocks have hierarchies, they’re not dictatorships, notes Vicsek. One bird led eight of the 13 flights, while other birds took the lead on the rest of the trips. Vicsek likens the dynamics to a group of peers deciding where to eat dinner. “Maybe someone knows the area restaurants best, or there is a person who’s a gourmand — or maybe they are the most outspoken,” he says. This one person might pick the place to eat for several nights, although another person might chime in now and then. And then there is the person with no say, whom everyone knows has terrible taste in food.

“These pigeons know each other. They know which is the smartest. The fastest bird will even follow the slower one who knows the way home the best,” say Vicsek. Videos of the birds’ positions during flight showed that if the best navigator moves a little to the left, it takes about a third of a second for other birds to do the same. But if the least savvy bird makes a move “the others don’t care,” Vicsek says.

Pigeons’ brains may be wired for follow-the-leader, comments behavioral neuroscientist Lucia Jacobs of the University of California, Berkeley. When the left eye sees something, for example, it sends all the visual information to the right brain hemisphere, and vice versa. This “extreme lateralization” may play a role in organizing flocks, the new work suggests. A pigeon following another was most likely to be flying on its partner’s right, seeing this leader with its left eye. “It’s very cool,” Jacobs says.

Images: Zsuzsa Ákos

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