RACING PIGEON NEWS ISSUE 270

Welcome deckers davy issue 270

'Racehorses of the sky' launch from NY rooftops
by Sebastian Smith - AFP

NEW YORK (AFP) – A handful of pigeons circling the drab streets of New York's suburbs gives no idea of the drama being enacted in the skies over the Big Apple this summer.

These are not ordinary pigeons, the flying rats of urban speak. They're homing pigeons, winged racers who'll literally give their lives to cross the finish line.

"They're the racehorses of the sky," as Peter Fusco, a 41-year-old pigeon keeper, from the borough of Staten Island, puts it.

Pigeon racing is little-known, but deeply rooted in New York.

So while the sport may have sharply diminished in popularity over recent years, old-timers and younger enthusiasts like Fusco will ensure that this year's racing season is as fiercely contested as ever.

Keepers, known as fanciers, train their athletes in a game of daring, navigation and endurance. Released hundreds of miles from their home coops, the pigeons brave hawks, storms and deadly power lines to return. Many die.

"They have heart," Fusco said. "I have birds come home with broken feet, busted keel, and they still made it home."

It's a working class sport largely hidden from the outside world. Fanciers maintain coops, called lofts, on rooftops and in yards throughout the less wealthy areas of New York, far from the glitz of billionaire-ville Manhattan.

The city's most famous fancier is Mike Tyson, the legendary heavyweight boxer. He grew up looking after pigeons and has announced he's returning to that first love -- this time as an owner of racing birds.

Albert Sima, who races and sells pigeons from a pet shop in the Queens borough, has known Tyson for years and says the ex-champ is in for a surprise if he thinks money will buy success.

"He's going to find out it's not that easy," Sima, 59, said on the roof where he keeps cages of slick-looking birds.

"This is not boxing. It's completely different. I hope he does well, but I should think I will beat him in most races. If you don't devote the time, you won't be a pigeon racer, just a pigeon keeper."

On race day, various clubs from the city compete, driving hundreds, even thousands of pigeons to a release point anything between 100 and 600 miles from home.

Each pigeon's return to its coop is clocked by a computer chip attached to an ankle ring. Handicaps are then applied to even out the distances between competitors' houses.

Often, only minutes, or seconds separate winners and losers, with prize money varying between a few hundred dollars at local level to tens of thousands of dollars for big occasions.

Ralph Laggio, 71, has been racing pigeons since he was nine and says it takes a lifetime to understand the animals' complexities.

"You need a good bloodline in the pigeon, he said. "You don't just take a pigeon from the street. That to me is nothing but a common pigeon."

Next comes the careful process of training the young pigeon alongside older birds to memorize the neighborhood and gradually acquire the ability to return home from longer distances.

There are various theories on how pigeons home in, battling mortal dangers and simply the temptations of sitting in a tree or absconding with a bunch of street pigeons.

They clearly appear to navigate by the sun and they may also have some natural compass, using magnetic north to find their way across swaths of unfamiliar territory. Once they locate their neighborhood, they seem to recognize the way home.

The real making of champions lies in the care of the pigeon, fanciers say.

"You have to treat them like an athlete. It's like a runner or a boxer: If you don't train, diet, exercise, sleep properly, then you're just wasting your time," Laggio says.

And on race day, the dark arts of the trainer come into play.

Laggio says he'll only feed his birds lightly on the eve of the flight. "That way the pigeon goes into the race, just as if it was a wrestling or boxing match, with a little hunger."

There are even stronger motivators.

Some trainers will fly female pigeons who are sitting on eggs or nursing newly hatched: the mother will be desperate to return home. Others separate males and females from their mates the day before, giving the athlete a different kind of hunger.

"The motivation to get them home, what motivates any individual, you know most of the time --sex!" laughs Staten Island pigeon fancier, Mike Romano.

As youngsters turn to less complex pastimes, Sima fears the sport could die out.

"When I was a kid all me and my father ever talked about was pigeons. There were 50 or 60 members of our club here. Now there're 24," he said.

But nothing, he says, tops that dedication between men -- and it is almost exclusively a male pastime here -- and their feathered friends.

Sima says his passion cost him a normal social life and ultimately his 20-year marriage. He'd change nothing.

"When I'm up here with the birds, I just forget everything," he says.

Tyson, one of the most tortured sportsmen of modern times, will still come into his pet store, "sit with the birds and just watch them."

And the pigeons repay that love.

"A friend had six or seven pigeons that he didn't want anymore, so he gave them to a friend in Florida," Sima recalled. "In a few days, two or three came home. They found their way back -- 1,100 miles back."

Brian Pearson of Gateshead
Keith Mott

Brian has had pigeons most of his life and started racing with all the fashionable strains over 20 years ago. In the last 10 years he has settled on the Busschaerts and Smits-Van Winckel bloodlines and has never looked back, with success after success, including: 1988 - 6th UNC (17,960 birds) Lillers: 1992 - 1st open UNC (18,948 birds) Lillers and 1995 - 1st open UNC (21,389 birds) Lillers. In my opinion he is a master at the art of racing pigeons. The loft’s performances over recent years, racing in the hotbed of the Up North Combine, are fantastic and he only races a very small team of pigeons. What is also amazing is that his loft is only a few yards away from and facing main railway lines.

When I met Brian on my visit to Newcastle, I found him to be a very pleasant gentleman. I asked him if the trains bothered the pigeons and he said not really, the pigeons are quite used to the passing trains, but if one comes by when they come home from the race, they can’t trap through the open doors, so have to fly around until they’ve gone. The passing trains have never hit the exercising birds, but the big coal trains do make the loft shake.

On my visit, Brian’s two Up North Combine winners were paired together in the stock partings and were typical of his ideal type of pigeon, small to medium in the hand. The 1995 Lillers Combine winner is a yearling blue white flight cock, ‘The Fonz’, whose sire was bred by Brian Clayburn of Yorkshire and his dam a Busschaert from Pearson & Dransfield of Barnsley. ‘The Fonz’ is a small cock in the hand, raced on Brian's own widowhood system and was rung with his last ring of the 1994 season. Brian's main base family is Busschaert and he says that in the last 20 years this great strain has been second to none for the base family in major Up North Combine winning lofts, in day races up to 500 miles. He says that when he won the UNC from Lillers (345 miles) in 1992, it was the greatest feeling in the world and his then champion Busschaert dark hen, 'Charlie's Angel', has not raced since she won the combine. She won on what Brian calls, his 'reverse widowhood system'. Her sire was a Busschaert pigeon bred by Arthur Wilkinson of Toft Hill. Brian isn't really a strain man, he just likes good pigeons and enjoys racing from 250 to 450 miles.

Ron Evans & son of Sunderland

On a recent video trip to the North-East, I visited Sunderland and the fantastic loft of Ron Evans & Son, who have raced with outstanding results for many years. Ron Evans was born in Sunderland and his father was a successful fancier, winning the federation many years ago. Ron Snr and Ron Jnr started racing together in Castletown HS in 1972 and their loft is sited at Fulwell Pumping Station in Sunderland. The father and son partnership had a lay-off from pigeons in the early 1980s and say that T. Laskey put them on the right track when they started to race pigeons again in 1988. They obtained Busschaerts from him and they hit on straight away, winning the Young Bird Average in 1989. On their re-start in the sport, they joined the High Southwick HS and flew to a standard wooden, wire-fronted loft. The Evans partners used to race on the natural system and feed on the hopper, with training every day. They now race on widowhood and do not train in the first part of the week, keeping the cocks on break down morning and night. They go back on widowhood mixture from the Tuesday night and all depends on the distance of the race the following Saturday. The cocks get a bath on Friday and are always shown the hens before going into the basket for the race.

The partners' present loft is made of fibreglass and sited high above a river bank. With no windows in the front, it has a full length corridor with open-door trapping and an apex roof, with ventilation in the sides of the roof. Ron likes to see a dry loft that should be light and draught-proof, with plenty of space for the inmates. The loft houses 20 pairs of stock birds and 44 pairs of racers which are all paired up in early January. They breed an average of 80 young birds each season. The loft's best performance is 2nd open UNC with 27,500 birds competing. Some of the loft's best racers are: 'Rags', a Busschaert who won 17 cards including 5 x 1st club, 3 x 1st federation, also winning the 2-Bird Club six times and now at stock; 'Deacon's Boy', who won 5 x 1sts club, 1 x 1st federation, 2 x 2nds federation, 1 x 3rd federation and many other positions; 'Grumpy' - 5 x 1sts club, 3 x 1sts federation, 1 x 2nd federation and 1 x 3rd federation; 'Vauxy' - 3 x 1sts federation and won the section with 3,500 birds competing. The loft houses two Van Loons which have both won 4th open UNC. and won the section.

High Southwick HS races on the south route, starting at Selby, 78 miles and going through to Bourges, 568 miles. The loft houses Busschaerts as the main family, with introductions of Janssens, Van Loons and Lefebre Dhaenens, with the Busschaerts being outstanding up to Provins, 483 miles. The old birds and some yearlings are sent through to Provins and the youngsters are raced through the full programme to 262 miles, with fancied birds being stopped at 170 miles. The partners like a good widowhood mixture and say it is ideal in its make-up for racing pigeons at any distance. The birds are given a seed and Hormoform mixture every time they come into the loft from training and exercise and the partners maintain this keeps the birds in good feather. The racers get multivits and pigeon tonic in the water during the week. The widowhood cocks and yearlings get tosses while sitting their second round of eggs and once racing starts, only fly out twice a day for regular exercise. Young birds train up to 30 miles, up to the first race, then they exercise around the loft every morning and have a 20-miletraining toss in the afternoon. Ron says that after a couple of loft visits with Brian Vickers he realised there is definitely something in the eyesign method.

In the club, the two Ronnies have won countless averages and trophies and top combine positions since 1989 have been as follows: 2nd open UNC Folkestone (27,878 birds), 4th open UNC Maidstone (23,338 birds), 4th open UNC Lillers, 342 miles (21,347 birds), 5th open UNC Folkestone (22,375 birds), 6th open UNC Provins, 483 miles (8,756 birds), also winning 1st section in these five races including 7th open UNC, 2nd section Young Bird National (23,548 birds), 8th open UNC, 3rd section Provins (6,250 birds), 21st open UNC Folkestone National (23,740 birds), 22nd open UNC Lillers (19,867 birds). A really fantastic loft performance!

National flown from Plimmerton
By MATTHEW LOWE

Pigeon fancier Kerry Frazer has flown into the history books by winning a treble of long distance races in record-breaking time.

A member of the Manukau Racing Pigeon Club he has enjoyed a successful month by getting the first birds back to Auckland in races from Timaru, Dunedin and Invercargill. His victories, a repeat of the treble he secured in 1998, all came in record times with the birds flying at speeds of about 90km/h.Kerry Frazer's had the top four birds in the 918km race from Timaru, with the winning pigeon's time of 10 hours and 30 minutes breaking the record by half an hour. The following week he took the first two places in the 1195km event from Dunedin and smashed the record by two hours when one of his pigeons came home in 12 hours and five minutes He completed a prestigious hat-trick of long-distance wins by coming first in the 1290km race from Invercargill in a time of 14 hours and 15 minutes last weekend DEC 18

The bird was nearly an hour clear of its nearest rival, broke the route's previous record by 30 minutes and it was the first time a bird had ever completed the journey on the same day.

"All the years I have been flying and I have never done Dunedin or Invercargill in one day before so that has been a big thrill," he says.

Unlike your urban pigeon that might seem to live primarily to hunt for crumbs and decorate cars, these winged athletes aren’t bred to just waddle around all day. They’re made for speed, and they might fly 600 miles a day at more than 50 mph in races back to their lofts, or home bases.

Getting the first one to complete the Invercargill race on the same day is what I was most wrapped about and we had a good wind which is a huge help in the long races.

"It was dark when he got back and to think that morning he was in Invercargill and he was the only one of all the birds competing to make it back on the day."

Frazer, 63, has been involved with racing pigeons since his childhood when his father took up the sport.

He has raced about 70 birds from his Pukekohe home during the past year but despite his success says he still does not know what makes the birds keep coming back.

"Tests have shown that it seems to have something to do with magnetic fields, on a clear day birds will get up and bang they are home but on a cloudy day they could take 10 minutes or more to find their bearings," says Kerry Frazer.

"They have to be trained as babies, you take them 20km and they could take two hours to come home but once you have taken them two or three times they are home in about 20 minutes. "The more you toss them the more they get their bearings quicker.

"Although you do worry when you get a storm and they're coming home hours late. You're always in the lap of the gods because you have problems with predators like the sparrow hawk or sometimes they get killed in the wires."

Kerry Frazer used to live in Otahuhu but moved from there after 21 of his birds were killed in wires in the space of two days.

Despite his record-breaking times Frazer can also boast having a pigeon that may have taken the longest to complete the journey back from Invercargill.

"It was the weekend of the Dunedin race and I went to the loft and saw a pigeon and looked at it and thought why are you trying to get in?

"Then I noticed she was one I had lost her three years ago in an Invercargill race, so I had sent her away as a two-year-old and she's come back as a five-year-old."

A thousand racers soar

ABOUT 1000 pigeons will be released as part of the Riverstone Festival this Saturday.

The festival coincides with the town's 200th anniversary and 500 pigeons will be released from Riverstone Bowling Club at 9.30am.

Another flock will fly 150kilometres from the South Coast at 11am, as part of the Culburra to Riverstone race run by Riverstone Racing Pigeon Club.

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