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.
....read more
Posts tonen met het label RACING PIGEON. Alle posts tonen
Posts tonen met het label RACING PIGEON. Alle posts tonen
zaterdag 5 juni 2010
zaterdag 22 mei 2010
RACING PIGEON NEWS ISSUE 268
Welcome deckers davy issue 268
A flying fancy
Harbour News
CARALISE MOORE - North Harbour News
IN HIS 70 years of experience, Whangaparaoa pigeon flyer Norman Coker has only once seen one of his birds fly from Invercargill to Auckland.
That day was celebrated in December last year.
The pigeon fancier started racing birds in Devon, England, when he was around 11 years old.
Now he has a family of 60 birds in his backyard that he breeds, rears and trains.
Norman says he has never met anyone in New Zealand who has had a bird fly back home from as far away as Invercargill – almost 1200 kilometres – in 14 hours and 45 minutes.
Flying distance and time are the two important factors in pigeon racing.
Norman released his bird at 6.30am on December 15, and it arrived home at 9.15pm.
"It was an unbelievable effort and the highlight of my racing career. I've never had anything like it."
Norman says pigeons find their way home using several methods to navigate, including visual clues from the landscape, the sun and the Earth's magnetic field.
"I train them from when they are around 12 to 14 weeks old.
"I put them in a basket and take them to the North Shore.
"I liberate them from there and almost always they make it home. The older they get the further away I do it."
While Norman is very proud of his bird, who is unnamed, he says it's important to recognise each pigeon has its own personality.
The bond between owner and bird is important in its drive to return home.
"It is important to spend a lot of time with your birds, and for them to know this is their home."
Always trying to push the flying time and distance boundaries, Norman says he has never put limitations on how far the birds can fly in a day.
"Pigeon flying started as a hobby back in the medieval days when people probably didn't have much to do.
"It's a shame the hobby isn't popular today, but it is probably because it is too expensive and there are so many other things children can do now."
One of Norman's biggest lessons from his pigeons is patience.
"It takes a lot of time to get a good flyer."
Racing for seven decades and perfecting the bloodline of his feathered family has taught him a lot of patience.
Norman's pigeons are based on the famous Van Cutsem bloodlines, and several more were introduced from other Auckland racers' stock, creating solid performers.
Pigeons usually have a racing life of six years and can live up to 20 years.
Norman moved to Whangaparaoa from Christchurch in 1993 with his wife. He has two sons and two daughters.
CHARLES DAHLEN OF THE GREATER SEATTLE CLUB.
BY SKI GRABANSKI
I belong to the Greater Seattle Club. We have 30 members with approx. 20 members flying each week this OB season. I would like you to meet Charles Dahlen who I think is worthy of special recognition. Charles has been a member of our club for four years. In those four years he has flown only a hand full of races. This year, Charles is flying a small team of yearling's that were not trained as young birds. Charles did start training his race team this year two months before the OB series started.
Here are Charles's club results to date.
Week 1 70 miles with 175 birds competing Charles took 12th, 13th, 14th & 15th.
Week 2 100 miles A, with 190 birds, 1st & 2nd
100 miles B, with 150 birds, 12th
Week 3 145 miles A, 209 birds, 4th, 9th, & 14th. Now is where it gets good.
Week 4 165 miles A, 211 birds, 1st, 3rd & 10th
165 miles B, 140 birds, 1st & 4th
Week 5 200 miles A, 220 birds, 1st, 3rd, 8th, 9th & 21st
200 miles B, 161 birds, 1st, 2nd 3rd & 16th.
Charles also took top honors in the Evergreen Concourse this past weekend with 1st place in the "B" race, winning by almost one minute.
Who knows what week 6 will bring. Just to let everyone know the competition is very tough in our club. In the first 15 positions, it's not uncommon to see 10 to 12 different lofts.
I remember the first weekend of the OB series, the guys were commenting how great Charles's birds felt. The color and the weight on them was perfect, and the feather quality was outstanding. They felt like silk.
After knock-off last week, some of the members asked Charles what he was doing to get such great results and his birds in such great shape? I asked if he was flying Widowhood or the Natural system? He flies them Natural. So we asked what nest position he flies them to? His answer was "OH I don't have nest boxes for them, they only have perches and sometimes a couple of pair get together in a corner of the loft".
Charles loft is small (10X12) with 3 sections (Breeders, OB flyer's & YB's). It's completely open in the front and has expanded metal for the floor. You would think that this would be a disadvantage because of our damp and rainy weather here in the Pacific Northwest. But as I said, the birds look fantastic. One thing I forgot to mention, Charles is one of two members in the club that still uses a mechanical clock. If you notice in the picture, he has bobs for his trapping system. Not stall traps. So when the birds return from the race, he has to walk them in from the landing board and once the birds are in the loft he has to catch them and remove the counter marker and put it in the clock. How much time do you think he loses?
Birds: Charles has 12 pair of breeders that were given to him by fellow club members. He has a little mixture of everything and some Janssens.
Feeding: Charles feeds his race birds a mixture that is 15.5% protein. Saturday (race day) the birds are fed equal parts race mix and Safflower. Sunday they are fed the same as Saturday. Monday through Thursday they get 1 part race mix and 1 part Safflower. Friday they get 1 part Safflower and 1 part race mix. Sunday through Friday the birds are fed only once a day in the AM. They are fed all they want, then the feed is taken away. The birds are also fed fresh grit with garlic everyday.
Training & exercise: The birds are trained twice a week, at 40 driving miles. They are exercised twice per day. The evening exercise is about an hour before sunset. Birds are rested Sunday & Monday.
Medication: NONE!!!!
Supplements: Twice a week they get a mixture of Wheat Germ Oil & Soybean Oil with Brewers Yeast mixed on the feed. Saturday & Sunday they are given electrolytes with vitamins in the water. Monday through Wednesday the water has Winsmore Vitamins in it. Thursday and Friday they are given Red Cell in the water.
Charles is not only a very tough competitor, but also a great asset to the club. He is always one of the first to arrive the night of shipping and makes sure all the shipping crates are setup and have water in them for the birds. Charles, congratulations from all your club members on a fantastic start and we all hope your success continues throughout the season.
We told Charles that his natural birds are not suppose to beat our widowhood cocks and hens week in and week out. He only smiled. Charles, the only advice I can give you, is don't change a thing, know matter what anyone tells you.
TEXT & PHOTOS BY SKI GRABANSKI.
BIRDBRAINED
Text: BRAD MACKAY
WALLY SABELL ARRIVES AT THE SILVERTON HOTEL & CASINO AROUND 6:30 p.m. on Thursday and elbows his way through the maze of slot machines and blackjack tables. The 72-year-old dodges the keno waitresses, ignores the call of the all-you-can-eat buffet and slips into a back room of this Las Vegas casino. Unlike the herd of silver-haired low rollers outside, Wally is uninterested in your run-of-the-mill video poker. Right now, not even an underground poker game or baccarat session will do. Tonight Wally is answering a higher calling - that of pigeon racing.
While pigeon racing has existed for centuries, it has largely been a regionalized hobby, with like-minded men pitting their birds against one another in a race back to their home lofts. But the recent growth of high-stakes one-loft races has helped change all that. As the name implies, in one-loft races, a large number of pigeons are raised at one location, which allows them to be treated equally with feed and medication. With big purses and a common finish line, one-loft races have added a much-needed shot of drama to a lonely " and admittedly strange " pastime.
It's fitting, then, that this high-voltage gambler's mecca is playing host this weekend to the world's top feathered athletes in a trifecta of one-loft pigeon racing. By Saturday, more than 1,000 pigeon breeders and fanciers from Italy, Belgium, China and the Philippines will descend on America's playground for a trio of long-distance races with a combined purse of more than US$1.25-million. By the time Wally arrives at the Silverton Showroom, a good half of them are waiting patiently for tonight's kickoff of the latest race, the Vegas Classic " a 515-kilometre aerial marathon with US$40,000 for the first-place bird. An affable, bright-eyed landscaper from Denver, Wally has been raising homing pigeons for almost 60 years. Clad in a blue satin jacket with a larger-than-life pigeon design on the back, he trades banter and rumours while waiting for the proceedings to begin.
Each breeder is given a three-minute audience with his bird before it is registered and locked in the race trailer. (Following the inspection, the 382 birds will be kept under lock and key overnight before being driven by race officials to the Mexican fishing village El Golfo de Santa Clara and released.) If you're not around, your bird is left in the hands of race officials. Wally doesn't like the sound of that. "Look at that guy," he motions with his head. "He has a hand like a foot. I don't want him anywhere near my bird."
When his name is called, Wally makes his way through cigar smoke to stacks of metal cages and is handed his pigeon beak-first. He begins a pre-flight checklist. First he grabs a wing and holds it outstretched, waiting for it to tremble just so. Next he pushes on the feet " a test of muscle resistance. Uncertain, he peers into the bird's red and yellow pupils and inspects the colour of its wattle. Then he suddenly flips the bird over, parting its feathers and exposing its breastbone. Squinting, he leans closer, sticks out his tongue and licks the bird's pale pinkish skin to clean off the excess dander. He says he's looking for a tiny blood vessel that is visible only in first-class racing pigeons, and he apparently likes what he sees. "Could be a winner," he says nodding, as the bird is secured in its cage.
As bizarre as this seems, Wally's personal voodoo is re-enacted many times over the next three days. Owners here will do anything, including staring down the birds' throats and examining their tail feathers, in an attempt to decipher something that is essentially unexplainable. Although homing pigeons date back to ancient Egypt, their ability to return to their home lofts remains inscrutable. Besides being prized as couriers during two world wars, the birds have beguiled everyone from Kublai Khan to Charles Darwin to Queen Victoria. They even sparked a pigeon-fancying craze in late 19th-century Europe, complete with its own social clubs. This culture lingers on in Belgium, the heart of global pigeon racing.
Come Saturday afternoon, Ed Sittner's back yard is awash with well-maintained beer bellies and once-proud pompadours. It's a perfectly balmy day, and about 400 farmers, cowboys and businessmen are feeding on barbecue and peach cobbler, just metres from the race loft-cum-finish line. Released around 7:30 a.m., the birds are expected to return to Ed's 25-metre custom-built loft around 2:30 this afternoon. Ed, the organizer of the Vegas Classic, has been responsible for raising these men's birds since they were shipped to him from across the globe last summer. Each entrant dished out $1,300 for a team of three birds, the bulk of which is funnelled into the cash prizes.
Calabrese, a Californian wearing a solid-gold pigeon around his neck, believes that one-loft races have changed the sport " and not necessarily for the better. "It used to be you won $75; you'd take your wife out to a dinner and a show," he groans. "Now everything's just mind-boggling." These heightened stakes lend a whiff of intrigue to today's event that is usually reserved for more established sports such as horse racing. By 1 p.m., the crowd is swapping rumours in a mash of English, Spanish, Chinese and other languages. Near a set of bleachers, some Mexican guys, up from Los Angeles, share trade secrets with me. "Cocaine," whispers one, prompting me to nervous laughter. "Don't laugh, man," adds another. "It happens." Steve Bueller, a man with the spreading paunch of someone who loves his barbecue, confesses that such tactics, including the use of steroids, can never be ruled out: "When you're talking about this type of money, people will do a lot of things."
As the clock drags closer to 2:30 p.m., people stop talking and begin scanning the sky. "This is like watching a baseball game," says a guy wearing a "Fly or Die" ball cap. "In January." To ease the monotony, Wally tears off the top off a cardboard beer box and starts taking side bets on the arrival of the first bird. "What time you like?" he croaks, grabbing at the bills being thrust his way. Shortly after a teenage boy and I place a measly one-dollar bets, we catch sight of a pigeon that has apparently snuck into view from the north.
"Bird! Bird! Bird!" I find myself hollering, complete with a repeated jabbing of my finger. After the boy begins silently jumping in unison, an old-timer interrupts. "Nope," he says dryly. "That's just a commie." Common pigeons have a more laboured stroke than homing pigeons, he explains, and often coast on updrafts.
Surprisingly, only five birds will arrive today, the rest straggling in tomorrow morning and over the next few days. (The winner, Andy Rodriguez from Texas, walks away with $40,000 plus an additional $10,000 from the breeder pooling.) Still, most fanciers remain steadfast until sundown, wrapped in blankets, awaiting their birds in the desert chill.
"There's something about them being let go miles away and still deciding to fly back to this stupid little loft," Donald Giunta, a New York contractor, explains. "Let's face it " they could just land at any time in a nice cornfield somewhere and that would be the end of it."
But they don't. And that's a neat kind of magic.
Racing Pigeon News
A flying fancy
Harbour News
CARALISE MOORE - North Harbour News
IN HIS 70 years of experience, Whangaparaoa pigeon flyer Norman Coker has only once seen one of his birds fly from Invercargill to Auckland.
That day was celebrated in December last year.
The pigeon fancier started racing birds in Devon, England, when he was around 11 years old.
Now he has a family of 60 birds in his backyard that he breeds, rears and trains.
Norman says he has never met anyone in New Zealand who has had a bird fly back home from as far away as Invercargill – almost 1200 kilometres – in 14 hours and 45 minutes.
Flying distance and time are the two important factors in pigeon racing.
Norman released his bird at 6.30am on December 15, and it arrived home at 9.15pm.
"It was an unbelievable effort and the highlight of my racing career. I've never had anything like it."
Norman says pigeons find their way home using several methods to navigate, including visual clues from the landscape, the sun and the Earth's magnetic field.
"I train them from when they are around 12 to 14 weeks old.
"I put them in a basket and take them to the North Shore.
"I liberate them from there and almost always they make it home. The older they get the further away I do it."
While Norman is very proud of his bird, who is unnamed, he says it's important to recognise each pigeon has its own personality.
The bond between owner and bird is important in its drive to return home.
"It is important to spend a lot of time with your birds, and for them to know this is their home."
Always trying to push the flying time and distance boundaries, Norman says he has never put limitations on how far the birds can fly in a day.
"Pigeon flying started as a hobby back in the medieval days when people probably didn't have much to do.
"It's a shame the hobby isn't popular today, but it is probably because it is too expensive and there are so many other things children can do now."
One of Norman's biggest lessons from his pigeons is patience.
"It takes a lot of time to get a good flyer."
Racing for seven decades and perfecting the bloodline of his feathered family has taught him a lot of patience.
Norman's pigeons are based on the famous Van Cutsem bloodlines, and several more were introduced from other Auckland racers' stock, creating solid performers.
Pigeons usually have a racing life of six years and can live up to 20 years.
Norman moved to Whangaparaoa from Christchurch in 1993 with his wife. He has two sons and two daughters.
CHARLES DAHLEN OF THE GREATER SEATTLE CLUB.
BY SKI GRABANSKI
I belong to the Greater Seattle Club. We have 30 members with approx. 20 members flying each week this OB season. I would like you to meet Charles Dahlen who I think is worthy of special recognition. Charles has been a member of our club for four years. In those four years he has flown only a hand full of races. This year, Charles is flying a small team of yearling's that were not trained as young birds. Charles did start training his race team this year two months before the OB series started.
Here are Charles's club results to date.
Week 1 70 miles with 175 birds competing Charles took 12th, 13th, 14th & 15th.
Week 2 100 miles A, with 190 birds, 1st & 2nd
100 miles B, with 150 birds, 12th
Week 3 145 miles A, 209 birds, 4th, 9th, & 14th. Now is where it gets good.
Week 4 165 miles A, 211 birds, 1st, 3rd & 10th
165 miles B, 140 birds, 1st & 4th
Week 5 200 miles A, 220 birds, 1st, 3rd, 8th, 9th & 21st
200 miles B, 161 birds, 1st, 2nd 3rd & 16th.
Charles also took top honors in the Evergreen Concourse this past weekend with 1st place in the "B" race, winning by almost one minute.
Who knows what week 6 will bring. Just to let everyone know the competition is very tough in our club. In the first 15 positions, it's not uncommon to see 10 to 12 different lofts.
I remember the first weekend of the OB series, the guys were commenting how great Charles's birds felt. The color and the weight on them was perfect, and the feather quality was outstanding. They felt like silk.
After knock-off last week, some of the members asked Charles what he was doing to get such great results and his birds in such great shape? I asked if he was flying Widowhood or the Natural system? He flies them Natural. So we asked what nest position he flies them to? His answer was "OH I don't have nest boxes for them, they only have perches and sometimes a couple of pair get together in a corner of the loft".
Charles loft is small (10X12) with 3 sections (Breeders, OB flyer's & YB's). It's completely open in the front and has expanded metal for the floor. You would think that this would be a disadvantage because of our damp and rainy weather here in the Pacific Northwest. But as I said, the birds look fantastic. One thing I forgot to mention, Charles is one of two members in the club that still uses a mechanical clock. If you notice in the picture, he has bobs for his trapping system. Not stall traps. So when the birds return from the race, he has to walk them in from the landing board and once the birds are in the loft he has to catch them and remove the counter marker and put it in the clock. How much time do you think he loses?
Birds: Charles has 12 pair of breeders that were given to him by fellow club members. He has a little mixture of everything and some Janssens.
Feeding: Charles feeds his race birds a mixture that is 15.5% protein. Saturday (race day) the birds are fed equal parts race mix and Safflower. Sunday they are fed the same as Saturday. Monday through Thursday they get 1 part race mix and 1 part Safflower. Friday they get 1 part Safflower and 1 part race mix. Sunday through Friday the birds are fed only once a day in the AM. They are fed all they want, then the feed is taken away. The birds are also fed fresh grit with garlic everyday.
Training & exercise: The birds are trained twice a week, at 40 driving miles. They are exercised twice per day. The evening exercise is about an hour before sunset. Birds are rested Sunday & Monday.
Medication: NONE!!!!
Supplements: Twice a week they get a mixture of Wheat Germ Oil & Soybean Oil with Brewers Yeast mixed on the feed. Saturday & Sunday they are given electrolytes with vitamins in the water. Monday through Wednesday the water has Winsmore Vitamins in it. Thursday and Friday they are given Red Cell in the water.
Charles is not only a very tough competitor, but also a great asset to the club. He is always one of the first to arrive the night of shipping and makes sure all the shipping crates are setup and have water in them for the birds. Charles, congratulations from all your club members on a fantastic start and we all hope your success continues throughout the season.
We told Charles that his natural birds are not suppose to beat our widowhood cocks and hens week in and week out. He only smiled. Charles, the only advice I can give you, is don't change a thing, know matter what anyone tells you.
TEXT & PHOTOS BY SKI GRABANSKI.
BIRDBRAINED
Text: BRAD MACKAY
WALLY SABELL ARRIVES AT THE SILVERTON HOTEL & CASINO AROUND 6:30 p.m. on Thursday and elbows his way through the maze of slot machines and blackjack tables. The 72-year-old dodges the keno waitresses, ignores the call of the all-you-can-eat buffet and slips into a back room of this Las Vegas casino. Unlike the herd of silver-haired low rollers outside, Wally is uninterested in your run-of-the-mill video poker. Right now, not even an underground poker game or baccarat session will do. Tonight Wally is answering a higher calling - that of pigeon racing.
While pigeon racing has existed for centuries, it has largely been a regionalized hobby, with like-minded men pitting their birds against one another in a race back to their home lofts. But the recent growth of high-stakes one-loft races has helped change all that. As the name implies, in one-loft races, a large number of pigeons are raised at one location, which allows them to be treated equally with feed and medication. With big purses and a common finish line, one-loft races have added a much-needed shot of drama to a lonely " and admittedly strange " pastime.
It's fitting, then, that this high-voltage gambler's mecca is playing host this weekend to the world's top feathered athletes in a trifecta of one-loft pigeon racing. By Saturday, more than 1,000 pigeon breeders and fanciers from Italy, Belgium, China and the Philippines will descend on America's playground for a trio of long-distance races with a combined purse of more than US$1.25-million. By the time Wally arrives at the Silverton Showroom, a good half of them are waiting patiently for tonight's kickoff of the latest race, the Vegas Classic " a 515-kilometre aerial marathon with US$40,000 for the first-place bird. An affable, bright-eyed landscaper from Denver, Wally has been raising homing pigeons for almost 60 years. Clad in a blue satin jacket with a larger-than-life pigeon design on the back, he trades banter and rumours while waiting for the proceedings to begin.
Each breeder is given a three-minute audience with his bird before it is registered and locked in the race trailer. (Following the inspection, the 382 birds will be kept under lock and key overnight before being driven by race officials to the Mexican fishing village El Golfo de Santa Clara and released.) If you're not around, your bird is left in the hands of race officials. Wally doesn't like the sound of that. "Look at that guy," he motions with his head. "He has a hand like a foot. I don't want him anywhere near my bird."
When his name is called, Wally makes his way through cigar smoke to stacks of metal cages and is handed his pigeon beak-first. He begins a pre-flight checklist. First he grabs a wing and holds it outstretched, waiting for it to tremble just so. Next he pushes on the feet " a test of muscle resistance. Uncertain, he peers into the bird's red and yellow pupils and inspects the colour of its wattle. Then he suddenly flips the bird over, parting its feathers and exposing its breastbone. Squinting, he leans closer, sticks out his tongue and licks the bird's pale pinkish skin to clean off the excess dander. He says he's looking for a tiny blood vessel that is visible only in first-class racing pigeons, and he apparently likes what he sees. "Could be a winner," he says nodding, as the bird is secured in its cage.
As bizarre as this seems, Wally's personal voodoo is re-enacted many times over the next three days. Owners here will do anything, including staring down the birds' throats and examining their tail feathers, in an attempt to decipher something that is essentially unexplainable. Although homing pigeons date back to ancient Egypt, their ability to return to their home lofts remains inscrutable. Besides being prized as couriers during two world wars, the birds have beguiled everyone from Kublai Khan to Charles Darwin to Queen Victoria. They even sparked a pigeon-fancying craze in late 19th-century Europe, complete with its own social clubs. This culture lingers on in Belgium, the heart of global pigeon racing.
Come Saturday afternoon, Ed Sittner's back yard is awash with well-maintained beer bellies and once-proud pompadours. It's a perfectly balmy day, and about 400 farmers, cowboys and businessmen are feeding on barbecue and peach cobbler, just metres from the race loft-cum-finish line. Released around 7:30 a.m., the birds are expected to return to Ed's 25-metre custom-built loft around 2:30 this afternoon. Ed, the organizer of the Vegas Classic, has been responsible for raising these men's birds since they were shipped to him from across the globe last summer. Each entrant dished out $1,300 for a team of three birds, the bulk of which is funnelled into the cash prizes.
Calabrese, a Californian wearing a solid-gold pigeon around his neck, believes that one-loft races have changed the sport " and not necessarily for the better. "It used to be you won $75; you'd take your wife out to a dinner and a show," he groans. "Now everything's just mind-boggling." These heightened stakes lend a whiff of intrigue to today's event that is usually reserved for more established sports such as horse racing. By 1 p.m., the crowd is swapping rumours in a mash of English, Spanish, Chinese and other languages. Near a set of bleachers, some Mexican guys, up from Los Angeles, share trade secrets with me. "Cocaine," whispers one, prompting me to nervous laughter. "Don't laugh, man," adds another. "It happens." Steve Bueller, a man with the spreading paunch of someone who loves his barbecue, confesses that such tactics, including the use of steroids, can never be ruled out: "When you're talking about this type of money, people will do a lot of things."
As the clock drags closer to 2:30 p.m., people stop talking and begin scanning the sky. "This is like watching a baseball game," says a guy wearing a "Fly or Die" ball cap. "In January." To ease the monotony, Wally tears off the top off a cardboard beer box and starts taking side bets on the arrival of the first bird. "What time you like?" he croaks, grabbing at the bills being thrust his way. Shortly after a teenage boy and I place a measly one-dollar bets, we catch sight of a pigeon that has apparently snuck into view from the north.
"Bird! Bird! Bird!" I find myself hollering, complete with a repeated jabbing of my finger. After the boy begins silently jumping in unison, an old-timer interrupts. "Nope," he says dryly. "That's just a commie." Common pigeons have a more laboured stroke than homing pigeons, he explains, and often coast on updrafts.
Surprisingly, only five birds will arrive today, the rest straggling in tomorrow morning and over the next few days. (The winner, Andy Rodriguez from Texas, walks away with $40,000 plus an additional $10,000 from the breeder pooling.) Still, most fanciers remain steadfast until sundown, wrapped in blankets, awaiting their birds in the desert chill.
"There's something about them being let go miles away and still deciding to fly back to this stupid little loft," Donald Giunta, a New York contractor, explains. "Let's face it " they could just land at any time in a nice cornfield somewhere and that would be the end of it."
But they don't. And that's a neat kind of magic.
Racing Pigeon News
zaterdag 15 mei 2010
RACING PIGEON NEWS ISSUE 267
Welcome issue 267
High Flyer
The Northern Echo
Pigeon racing might not seem the natural choice of hobby for a young woman, but Katie Awdas is proving the sceptics wrong. She talks to Ian Noble.
THINK of pigeon racing and the image which springs to most people’s minds is a Northern chap pottering around a pigeon loft, wearing a flat cap and accompanied by a whippet.
Pigeon fancier Katie Awdas, 29, is not only ruffling a few feathers in the male-dominated sport, but is determined to prove her worth and pursue her lifelong hobby.
Katie of Church Lane, Bagby, near Thirsk, North Yorkshire, is one of the few women to be actively involved and is continuing a long family tradition looking after feathered racers in the region. As a member of the Topcliffe Flyers club, near Thirsk, Katie is one of two women (there are eight members in total), but she is as devoted as any of them and heads off most weekends to race her birds across the UK.
“I was brought up with pigeons as my granddad (Eddie Hudson), dad (Howard Hudson) and uncle (Trevor Hudson) all had them,” says Katie.
“My mum, Chris, is involved too, so I thought if you can’t beat them, join them.”
Katie was 15 when she started helping her dad. As she got older she started to help train them. The more involved she got, the more her interest grew. “At first, I didn’t so much want to race the birds as keep them as pets,” she says. “But I found it fascinating they could start a race in Scotland and end up back home in Thirsk, and it escalated from there.”
Being female and young, Katie has inevitably faced a fair share of hostility.
She came up against a lot of opposition when she started and some enthusiasts claimed she was only involved because of her father.
“There’s bad mouthing and bitching in the sport and people have had their pigeon lofts burnt down,” she says. “It’s funny because I do just as much as the boys at the club. I’m not scared about breaking a nail or anything like that.”
Katie’s passion for pigeons continued even after she left home to go to university in Huddersfield. It was there she met her husband, Chris Awdas. While they tried to spend as much time as they could together, Katie couldn’t stay away from her feathered friends and used to pop back at the weekends to check on their progress.
“I went home most weekends to see the 100 pigeons we loft at Knayton, near Thirsk,” she says. “Chris thought I was totally loopy.”
KATIE has been a member of the Topcliffe Flyers for ten years and races with her father, both under the Hudson family name and her married name of Awdas.
She has also won a number of trophies, including the Queen’s Cup.
Her bird was the first back to its loft in the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire area, after setting off from Lerwick, Scotland, recording an impressive speed of 52mph over 406miles. The feathered champ beat all 463 other pigeons in the race.
With the racing season running from April to September, most of her spare time is now spent getting the birds ready.
“I like going out to the lofts and getting away from it all for a couple of hours. It’s my relaxing time,”
Katie says. “My friends think I’m a bit strange, but it’s amazing seeing the birds come back from hundreds of miles away. I get a massive buzz from it.”
While pigeon racing has long been a male-dominated sport, one of the best known female fanciers is none other than the Queen, who keeps lofts at Sandringham and is patron of the sport’s governing body in the UK, The Royal Pigeon Racing Association (RPRA).
“We do have some women who race in a partnership with their husbands, but we don’t have many racing in their own names,” says an RPRA spokesman.
“We would like to see more females and youngsters involved as it is seen very much as a sport for the older generation. We’d also like to see memberships increase and to get more families involved in the sport too.”
Topcliffe Flyers are looking for male and female members of all ages. For further information, email Katie at katieh80@hotmail.com
Piero & Jan Obertelli of Ashfield.
By Keith Mott
Some people know him as Piero the Italian pigeon racer, others call him the ‘Italian Stallion’, but for the 30 years that I’ve known him he has always been Peter Obertelli! He was born in a small village north of Malan called, Piacenza, near Morfasso and the family house was built in the Italian mountains, and on a good clear day you could she the Swiss Alps. Peter is from a big family, with six brothers and five sisters, and tells me, only one of his brothers was also interested in pigeons and that was Renato, who was a very successful fancier in the London area a few years ago. When the family lived in the Italian mountains the older brothers chop down trees for logs for the house fires and to sell, plus they lived off the cattle, sheep and poultry they kept. The young Piero used to hunt for Fox and Badger in the mountains, which often got him into trouble with his parents, as he should have been working in the woods cutting trees. He kept a few Fantails when he was a lad and started racing pigeons when he came to the U.K. in 1976. He bought a house with a nice long garden in Hounslow, near Heathrow Airport, and very soon erected a pigeon loft. Peter recalls the premier fanciers locally in the 1970’s were Jack Knowle, George Burgess, Brian Goodwin and Eric Hurley. At that time pigeon racing was his passion, but still enjoyed hunting and quite often went shooting Pheasant and Hare.
I first met Peter Obertelli on one cold winters night in the 1970’s, when I judged an old hens show class for Isleworth S.R. Club and he had just finished the season of a lifetime. There were two classes that evening and Peter had entered four hens, lifting lst, 2nd, and Commended in the young hens class and 2nd in old hens. After the show we had a chat and he told me about the fantastic young bird season he had had flying in the Thames Valley Federation. Peter started up in the sport in the spring of 1976 with birds he purchased for 50p each from Petticoat Lane Market in London and after doing no good with these birds he decided to purchase some better stock. About that time Eric Hurley of Hanwell was packing up so Peter purchased four hens and a cock, all Stassarts, from him and these birds were the base of his 1970’s family. He also purchased Eric Hur1y's 16ft x 6ft one compartment loft and after added a 8ft x 6ft young bird loft. He kept 50 old birds and bred 28 young birds each year. Peter broke his novice status at Leicester the first young bird race in 1976 and also won the longest young bird race from Durham that same year. Peter's three most outstanding 1977 young birds were the red chequer cock, ‘Albion Lad’, winner of 1st Club, 1st Thames Valley Federation Pontefract, a blue pied cock named ‘Albion Galahad’, winner of 1st Two Rivers 2-B Club Nottingham and 2nd Club, 3rd Thames Valley Federation Leicester (beaten by loftmate) and last, but by no means least, the dark chequer cock, ‘Albion Rocket’, winner of 1st Club, 2nd Thames Valley Federation Leicester. The early Obertelli racing team was formed mostly from the Stassart and Busschaert bloodlines and a good pigeon that Peter recilected from that time was the Busschaert cock, ‘Blue Boy’, and he was always the first bird home, but not always the first on the clock, having been caught to many times.
On moving up to the midlands in 1990, Peter and Jan packed up the pigeons, but aquired a field near their home in Sutton-in-Ashfield, and started keeping a few chickens, sheep and of cause Jan’s beloved Horse. Peter restarted with pigeons in 2004 and the lofts were erected on the field, which has proved to be an excellent enviriment for the birds. The field is complete with stables and has housed Jan’s very successful Show Jumper for many years. Jan is very interested in the pigeons and helps out any way she can, including stitching up and repairing broken legs on the damaged birds. She is very good with the pigeon having a vast experience of looking after live stock, after many years in Africa working with wild animals. In recent years most of her time has been taken up looking after and jumping her Horse at big shows, but unfortunely last year she lost him with a sudden terminal illness.
Peter’s several lofts at Sutton-in-Ashfield are set out in a square, with a slabbed area in the middle and he told me, the most important factor of his set up is all the structures are built at least 2ft off the ground. The lofts are well ventilated and deep litter has been used in previous seasons, but Peter wasn’t impressed with it, finding it very dusty. The birds are paired up at the beginning of February and the 24 pairs of old birds are raced on the roundabout system. The racers are trained from 20 miles three times a week and the cocks and hens are allowed to run together on marking day. The birds are left together for about an hour on their return home from the race and mid-week training continues right through to the end of the season. Peter repairs the old birds for the longest races and likes them sitting ten day old eggs for the major 500 mile events. They are fed on ‘All Rounder’ mixture, which is as the name surgests is a general mixture and this sees them though the racing season to 509 miles, with not much else added. Peter thinks the moult is a very important time of the year and gives his birds plenty of rest, backed up with a good heavy feed, with extra condition seed and linseed.
The Obertelli family of pigeons are mostly Janssen and Busschaerts, and eight pairs of stock birds are retained, which are paired up with the racers at the beginning of February. These are fed on ‘Breeders’ mixture and when bringing in new stock birds, Peter looks for an appled well ballanced body, intelegent eye and light in the hand, but above all it must come from premier winning bloodlines. When I asked if he was interested in the eye sign theory for his breeding, he said he liked to see a nice eye on a pigeon, but it made no difference when it came down to it producing winners in the stock loft. Peter never breeds late breds and says, years ago he used to take some off his best racers, but never did any good with them. The 50 young birds he breeds each season start training at 15 miles and when they reach the 30 mile stage they stay there, being given three tosses a week until the end of the racing season. For the first six weeks after weaning they are fed a heavy ‘Breed & Wean’ mixture and after this period they go on a lighter corn for racing. Peter did the darkness system for the first time in 2009 and he had a brilliant young bird season. The young birds are raced to the perch and are never sent further than 180 miles, as Peter believes they are still growing and sending them on to silly distances will only set them back. The Obertelli’s enjoyed a brilliant young bird season flying against the very best company in 2009 and won: 2nd, 3rd, 4th club, 12th, 14th Notts & Derby Borders Federation Stratford (2257 birds), 1st, 2nd, 3rd club, 15th Notts & Derby Borders Federation Windrush (2109 birds), 1st club, 6th Notts & Derby Borders Federation Newbury (2829 birds), 3rd club Salibury, 1st club, 7th Notts & Derby Borders Federation Portsmouth (2282 birds), 1st club Newbury, 4th club Messac. Peter’s two best performers in the 2009 season were the two blues, ‘Kirkby Boy’ and ‘Picola’, who lifted a list of top prizes.
Peter prefers sprint racing and although he wins his fair shair of old bird races, he like young bird racing best. He is a member of one of the strongest clubs in the Midlands, in the form of the Sutton Central Club and is flying against premier fanciers like Ron Vardy and Phil Elliot, but he says this is great to keep his approach sharp, and spurs him on to try harder to win. Peter loves to show his racing pigeons and has won many firsts through the years in club and open events, with big birdage. This is a testiment to the wonderful condition he keeps his pigeons in! He has judged at several premier shows, including twice at the RPRA Southern Region Show, when he traveled down from the Midlands with his good friend, Russell Lowbridge and stayed over for the weekend in Surrey. He thinks generally the sport has progressed in the last twenty years, but feels the hawk problem is pushing it back with people leaving the fancy because of their teams of pigeons get constantly smashed up by these preditors. The hawks are always in his field attacking his birds! He thinks the ETS system is a great leap forward for the sport, but fancier giving their birds too many treatments is a step backwards and thinks we should look after our workers better.
There you have it the Piero Obertelli story! I’ve enjoyed doing this week’s article, as Peter has been a good mate for a long time. I can be contacted with any pigeon comments on telephone number: 01372 463480. See yer!
TEXT & PHOTOS BY KEITH MOTT.
The Wild Birds Return
By Sher A. Schwartz - Site News
Ketchikan, Alaska - It's a good day for flying in Southeast Alaska when the skies are clear and the wind is calm. Though this normally holds true for airplane pilots, it's not necessarily true for birds.
I raise and train homing pigeons, and the past four years I have been training my birds to come home from various locations around Ketchikan in Southeast Alaska. They've sped back to their north-Ketchikan loft from high peaks like Dude Mountain and from isolated communities, such as Loring, that can only be reached by boat.
Most of my birds are racing homing pigeons bred to return from hundreds of miles away. These athletes came to me through the United States Post Office from an established homing pigeon breeder in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. I crossed one of the racing homers with a wild bird named Growler, that I had successfully flown, to see how the offspring would compare to the birds bred for homing. Wild pigeons are known to have some homing abilities, but they are generally unable to return from distances much greater than twenty miles.
I had been wanting to fly the birds across Clarence Strait, a ten mile stretch of ocean west of Ketchikan, because in general training the birds fly over water everyday, and I had thought they would be able to quickly fly home--especially in fine weather.
The second Sunday in August was so calm and sunny it seemed the perfect opportunity to release the birds from the Prince of Wales Island side of Clarence Strait. My husband agreed to free the pigeons early that morning before he and his brother set their halibut hooks down at Twenty Fathom Bank. The seven birds were carried to the fishing spot aboard the Sea Wolf, my husband's twenty-six foot aluminum boat, in a Belgium wicker release basket. When Bruce held the basket over the deck, the quick release door dropped open and the birds burst out above the shining sea. They rose quickly and began circling over Clarence Strait to orient in the correct direction. Bruce called me later from his cell phone and said, "I'm sure the birds could see home from there."
And, indeed, they should have been home within the hour, but events did not unfold as planned.
It isn't known exactly how homing pigeons find their way home, but scientists have discovered the birds utilize a variety of methods--just like any good navigator. Genetics influence a bird's ability to navigate in particular conditions and the birds use sight, smell, the magnetic field, and the sun. In addition, an individual bird's personality can play a role in its homing success. US Military records from WWII tell of many brave service birds that returned home, after carrying important messages, "despite being wounded, shot at," and being released from their starting baskets in "near dark conditions."
Some birds are so independent and have such a fierce desire for home they ignore the flock and shoot off in the direction they deem correct leaving the flock, still circling, behind. And so it was on that clear day with Growler's offspring Ariadne --the crossbred bird.
Bruce recalled seeing one of the birds separate from the flock early on. He said, "the other birds flew toward Prince of Wales Island," which surprised him, because they were flying away from Ketchikan. But he figured, eventually, they'd come back around and head home like they always did. If they had flown directly northeast across Clarence Strait, they would have been home before noon.
Three hours later none of the birds had made it home. I scanned the skies and kept walking onto the beach to check the roof, and I repeatedly visited the loft. The pigeon lofts are below the house so I can easily watch my birds come and go. Mid-afternoon I saw, from the living room window, a pigeon come zooming in from Prince of Wales Island. It landed on the platform outside the loft and shot through the trap door. I ran outside, hurried down the stone steps to the beach, and entered the loft. Saucy, flighty, and only half-tame Ariadne stood perched near her mate on a shelf. Five hours had passed and the bird that made it home was a feral-cross --not a purebred homing pigeon! I was surprised.
By sunset Ariadne was the only bird to make it home, and I was online polling experienced bird trainers to get their opinion on what could have prevented the other six birds from flying ten miles across Clarence Strait on a calm, clear day. Charlie Cole from Marietta, Georgia, a racing pigeon enthusiast, suggested they "chickened out." He explained that racing pigeons "do not like to fly over a lot of water." He bet "only the bravest, most motivated" birds would make it back. Local fisherman surmised the birds had flown north toward Grindall Island, since it was the closest landmass, and had encountered an "iron wall"-- a magnetic disturbance in the area that threw them off course.
Everyone had a theory. In the end two crossbred birds and one racing homer were the birds to make it back. I was stunned that four of the purebred birds--the long distance warriors of the sky--did not make it home. Wynn Smith, founder of Ceremony Dove Release Service in Oregon City, Oregon and the developer of a new breed of pigeon called Release Duvs has spent years considering the genetics of a variety of pigeon breeds including the Columba Livia or the common pigeon. Smith posed a plausible reason for why the feral-cross birds could make it home.
The wild pigeons circling above Creek Street and Cape Fox Lodge downtown have been flying for generations over water. Thriving in an archipelago environment, they are born in nests built under pilings. The seawater rises and falls below them with the movement of the tide. In their daily life the Ketchikan birds fly over water to reach all their destinations whether it is to feed on seed or to gather nesting material. Smith suggests it is possible that when faced with Clarence Strait, Ariadne and her offspring tapped into a store of genetic memory enabling them to find the courage to return home; whereas, the racing birds didn't have that resource since their genetic memory did not include repeatedly flying over water.
Despite the racing pigeon's deserved reputation as being Olympian of the air, it was the wild cross, Ariadne, that flew straight over the labyrinth expanse of water and islands toward home. She combined the best of both bird types--a familiarity with water crossings and the homing skills and physical endurance of a purebred racing pigeon.
Racing Pigeon News
High Flyer
The Northern Echo
Pigeon racing might not seem the natural choice of hobby for a young woman, but Katie Awdas is proving the sceptics wrong. She talks to Ian Noble.
THINK of pigeon racing and the image which springs to most people’s minds is a Northern chap pottering around a pigeon loft, wearing a flat cap and accompanied by a whippet.
Pigeon fancier Katie Awdas, 29, is not only ruffling a few feathers in the male-dominated sport, but is determined to prove her worth and pursue her lifelong hobby.
Katie of Church Lane, Bagby, near Thirsk, North Yorkshire, is one of the few women to be actively involved and is continuing a long family tradition looking after feathered racers in the region. As a member of the Topcliffe Flyers club, near Thirsk, Katie is one of two women (there are eight members in total), but she is as devoted as any of them and heads off most weekends to race her birds across the UK.
“I was brought up with pigeons as my granddad (Eddie Hudson), dad (Howard Hudson) and uncle (Trevor Hudson) all had them,” says Katie.
“My mum, Chris, is involved too, so I thought if you can’t beat them, join them.”
Katie was 15 when she started helping her dad. As she got older she started to help train them. The more involved she got, the more her interest grew. “At first, I didn’t so much want to race the birds as keep them as pets,” she says. “But I found it fascinating they could start a race in Scotland and end up back home in Thirsk, and it escalated from there.”
Being female and young, Katie has inevitably faced a fair share of hostility.
She came up against a lot of opposition when she started and some enthusiasts claimed she was only involved because of her father.
“There’s bad mouthing and bitching in the sport and people have had their pigeon lofts burnt down,” she says. “It’s funny because I do just as much as the boys at the club. I’m not scared about breaking a nail or anything like that.”
Katie’s passion for pigeons continued even after she left home to go to university in Huddersfield. It was there she met her husband, Chris Awdas. While they tried to spend as much time as they could together, Katie couldn’t stay away from her feathered friends and used to pop back at the weekends to check on their progress.
“I went home most weekends to see the 100 pigeons we loft at Knayton, near Thirsk,” she says. “Chris thought I was totally loopy.”
KATIE has been a member of the Topcliffe Flyers for ten years and races with her father, both under the Hudson family name and her married name of Awdas.
She has also won a number of trophies, including the Queen’s Cup.
Her bird was the first back to its loft in the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire area, after setting off from Lerwick, Scotland, recording an impressive speed of 52mph over 406miles. The feathered champ beat all 463 other pigeons in the race.
With the racing season running from April to September, most of her spare time is now spent getting the birds ready.
“I like going out to the lofts and getting away from it all for a couple of hours. It’s my relaxing time,”
Katie says. “My friends think I’m a bit strange, but it’s amazing seeing the birds come back from hundreds of miles away. I get a massive buzz from it.”
While pigeon racing has long been a male-dominated sport, one of the best known female fanciers is none other than the Queen, who keeps lofts at Sandringham and is patron of the sport’s governing body in the UK, The Royal Pigeon Racing Association (RPRA).
“We do have some women who race in a partnership with their husbands, but we don’t have many racing in their own names,” says an RPRA spokesman.
“We would like to see more females and youngsters involved as it is seen very much as a sport for the older generation. We’d also like to see memberships increase and to get more families involved in the sport too.”
Topcliffe Flyers are looking for male and female members of all ages. For further information, email Katie at katieh80@hotmail.com
Piero & Jan Obertelli of Ashfield.
By Keith Mott
Some people know him as Piero the Italian pigeon racer, others call him the ‘Italian Stallion’, but for the 30 years that I’ve known him he has always been Peter Obertelli! He was born in a small village north of Malan called, Piacenza, near Morfasso and the family house was built in the Italian mountains, and on a good clear day you could she the Swiss Alps. Peter is from a big family, with six brothers and five sisters, and tells me, only one of his brothers was also interested in pigeons and that was Renato, who was a very successful fancier in the London area a few years ago. When the family lived in the Italian mountains the older brothers chop down trees for logs for the house fires and to sell, plus they lived off the cattle, sheep and poultry they kept. The young Piero used to hunt for Fox and Badger in the mountains, which often got him into trouble with his parents, as he should have been working in the woods cutting trees. He kept a few Fantails when he was a lad and started racing pigeons when he came to the U.K. in 1976. He bought a house with a nice long garden in Hounslow, near Heathrow Airport, and very soon erected a pigeon loft. Peter recalls the premier fanciers locally in the 1970’s were Jack Knowle, George Burgess, Brian Goodwin and Eric Hurley. At that time pigeon racing was his passion, but still enjoyed hunting and quite often went shooting Pheasant and Hare.
I first met Peter Obertelli on one cold winters night in the 1970’s, when I judged an old hens show class for Isleworth S.R. Club and he had just finished the season of a lifetime. There were two classes that evening and Peter had entered four hens, lifting lst, 2nd, and Commended in the young hens class and 2nd in old hens. After the show we had a chat and he told me about the fantastic young bird season he had had flying in the Thames Valley Federation. Peter started up in the sport in the spring of 1976 with birds he purchased for 50p each from Petticoat Lane Market in London and after doing no good with these birds he decided to purchase some better stock. About that time Eric Hurley of Hanwell was packing up so Peter purchased four hens and a cock, all Stassarts, from him and these birds were the base of his 1970’s family. He also purchased Eric Hur1y's 16ft x 6ft one compartment loft and after added a 8ft x 6ft young bird loft. He kept 50 old birds and bred 28 young birds each year. Peter broke his novice status at Leicester the first young bird race in 1976 and also won the longest young bird race from Durham that same year. Peter's three most outstanding 1977 young birds were the red chequer cock, ‘Albion Lad’, winner of 1st Club, 1st Thames Valley Federation Pontefract, a blue pied cock named ‘Albion Galahad’, winner of 1st Two Rivers 2-B Club Nottingham and 2nd Club, 3rd Thames Valley Federation Leicester (beaten by loftmate) and last, but by no means least, the dark chequer cock, ‘Albion Rocket’, winner of 1st Club, 2nd Thames Valley Federation Leicester. The early Obertelli racing team was formed mostly from the Stassart and Busschaert bloodlines and a good pigeon that Peter recilected from that time was the Busschaert cock, ‘Blue Boy’, and he was always the first bird home, but not always the first on the clock, having been caught to many times.
On moving up to the midlands in 1990, Peter and Jan packed up the pigeons, but aquired a field near their home in Sutton-in-Ashfield, and started keeping a few chickens, sheep and of cause Jan’s beloved Horse. Peter restarted with pigeons in 2004 and the lofts were erected on the field, which has proved to be an excellent enviriment for the birds. The field is complete with stables and has housed Jan’s very successful Show Jumper for many years. Jan is very interested in the pigeons and helps out any way she can, including stitching up and repairing broken legs on the damaged birds. She is very good with the pigeon having a vast experience of looking after live stock, after many years in Africa working with wild animals. In recent years most of her time has been taken up looking after and jumping her Horse at big shows, but unfortunely last year she lost him with a sudden terminal illness.
Peter’s several lofts at Sutton-in-Ashfield are set out in a square, with a slabbed area in the middle and he told me, the most important factor of his set up is all the structures are built at least 2ft off the ground. The lofts are well ventilated and deep litter has been used in previous seasons, but Peter wasn’t impressed with it, finding it very dusty. The birds are paired up at the beginning of February and the 24 pairs of old birds are raced on the roundabout system. The racers are trained from 20 miles three times a week and the cocks and hens are allowed to run together on marking day. The birds are left together for about an hour on their return home from the race and mid-week training continues right through to the end of the season. Peter repairs the old birds for the longest races and likes them sitting ten day old eggs for the major 500 mile events. They are fed on ‘All Rounder’ mixture, which is as the name surgests is a general mixture and this sees them though the racing season to 509 miles, with not much else added. Peter thinks the moult is a very important time of the year and gives his birds plenty of rest, backed up with a good heavy feed, with extra condition seed and linseed.
The Obertelli family of pigeons are mostly Janssen and Busschaerts, and eight pairs of stock birds are retained, which are paired up with the racers at the beginning of February. These are fed on ‘Breeders’ mixture and when bringing in new stock birds, Peter looks for an appled well ballanced body, intelegent eye and light in the hand, but above all it must come from premier winning bloodlines. When I asked if he was interested in the eye sign theory for his breeding, he said he liked to see a nice eye on a pigeon, but it made no difference when it came down to it producing winners in the stock loft. Peter never breeds late breds and says, years ago he used to take some off his best racers, but never did any good with them. The 50 young birds he breeds each season start training at 15 miles and when they reach the 30 mile stage they stay there, being given three tosses a week until the end of the racing season. For the first six weeks after weaning they are fed a heavy ‘Breed & Wean’ mixture and after this period they go on a lighter corn for racing. Peter did the darkness system for the first time in 2009 and he had a brilliant young bird season. The young birds are raced to the perch and are never sent further than 180 miles, as Peter believes they are still growing and sending them on to silly distances will only set them back. The Obertelli’s enjoyed a brilliant young bird season flying against the very best company in 2009 and won: 2nd, 3rd, 4th club, 12th, 14th Notts & Derby Borders Federation Stratford (2257 birds), 1st, 2nd, 3rd club, 15th Notts & Derby Borders Federation Windrush (2109 birds), 1st club, 6th Notts & Derby Borders Federation Newbury (2829 birds), 3rd club Salibury, 1st club, 7th Notts & Derby Borders Federation Portsmouth (2282 birds), 1st club Newbury, 4th club Messac. Peter’s two best performers in the 2009 season were the two blues, ‘Kirkby Boy’ and ‘Picola’, who lifted a list of top prizes.
Peter prefers sprint racing and although he wins his fair shair of old bird races, he like young bird racing best. He is a member of one of the strongest clubs in the Midlands, in the form of the Sutton Central Club and is flying against premier fanciers like Ron Vardy and Phil Elliot, but he says this is great to keep his approach sharp, and spurs him on to try harder to win. Peter loves to show his racing pigeons and has won many firsts through the years in club and open events, with big birdage. This is a testiment to the wonderful condition he keeps his pigeons in! He has judged at several premier shows, including twice at the RPRA Southern Region Show, when he traveled down from the Midlands with his good friend, Russell Lowbridge and stayed over for the weekend in Surrey. He thinks generally the sport has progressed in the last twenty years, but feels the hawk problem is pushing it back with people leaving the fancy because of their teams of pigeons get constantly smashed up by these preditors. The hawks are always in his field attacking his birds! He thinks the ETS system is a great leap forward for the sport, but fancier giving their birds too many treatments is a step backwards and thinks we should look after our workers better.
There you have it the Piero Obertelli story! I’ve enjoyed doing this week’s article, as Peter has been a good mate for a long time. I can be contacted with any pigeon comments on telephone number: 01372 463480. See yer!
TEXT & PHOTOS BY KEITH MOTT.
The Wild Birds Return
By Sher A. Schwartz - Site News
Ketchikan, Alaska - It's a good day for flying in Southeast Alaska when the skies are clear and the wind is calm. Though this normally holds true for airplane pilots, it's not necessarily true for birds.
I raise and train homing pigeons, and the past four years I have been training my birds to come home from various locations around Ketchikan in Southeast Alaska. They've sped back to their north-Ketchikan loft from high peaks like Dude Mountain and from isolated communities, such as Loring, that can only be reached by boat.
Most of my birds are racing homing pigeons bred to return from hundreds of miles away. These athletes came to me through the United States Post Office from an established homing pigeon breeder in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. I crossed one of the racing homers with a wild bird named Growler, that I had successfully flown, to see how the offspring would compare to the birds bred for homing. Wild pigeons are known to have some homing abilities, but they are generally unable to return from distances much greater than twenty miles.
I had been wanting to fly the birds across Clarence Strait, a ten mile stretch of ocean west of Ketchikan, because in general training the birds fly over water everyday, and I had thought they would be able to quickly fly home--especially in fine weather.
The second Sunday in August was so calm and sunny it seemed the perfect opportunity to release the birds from the Prince of Wales Island side of Clarence Strait. My husband agreed to free the pigeons early that morning before he and his brother set their halibut hooks down at Twenty Fathom Bank. The seven birds were carried to the fishing spot aboard the Sea Wolf, my husband's twenty-six foot aluminum boat, in a Belgium wicker release basket. When Bruce held the basket over the deck, the quick release door dropped open and the birds burst out above the shining sea. They rose quickly and began circling over Clarence Strait to orient in the correct direction. Bruce called me later from his cell phone and said, "I'm sure the birds could see home from there."
And, indeed, they should have been home within the hour, but events did not unfold as planned.
It isn't known exactly how homing pigeons find their way home, but scientists have discovered the birds utilize a variety of methods--just like any good navigator. Genetics influence a bird's ability to navigate in particular conditions and the birds use sight, smell, the magnetic field, and the sun. In addition, an individual bird's personality can play a role in its homing success. US Military records from WWII tell of many brave service birds that returned home, after carrying important messages, "despite being wounded, shot at," and being released from their starting baskets in "near dark conditions."
Some birds are so independent and have such a fierce desire for home they ignore the flock and shoot off in the direction they deem correct leaving the flock, still circling, behind. And so it was on that clear day with Growler's offspring Ariadne --the crossbred bird.
Bruce recalled seeing one of the birds separate from the flock early on. He said, "the other birds flew toward Prince of Wales Island," which surprised him, because they were flying away from Ketchikan. But he figured, eventually, they'd come back around and head home like they always did. If they had flown directly northeast across Clarence Strait, they would have been home before noon.
Three hours later none of the birds had made it home. I scanned the skies and kept walking onto the beach to check the roof, and I repeatedly visited the loft. The pigeon lofts are below the house so I can easily watch my birds come and go. Mid-afternoon I saw, from the living room window, a pigeon come zooming in from Prince of Wales Island. It landed on the platform outside the loft and shot through the trap door. I ran outside, hurried down the stone steps to the beach, and entered the loft. Saucy, flighty, and only half-tame Ariadne stood perched near her mate on a shelf. Five hours had passed and the bird that made it home was a feral-cross --not a purebred homing pigeon! I was surprised.
By sunset Ariadne was the only bird to make it home, and I was online polling experienced bird trainers to get their opinion on what could have prevented the other six birds from flying ten miles across Clarence Strait on a calm, clear day. Charlie Cole from Marietta, Georgia, a racing pigeon enthusiast, suggested they "chickened out." He explained that racing pigeons "do not like to fly over a lot of water." He bet "only the bravest, most motivated" birds would make it back. Local fisherman surmised the birds had flown north toward Grindall Island, since it was the closest landmass, and had encountered an "iron wall"-- a magnetic disturbance in the area that threw them off course.
Everyone had a theory. In the end two crossbred birds and one racing homer were the birds to make it back. I was stunned that four of the purebred birds--the long distance warriors of the sky--did not make it home. Wynn Smith, founder of Ceremony Dove Release Service in Oregon City, Oregon and the developer of a new breed of pigeon called Release Duvs has spent years considering the genetics of a variety of pigeon breeds including the Columba Livia or the common pigeon. Smith posed a plausible reason for why the feral-cross birds could make it home.
The wild pigeons circling above Creek Street and Cape Fox Lodge downtown have been flying for generations over water. Thriving in an archipelago environment, they are born in nests built under pilings. The seawater rises and falls below them with the movement of the tide. In their daily life the Ketchikan birds fly over water to reach all their destinations whether it is to feed on seed or to gather nesting material. Smith suggests it is possible that when faced with Clarence Strait, Ariadne and her offspring tapped into a store of genetic memory enabling them to find the courage to return home; whereas, the racing birds didn't have that resource since their genetic memory did not include repeatedly flying over water.
Despite the racing pigeon's deserved reputation as being Olympian of the air, it was the wild cross, Ariadne, that flew straight over the labyrinth expanse of water and islands toward home. She combined the best of both bird types--a familiarity with water crossings and the homing skills and physical endurance of a purebred racing pigeon.
Racing Pigeon News
zaterdag 8 mei 2010
RACING PIGEON NEWSLETTER ISSUE 266
Welcome deckers davy issue 266
They are still useful as couriers
By P. Oppili - The Hindu
PIGEONS AS couriers were indispensable for any saga of love or war of yesteryear. Times have changed, but not the pigeons and our love for them.
In the era of multinational couriers and e-mails that criss- cross the world, are pigeons an anachronism? Walk into the terrace of the house of Mr. R. R. Prasad at Royapuram in north Chennai.
You are in a pigeon breeding club. Mr. Prasad has six cubicles for rearing pigeons and rooms have been provided separately for males, females and "youngsters''. There are also lofts for breeding and "racing''.
In the city, there are four associations which promote pigeon racing. Pigeon clubs are functioning in Tiruchi, Madurai, Kovilpatti and Pondicherry.
Training for pigeons starts from the sixtieth day of their birth, says Mr. Prasad. Initially the birds are taken to a distance of five kilometres and then released. Gradually the distance is increased and when the birds reach a target of 150 km, they are ready for the race.
Pigeons are categorised into young and old. Young bird will be below one year and the old above one year and races are conducted for both the categories. On an average, the birds cross about 2,000 km after two years of rigorous training, says Mr. Prasad.
Pigeons with big feathers and dark eyes are selected for the race. They need to be quite disciplined to reach their holes lest they wander around and lose the race.
Various breeding techniques are adopted by the racers like line breeding, in-breeding and out-cross breeding. Good face, beautiful breast and short legs are signs of good "blood line''.
Every racing group will have a few leaders, who guide them back home safely.
In a group there will at least four to five leaders. If one leader fails, the other will take charge and lead the group back to pavilion.
Various racing methods are adopted by the members. For example, both the male and female pigeons will take care of the new born.
If the female is removed and released from somewhere, it will fly faster and reach home quickly in a bid to reach its baby.
Way back in 1986, when a race was conducted in the city, the birds were released in Tiruchi. One of the pigeons of Mr. N. Sampath Kumar reached the city flying non stop for about five hours creating a record. The clubs have conducted races from Kanyakumari and also in the northern parts of the country.
In 1997, a group of pigeons were released from Gwalior and one of the pigeons of Mr. Prasad came first. The bird covered a distance of more than 1700 km and reached his home without any problem.
After this, yet another race was conducted in the same year from Delhi and another pigeon of Mr. Prasad covered a distance of 2186 km. Mr. Prasad claims that both are unbroken records.
Technology might change the way we live, but old habits die hard.
New L&SECC Website.
By Keith Mott
We are currently constructing a new and better London & South East Classic Club website, which will be up and running before we start racing in May. The new site is being built by the best in the business, Mysoft and we at the Classic committee are looking forward to a better up graded site for the membership to enjoy. The new 2010 racing season is looming up and we are looking forward to some good racing from our new transporter, which was purchased recently to cope better with our big birdage races. I would like to welcome our new secretary, Terri Hoskin, who I believe is going to be one of the best administrators in our sport! She is a very keen, but needs a sorting out period.
The new L&SECC phone line and internet has been installed and Terri’s full details are: address - 53, Highham Road, Chesham, Buckinghamshire, HP5 2AF: phone number - 01494 786026: email address – lsecc.terri@ntlworld.com Subs are £25 and 'Gold Rings' cost ?5 each (max ten rings) plus £1 p&p. The 2010 race programme is: 15th May Alencon: 29th May Tours (including the yearling derby): 25th June Tarbes: 16th July Bergerac: 21st August Guernsey 1 (young bird and old hens): 11th September Guernsey2 (young bird and old hens).
Back in January I was given the great honour of being elected as the new L&SECC President and I would like to thank the committee for their vote of support and confidence. Being elected has presented me with an exciting challenge which I will enjoy and relish! We at the L&SECC have one of the best work forces in the sport and I would like to thank them all personally for their good work in the 2009 season and hope for their continuing support this year. I would like to conclude by wishing all our membership the very best of luck for the new racing season!
Alan & Christine Lomax of Woking.
My ol’ friends from the Pyrford club, Alan and Christine Lomax, have had some good success in the L&SECC in recent seasons with their Busschaert hen, ‘Classic Blue Lady’, which has recorded: 2007: 22nd open L&SECC Guernsey 1. (old hens), 24th open L&SECC Guernsey 2. (old hens), 2008: 45th open L&SECC Alencon, 13th open L&SECC Tours. A brilliant record! This game hen came home from the Tours classic in 2008 with her keel skinned and bleeding, and still recorded 13th open. A few years ago Christine purchased six Busschaert squeakers from Oly Gittins of Cornwall for a present for Alan and ‘Classic Blue Lady’ was bred from two of those original birds.
The partners have been winning major pigeon races for many years and 1988 season saw Alan and Christine win the longest Surrey Federation old bird race from Bergerac (450 miles) with 1,763 birds taking part. The partner’s Federation winner was an eight year old Corbett / Busschaert red chequer hen called ‘The 96 Hen’ and she was bred by the late Alec Martin of Worplesdon. Alec was also a past winner of the Surrey Federation from Bergerac. Alan said at the time that he wasn’t very interested in inland racing, with his whole pigeon management being geared to channel racing. Some of the partner’s best channel results then were: 1964: 1st club, 2nd Three Borders Federation Bordeaux (446 miles), 1970: 1st club, 5th Federation Nantes (282 miles), 1971: 1st club, 9th Federation Nantes, 1975: 1st club, 4th Federation, 10th SMT Combine (4256 birds) Niort (343 miles), 1st, 2nd club, 4th, 17th Federation, 15th SMT Combine (4775 birds) Avranches (183 miles), 2nd club, 8th Federation, 35th SMT Combine Bergerac, 1976: 1st club, 11th Federation Laval, 1982: 1st club, 1st Three Borders Federation, 3rd Seven Counties Combine (3415 birds) Bergerac, 1985: 2nd club, 14th Federation, 44th SMT Combine Bergerac, 1986: 1st club Bergerac, 6th Federation, 30th SMT Combine Nantes 1987: 1st club, 4th Surrey Federation, 22nd SMT Combine (4452 birds) Wadebridge, 1988: 1st, 2nd club, 1st, 22nd Surrey Federation Bergerac. A wonderful loft performance!
Alan and Christine got married in 1981 and on moving to Old Woking that year formed their pigeon racing partnership. Christine was very interested in the pigeons and is the book keeper in the partnership, and took over as club secretary of the Horsell Inv. Club in 1989. She was the hard working secretary of the Pyrford club for an amazing 21 years! The partners had five lofts, which are cleaned out every day and Alan maintains that pigeons will race to an orange box if they are happy. The Lomax’s lofts are well ventilated and are kept as dry as possible, in winter and summer. The 35 pairs are raced natural as the partners liked hens for the longer races and pairing up is in March with racing from France in mind. The main families kept are Janssen and Busschaert obtained from Alec and Molly Martin, Cattrysse from Robin Creswick of Woking, but at this time mostly pigeons of the Krauth strain from John Everly. Alan runs a training programme for the Pyrford club members and his birds get regular tosses from Winchester and he feeds on a good general mixture, with added chicken pellets for the longer races. The Lomax’s live in a very rural area of Surrey, with their cottage being sited on a river bank and they get a lot of problems with Sparrowhawks and Minks, which kill they birds regularly. They normally wintered about 40 young birds bred from eight pairs of stock birds and 35 pairs of channel racers. Alan says he likes young bird racing, on the natural system flying to the perch, and gives them lots of training out of Winchester. Alan told me a funny, but true story about two of his young birds. The late Alec Martin gave him a pair eggs from his Red Janssen stock birds and after Alan reared them he let them out with his other youngsters, and those two went straight back to the Martin loft, a mile or so away. Strange, but true!
At this time Alan had been in the sport 50 years, starting racing in 1960, after catching the pigeon bug from fancier school mates as a 15 year old. In those early days he had the Wegg pigeons and received a lot of help from a near by fancier, the late Alec Martin. Alan’s second hobby was playing golf and his job is a green keeper at the Hoebridge Golf Centre. Alan and Christine are great workers for the sport and he was chief clock setter and Surrey Federation delegate for his club. Alan is still the club’s delegate to the Three Borders Federation, a job he has done since the early 1960’s. Alan’s favourite nest condition for the longer races is hens sitting about ten day eggs. Alan said when he started up it was an achievement to get a bird on the day from Niort, such is the advance in our sport in 50 years, that some times you can get a day bird from Pau (550 miles) and not get in the National result. Alan isn’t a show man, but helps out at his club shows to get some funds in the bank. Christine said when the partners pair up they try and pair the best performers together.
There you have it, Alan and Christine Lomax of Woking, two of the nicest people in pigeon racing! They are still racing their pigeons with great success to their lofts down by the river at Old Woking and its great see them get some outstanding performances in the London & South East Classic Club races.
Well that’s your latest L&SECC report and I hope my readers have enjoyed it! I can be contacted on telephone number: 01372 463480.
TEXT & PHOTOS BY KEITH MOTT.
Thrill of the race
By DIANE LEWIS
A car would have to travel 90 mph to have a chance at keeping pace with a pigeon flying 1,500 yards per second.
Daryl Hopkins, who races homing pigeons, said the birds are fascinating.
"They have a homing device planted in their head that God just blessed them with," Hopkins said. "How do they know and where do they go? Your guess is as good as mine. There was a 150-mile race last Saturday when that storm came through, and I'm still getting some birds coming in. My guess is they were blown 100 miles or so off course and are still making their way home."
He began racing pigeons when he was a teen-ager and got back into it last year.
"Almost every person about my age would probably tell you the same story," Hopkins said. "Somewhere as youngster, I acquired this pet, a barnyard bird. The technical term is rock dove. The bird would ride on my shoulder and I could feed it. This pet I had was interesting, but the only thing I could do with him is feed him."
Then, Hopkins said, he read about homing pigeons in a book and heard another boy, two years younger in school, had homing pigeons. Hopkins and Melvin Voth, both then of Dodge City, began racing the pigeons.
They continued until they were 16, when they lost interest in the birds.
It wasn't until many years later they rediscovered the fun of homing pigeons.
When Hopkins moved from Dodge City and back to this area, he found Voth also living in Garden City.
When Hopkins decided to get back into homing pigeons last year, he said, "lo and behold, there was Melvin Voth."
Hopkins is one of seven members of the Garden City Flying for Fun Pigeon Racing Club. To keep costs down, clubs in Garden City, Dodge City, Scott City, Cimarron and Manter combine when racing.
Young bird season is August through October, while old bird season runs April to June.
Old birds, the ones Hopkins races, are at least a year old and their flying range is 300 to 600 miles.
Young birds are limited to 300-mile races because they aren't ready to travel long distances.
The birds are trained by flying distances for practice. If they come back, they are entered in races.
"I usually take my birds to Sublette and see if they come back," Hopkins said.
Hopkins stores his pigeons in a loft in his former garage.
Weather is important in pigeon racing. Wind, fog, heavy smoke, heavy dust, rain and solar storms cause problems for the birds.
"They can't handle solar storms," Hopkins said. "They put down a magnetic charge that throws off their internal compass. The birds get disoriented to where all they have is sight, then they can get lost. With the other things, they'll either fly around, over or through it."
Part of Hopkins' interest in the birds comes from history.
"They used to carry messages in the Civil War, World War I and a little in World War II," Hopkins said. "I just learned not too long ago they were used in Desert Storm, except we (United States) weren't the ones using them. Communications are based on radio. Saddam Hussein jammed the radio signals, but the homing pigeons just went right through that."
Hopkins said the pigeons can cost as much as $100,000 or more and are raised all over the world.
In magazines, like the Racing Pigeon Digest, they sell for $100 to $2,500.
But Hopkins said his first birds were given to him by other members in the club.
"We do that for people in the club who are just getting started, because it can get expensive, especially for youngsters," Hopkins said. "Now I have eight pair of breeders, 12 old bird flyers and 35 babies."
Racing Pigeon News
They are still useful as couriers
By P. Oppili - The Hindu
PIGEONS AS couriers were indispensable for any saga of love or war of yesteryear. Times have changed, but not the pigeons and our love for them.
In the era of multinational couriers and e-mails that criss- cross the world, are pigeons an anachronism? Walk into the terrace of the house of Mr. R. R. Prasad at Royapuram in north Chennai.
You are in a pigeon breeding club. Mr. Prasad has six cubicles for rearing pigeons and rooms have been provided separately for males, females and "youngsters''. There are also lofts for breeding and "racing''.
In the city, there are four associations which promote pigeon racing. Pigeon clubs are functioning in Tiruchi, Madurai, Kovilpatti and Pondicherry.
Training for pigeons starts from the sixtieth day of their birth, says Mr. Prasad. Initially the birds are taken to a distance of five kilometres and then released. Gradually the distance is increased and when the birds reach a target of 150 km, they are ready for the race.
Pigeons are categorised into young and old. Young bird will be below one year and the old above one year and races are conducted for both the categories. On an average, the birds cross about 2,000 km after two years of rigorous training, says Mr. Prasad.
Pigeons with big feathers and dark eyes are selected for the race. They need to be quite disciplined to reach their holes lest they wander around and lose the race.
Various breeding techniques are adopted by the racers like line breeding, in-breeding and out-cross breeding. Good face, beautiful breast and short legs are signs of good "blood line''.
Every racing group will have a few leaders, who guide them back home safely.
In a group there will at least four to five leaders. If one leader fails, the other will take charge and lead the group back to pavilion.
Various racing methods are adopted by the members. For example, both the male and female pigeons will take care of the new born.
If the female is removed and released from somewhere, it will fly faster and reach home quickly in a bid to reach its baby.
Way back in 1986, when a race was conducted in the city, the birds were released in Tiruchi. One of the pigeons of Mr. N. Sampath Kumar reached the city flying non stop for about five hours creating a record. The clubs have conducted races from Kanyakumari and also in the northern parts of the country.
In 1997, a group of pigeons were released from Gwalior and one of the pigeons of Mr. Prasad came first. The bird covered a distance of more than 1700 km and reached his home without any problem.
After this, yet another race was conducted in the same year from Delhi and another pigeon of Mr. Prasad covered a distance of 2186 km. Mr. Prasad claims that both are unbroken records.
Technology might change the way we live, but old habits die hard.
New L&SECC Website.
By Keith Mott
We are currently constructing a new and better London & South East Classic Club website, which will be up and running before we start racing in May. The new site is being built by the best in the business, Mysoft and we at the Classic committee are looking forward to a better up graded site for the membership to enjoy. The new 2010 racing season is looming up and we are looking forward to some good racing from our new transporter, which was purchased recently to cope better with our big birdage races. I would like to welcome our new secretary, Terri Hoskin, who I believe is going to be one of the best administrators in our sport! She is a very keen, but needs a sorting out period.
The new L&SECC phone line and internet has been installed and Terri’s full details are: address - 53, Highham Road, Chesham, Buckinghamshire, HP5 2AF: phone number - 01494 786026: email address – lsecc.terri@ntlworld.com Subs are £25 and 'Gold Rings' cost ?5 each (max ten rings) plus £1 p&p. The 2010 race programme is: 15th May Alencon: 29th May Tours (including the yearling derby): 25th June Tarbes: 16th July Bergerac: 21st August Guernsey 1 (young bird and old hens): 11th September Guernsey2 (young bird and old hens).
Back in January I was given the great honour of being elected as the new L&SECC President and I would like to thank the committee for their vote of support and confidence. Being elected has presented me with an exciting challenge which I will enjoy and relish! We at the L&SECC have one of the best work forces in the sport and I would like to thank them all personally for their good work in the 2009 season and hope for their continuing support this year. I would like to conclude by wishing all our membership the very best of luck for the new racing season!
Alan & Christine Lomax of Woking.
My ol’ friends from the Pyrford club, Alan and Christine Lomax, have had some good success in the L&SECC in recent seasons with their Busschaert hen, ‘Classic Blue Lady’, which has recorded: 2007: 22nd open L&SECC Guernsey 1. (old hens), 24th open L&SECC Guernsey 2. (old hens), 2008: 45th open L&SECC Alencon, 13th open L&SECC Tours. A brilliant record! This game hen came home from the Tours classic in 2008 with her keel skinned and bleeding, and still recorded 13th open. A few years ago Christine purchased six Busschaert squeakers from Oly Gittins of Cornwall for a present for Alan and ‘Classic Blue Lady’ was bred from two of those original birds.
The partners have been winning major pigeon races for many years and 1988 season saw Alan and Christine win the longest Surrey Federation old bird race from Bergerac (450 miles) with 1,763 birds taking part. The partner’s Federation winner was an eight year old Corbett / Busschaert red chequer hen called ‘The 96 Hen’ and she was bred by the late Alec Martin of Worplesdon. Alec was also a past winner of the Surrey Federation from Bergerac. Alan said at the time that he wasn’t very interested in inland racing, with his whole pigeon management being geared to channel racing. Some of the partner’s best channel results then were: 1964: 1st club, 2nd Three Borders Federation Bordeaux (446 miles), 1970: 1st club, 5th Federation Nantes (282 miles), 1971: 1st club, 9th Federation Nantes, 1975: 1st club, 4th Federation, 10th SMT Combine (4256 birds) Niort (343 miles), 1st, 2nd club, 4th, 17th Federation, 15th SMT Combine (4775 birds) Avranches (183 miles), 2nd club, 8th Federation, 35th SMT Combine Bergerac, 1976: 1st club, 11th Federation Laval, 1982: 1st club, 1st Three Borders Federation, 3rd Seven Counties Combine (3415 birds) Bergerac, 1985: 2nd club, 14th Federation, 44th SMT Combine Bergerac, 1986: 1st club Bergerac, 6th Federation, 30th SMT Combine Nantes 1987: 1st club, 4th Surrey Federation, 22nd SMT Combine (4452 birds) Wadebridge, 1988: 1st, 2nd club, 1st, 22nd Surrey Federation Bergerac. A wonderful loft performance!
Alan and Christine got married in 1981 and on moving to Old Woking that year formed their pigeon racing partnership. Christine was very interested in the pigeons and is the book keeper in the partnership, and took over as club secretary of the Horsell Inv. Club in 1989. She was the hard working secretary of the Pyrford club for an amazing 21 years! The partners had five lofts, which are cleaned out every day and Alan maintains that pigeons will race to an orange box if they are happy. The Lomax’s lofts are well ventilated and are kept as dry as possible, in winter and summer. The 35 pairs are raced natural as the partners liked hens for the longer races and pairing up is in March with racing from France in mind. The main families kept are Janssen and Busschaert obtained from Alec and Molly Martin, Cattrysse from Robin Creswick of Woking, but at this time mostly pigeons of the Krauth strain from John Everly. Alan runs a training programme for the Pyrford club members and his birds get regular tosses from Winchester and he feeds on a good general mixture, with added chicken pellets for the longer races. The Lomax’s live in a very rural area of Surrey, with their cottage being sited on a river bank and they get a lot of problems with Sparrowhawks and Minks, which kill they birds regularly. They normally wintered about 40 young birds bred from eight pairs of stock birds and 35 pairs of channel racers. Alan says he likes young bird racing, on the natural system flying to the perch, and gives them lots of training out of Winchester. Alan told me a funny, but true story about two of his young birds. The late Alec Martin gave him a pair eggs from his Red Janssen stock birds and after Alan reared them he let them out with his other youngsters, and those two went straight back to the Martin loft, a mile or so away. Strange, but true!
At this time Alan had been in the sport 50 years, starting racing in 1960, after catching the pigeon bug from fancier school mates as a 15 year old. In those early days he had the Wegg pigeons and received a lot of help from a near by fancier, the late Alec Martin. Alan’s second hobby was playing golf and his job is a green keeper at the Hoebridge Golf Centre. Alan and Christine are great workers for the sport and he was chief clock setter and Surrey Federation delegate for his club. Alan is still the club’s delegate to the Three Borders Federation, a job he has done since the early 1960’s. Alan’s favourite nest condition for the longer races is hens sitting about ten day eggs. Alan said when he started up it was an achievement to get a bird on the day from Niort, such is the advance in our sport in 50 years, that some times you can get a day bird from Pau (550 miles) and not get in the National result. Alan isn’t a show man, but helps out at his club shows to get some funds in the bank. Christine said when the partners pair up they try and pair the best performers together.
There you have it, Alan and Christine Lomax of Woking, two of the nicest people in pigeon racing! They are still racing their pigeons with great success to their lofts down by the river at Old Woking and its great see them get some outstanding performances in the London & South East Classic Club races.
Well that’s your latest L&SECC report and I hope my readers have enjoyed it! I can be contacted on telephone number: 01372 463480.
TEXT & PHOTOS BY KEITH MOTT.
Thrill of the race
By DIANE LEWIS
A car would have to travel 90 mph to have a chance at keeping pace with a pigeon flying 1,500 yards per second.
Daryl Hopkins, who races homing pigeons, said the birds are fascinating.
"They have a homing device planted in their head that God just blessed them with," Hopkins said. "How do they know and where do they go? Your guess is as good as mine. There was a 150-mile race last Saturday when that storm came through, and I'm still getting some birds coming in. My guess is they were blown 100 miles or so off course and are still making their way home."
He began racing pigeons when he was a teen-ager and got back into it last year.
"Almost every person about my age would probably tell you the same story," Hopkins said. "Somewhere as youngster, I acquired this pet, a barnyard bird. The technical term is rock dove. The bird would ride on my shoulder and I could feed it. This pet I had was interesting, but the only thing I could do with him is feed him."
Then, Hopkins said, he read about homing pigeons in a book and heard another boy, two years younger in school, had homing pigeons. Hopkins and Melvin Voth, both then of Dodge City, began racing the pigeons.
They continued until they were 16, when they lost interest in the birds.
It wasn't until many years later they rediscovered the fun of homing pigeons.
When Hopkins moved from Dodge City and back to this area, he found Voth also living in Garden City.
When Hopkins decided to get back into homing pigeons last year, he said, "lo and behold, there was Melvin Voth."
Hopkins is one of seven members of the Garden City Flying for Fun Pigeon Racing Club. To keep costs down, clubs in Garden City, Dodge City, Scott City, Cimarron and Manter combine when racing.
Young bird season is August through October, while old bird season runs April to June.
Old birds, the ones Hopkins races, are at least a year old and their flying range is 300 to 600 miles.
Young birds are limited to 300-mile races because they aren't ready to travel long distances.
The birds are trained by flying distances for practice. If they come back, they are entered in races.
"I usually take my birds to Sublette and see if they come back," Hopkins said.
Hopkins stores his pigeons in a loft in his former garage.
Weather is important in pigeon racing. Wind, fog, heavy smoke, heavy dust, rain and solar storms cause problems for the birds.
"They can't handle solar storms," Hopkins said. "They put down a magnetic charge that throws off their internal compass. The birds get disoriented to where all they have is sight, then they can get lost. With the other things, they'll either fly around, over or through it."
Part of Hopkins' interest in the birds comes from history.
"They used to carry messages in the Civil War, World War I and a little in World War II," Hopkins said. "I just learned not too long ago they were used in Desert Storm, except we (United States) weren't the ones using them. Communications are based on radio. Saddam Hussein jammed the radio signals, but the homing pigeons just went right through that."
Hopkins said the pigeons can cost as much as $100,000 or more and are raised all over the world.
In magazines, like the Racing Pigeon Digest, they sell for $100 to $2,500.
But Hopkins said his first birds were given to him by other members in the club.
"We do that for people in the club who are just getting started, because it can get expensive, especially for youngsters," Hopkins said. "Now I have eight pair of breeders, 12 old bird flyers and 35 babies."
Racing Pigeon News
zaterdag 1 mei 2010
RACING PIGEON NEWS ISSUE 265
Welcome issue 265
In This Issue:
Race Horses of the sky
A True Champion
This little pigeon
'Race Horses of the sky'.
By Robert Kelly-Goss - The Daily Advance
The cooing sound of about 100 pigeons carries softly through the air behind Charlie Jones’ Camden County home. Behind his house is a coop that houses the pigeons, birds that will race hundreds of miles before they return home.
Jones has been keeping homing pigeons since he was about 14, back in 1953. When he worked for J. Holland Webster in Weeksville, Jones began to learn how to handle these birds.
“I went to work for him and he had the pigeons,” says Jones, a retired City of Elizabeth City employee. “I helped him with (the pigeons).”
Eventually, Webster would set Jones up with pigeons and a coop, and teach him how to race the birds. Racing the birds is what it’s all about for Jones.
Over the years Jones has cultivated quite a collection of these racing pigeons. They are not, he emphasizes, the fat and dirty “common pigeon” you see in the parks.
“They are the race horses of the sky,” Jones says.
These are sleek, strong birds and they can cost as much as $1,500 to $2,500 a bird — he breeds his, however.
Racing the pigeons can also run into big money for the winners. While Jones says he doesn’t compete in the bigger races, he points to one that will award the first place winner a $160,000 purse.
In a whitewashed coop, Jones has his birds comfortably housed. They each have a cubby for their nests, a run where they all congregate and plenty of space to move around.
The birds’ feathers are smooth and silky. Some are gray, some are black or brown and there are solid white pigeons as well — those are easy prey for hawks, Jones says.
Jones takes a pigeon in his hands, fans its wings and counts the feathers. He does the same with the tail feathers, commenting that all are intact and that is important since those feathers will take a bird up to 600 miles in any given race.
The birds are not named, but each pigeon has a band with a specific number strapped to its leg. The bands have electronic components that can be read by a scanner inside the coop.
Jones is a part of the Seaport Pigeon Flyers in Virginia. He races with this group against other pigeons.
In the event of a race, he meets a conveyor truck and loads his birds along with other competitors. The truck then takes the pigeons to a designated start point and releases them.
They then use their natural instincts to return to their coops. They are judged on best time.
When the birds return from a race, Jones explains, they return to the coop and the scanner records the time of their arrival. He will take that scanner to a designated judging station where the times are loaded into a computer and tallied.
His birds have flown in races up to 600 miles.
A brief history of the homing pigeon:
* Egyptians and Persians used carrier, or homing, pigeons as far back as 3,000 years ago.
* Pigeons were used to announce the winners of the ancient Olympic games.
* The Republic of Genoa used pigeons along its Mediterranean Sea watchtowers.
* In 1860, founder of Reuter press agency, Paul Reuter, used pigeons to deliver news and stock prices in Europe.
* The outcome of the Battle of Waterloo was delivered to England via pigeon.
* It is believed that the first regular airmail service was in New Zealand, using pigeons, beginning in 1896.
* Pigeons were used in both World Wars. One pigeon named Cher Ami was awarded the French Croix de guerre for heroic service during World War I. Pigeons played a key role in the invasion of Normandy during World War II, as well as other operations where radio silence was necessary.
* Carrier pigeons were used as recently as 2002 in India to provide communication services in the event of a natural disaster.
A True Champion
Red Danial And his Dynasty
1st Open Peterborough, 1st Open Sleaford, 1st Open Sleaford, 1st Open Retford, 1st Open Berwick, 1st Open Essex & Suffolk Fed 4,132 birds, competing in six Open races winning 6 x lsts. Also won:1st Beverley, 1st Retford, 1st Sleaford, 1st Retford, 1st Sleaford, 1st Beverley, 1st Beverly, 1st Sect B Essex & Suffolk Fed 3,312 birds, 1st Sect B Essex & Suffolk Fed 2,633 birds, 1st Sect B Essex & Suffolk Fed 1,853birds,1st Beverley Essex & Suffolk Fed 3,148 birds. 1st Stour Valley Fed 1,204 birds, 1st Peterborough Colchester Championship Club, 4th Essex & Suffolk Fed Beverley 4,221 birds. Also 4th Essex & Suffolk Fed Beverley 2,191 birds, 5th Essex & Suffolk Fed Beverley 4,428 birds, 6th Essex & Suffolk Fed Beverley 3,318 birds. Only raced till two years of age then retired to stock. In 23 competitions entered he won a remarkable 19 x 1st prizes. He is sire, grandsire, great grandsire winner after winner, generation after generation.
WORLD CLASS RACER-PRODUCER
As you can see we soon realised that we possessed a bird of exceptional and special ability. Little did we realise his breeding accomplishments would surpass his racing achievements, and retiring him to stock at two years of age was the best decision we have ever made. It was our aspiration and goal to try and establish a genetically multi-winning family of our own based around him. This we feel we have established. But only after years of selective breeding, and maybe just as importantly being very critical and selective with the birds representing us in the racing section. We feel the strength and depth of winninq genes in this family, make this family capable of producing winners at most levels of competition!
This family has been created and blended over the last 15 years. During this period it has brought us great excitement, enjoyment, and satisfaction. To list the winners descended from him would be an impossible task. His ability to pass on his winning genes has been prolific. These pages will give a small but informative insight for you the fancier to make up your own mind about the ability of this remarkable pigeon. We would never dare say or suggest that he may be the best racer/producer in his lifetime. For in our opinion no one person has the best for very long, some just have better than others on the day. The reasons being, evolution combined with nature is ever shaping, always creating. However, we do believe that this family is better than most at producing good honest racing pigeons, something we are all striving to achieve.
Racing and breeding pigeons has been our passion for over 30 years. It has given Linda and myself great pleasure and it has enabled us to make many friendships and acquaintances. One such friend is Richie Ryder from the Wirral. So much so, that we decided to form a partnership in 2004. Richie now has specially selected stock, breeding in his stock lofts. Prior to our becoming partners, Richie's ability as a stockman had been well documented in the sport, and testimonials could be found in all areas of the media. Linda and Richie are responsible for the stock birds and the breeding plans. My major focus is on the racing side and the progeny testing of our fabulous “Red Daniel” family. - Keith Turner.
This little pigeon
BY: BECKY CRUM, Herald Reporter
Mother Mae’s Kitchen got an unexpected guest on Jan. 4. David Munoz, son of Marvin and Mae, stopped by the restaurant and when he approached the back door he noticed a pigeon huddled by the door stoop that looked frozen.
“I thought he was dead at first. He was cold and curled up. I got closer to him and I saw he was barely moving. I called my dad to see what I should do with him,” David said.
Marvin Munoz told his son to put the pigeon in a box and see if he could thaw him to help him live. It was ten below zero outside.
“I got a Frito Lay box and slid it by him. He went into the box. He had a tag on his leg so I knew if he was tagged, he must belong to someone. I took him to my parents house,” David said.
Marvin Munoz said that night they gave the pigeon some birdseed and water.
“At first he wouldn’t eat or drink; however, after a while, he ate some of the birdseed and took a drink of the water,” Munoz said.
He said they didn’t know how long he had been at the back door of the restaurant frozen and without food.
“We mainly took care of him Sunday night and Monday, and then on Tuesday evening, our daughter, Tammy Buechner, wrote down the number 144 that was on his leg band. Through the Internet, she was able to find out he was a registered racing pigeon. Tammy entered the number on his band and it identified him with a racing club in West Jordan, Utah,” Munoz said.
Munoz said he called the phone number and the secretary of the club gave him the phone number to Mike Westenskow, the man who raised the pigeon.
Westenskow told Munoz that he had sold that particular pigeon to a man named John who lived in Wyoming.
Pigeon history
Westenskow gave Munoz some background information about No. 144 and racing pigeons. Munoz said that Westenskow told him that a lot of people don’t know about racing pigeons. He said they are bred to race, just like racing horses. The pigeons have three different races that they compete in — a 100-mile race, a 300-mile race and a 600-mile race.
One of the pigeons that came out of the same batch as No. 144 won the 600-mile race for the state of Utah in 2008. He started the race at the Canadian border and flew non-stop to his coop in South Jordan, Utah in 14 hours.
The Munoz family continued their search on the history of racing birds. They found out that this particular breed of pigeon originated in Belgium. The pigeons were used in World War II to carry messages across enemy lines. They discovered that ten World War II pigeons were decorated for their military service.
The most decorated World War II racing pigeon was called G.I. Joe. He saved the lives of more than 1,000 people by carrying a message to warn a village that the enemy was gong to bomb them.
G. I Joe flew over 50 missions through enemy lines and was never hit. He was presented a medal for gallantry after the war. When he died, he was mounted and is on display at the U. S. Army Communications Electronics Museum in Fort Monmouth, N.J..
History of Pigeon
No. 144
Munoz called John, the pigeon’s current owner, and found out that he works at the sheriff’s department in Lincoln County. He was out of town, so Munoz told him they would keep No. 144 until John came back and was able to retrieve his pigeon.
John told them that he bought No. 144’s family from Westenskow. The family consisted of the father, mother, No. 144 and another sibling. No. 144 is less than a year old. John told him that No. 144 was in a race with a group of pigeons when he went missing. The race started in Salt Lake City and was to end in Cokeville. They assume he was caught in the storm or that it became too windy for him to fly. Once he stopped, he might have become too cold or disoriented and was not able to continue in the race.
He has raced in preliminary races such as this one before and done quite well.
The owner of the pigeon said that pigeons are odd. Sometimes they will disappear for a year and then show up the next year to race. It is unknown what happens to them during the time they are missing. He said it is a mystery how No. 144 showed up in Evanston, and particularly at Mother Mae’s Kitchen.
Third bird to show up at Mother Mae’s
No. 144 is not the first bird to take refuge at Mother Mae’s.
“No. 144 is unique because I don’t know how he chose our restaurant. Some of the other doors might have been warmer than ours. What is even stranger is that this is the third bird to show up here. Last year when they were tarring the roofs, two baby birds showed up here. They were covered in oil and we tried to help them. We called people and they gave us solutions to get the oil off the birds, but we were unable to save them,” Munoz said.
Another strange thing about No. 144 is that he’s bonded with the Munoz’s Jack Russell Terrier. Two years ago, a man came into the restaurant and told the Munozes’ that he had a dog and if he couldn’t find someone to take him, he was going to take him to the dog pound.
“We couldn’t let that happen, so we took him. His name is Sonny,” Munoz said. “I have to wonder if they have bonded because they both had similar circumstances. They are so cute together. Sonny will lick No. 144. No. 144 doesn’t act afraid or try to get away. They act like they’ve grown up together or understand each other. It’s unusual. I put the bird in a spare bedroom in a little box with a clothes basket over him so he can have light. The dog lies outside the bedroom and keeps an eye on him.”
Munoz said he has received help from others in his life and he tries to pass that practice on whenever he can.
“I tell my family that it doesn’t matter if it’s a human or an animal; when someone needs help, I think we should take the time to do what we can to help them,” Munoz said.
Racing Pigeon News
In This Issue:
Race Horses of the sky
A True Champion
This little pigeon
'Race Horses of the sky'.
By Robert Kelly-Goss - The Daily Advance
The cooing sound of about 100 pigeons carries softly through the air behind Charlie Jones’ Camden County home. Behind his house is a coop that houses the pigeons, birds that will race hundreds of miles before they return home.
Jones has been keeping homing pigeons since he was about 14, back in 1953. When he worked for J. Holland Webster in Weeksville, Jones began to learn how to handle these birds.
“I went to work for him and he had the pigeons,” says Jones, a retired City of Elizabeth City employee. “I helped him with (the pigeons).”
Eventually, Webster would set Jones up with pigeons and a coop, and teach him how to race the birds. Racing the birds is what it’s all about for Jones.
Over the years Jones has cultivated quite a collection of these racing pigeons. They are not, he emphasizes, the fat and dirty “common pigeon” you see in the parks.
“They are the race horses of the sky,” Jones says.
These are sleek, strong birds and they can cost as much as $1,500 to $2,500 a bird — he breeds his, however.
Racing the pigeons can also run into big money for the winners. While Jones says he doesn’t compete in the bigger races, he points to one that will award the first place winner a $160,000 purse.
In a whitewashed coop, Jones has his birds comfortably housed. They each have a cubby for their nests, a run where they all congregate and plenty of space to move around.
The birds’ feathers are smooth and silky. Some are gray, some are black or brown and there are solid white pigeons as well — those are easy prey for hawks, Jones says.
Jones takes a pigeon in his hands, fans its wings and counts the feathers. He does the same with the tail feathers, commenting that all are intact and that is important since those feathers will take a bird up to 600 miles in any given race.
The birds are not named, but each pigeon has a band with a specific number strapped to its leg. The bands have electronic components that can be read by a scanner inside the coop.
Jones is a part of the Seaport Pigeon Flyers in Virginia. He races with this group against other pigeons.
In the event of a race, he meets a conveyor truck and loads his birds along with other competitors. The truck then takes the pigeons to a designated start point and releases them.
They then use their natural instincts to return to their coops. They are judged on best time.
When the birds return from a race, Jones explains, they return to the coop and the scanner records the time of their arrival. He will take that scanner to a designated judging station where the times are loaded into a computer and tallied.
His birds have flown in races up to 600 miles.
A brief history of the homing pigeon:
* Egyptians and Persians used carrier, or homing, pigeons as far back as 3,000 years ago.
* Pigeons were used to announce the winners of the ancient Olympic games.
* The Republic of Genoa used pigeons along its Mediterranean Sea watchtowers.
* In 1860, founder of Reuter press agency, Paul Reuter, used pigeons to deliver news and stock prices in Europe.
* The outcome of the Battle of Waterloo was delivered to England via pigeon.
* It is believed that the first regular airmail service was in New Zealand, using pigeons, beginning in 1896.
* Pigeons were used in both World Wars. One pigeon named Cher Ami was awarded the French Croix de guerre for heroic service during World War I. Pigeons played a key role in the invasion of Normandy during World War II, as well as other operations where radio silence was necessary.
* Carrier pigeons were used as recently as 2002 in India to provide communication services in the event of a natural disaster.
A True Champion
Red Danial And his Dynasty
1st Open Peterborough, 1st Open Sleaford, 1st Open Sleaford, 1st Open Retford, 1st Open Berwick, 1st Open Essex & Suffolk Fed 4,132 birds, competing in six Open races winning 6 x lsts. Also won:1st Beverley, 1st Retford, 1st Sleaford, 1st Retford, 1st Sleaford, 1st Beverley, 1st Beverly, 1st Sect B Essex & Suffolk Fed 3,312 birds, 1st Sect B Essex & Suffolk Fed 2,633 birds, 1st Sect B Essex & Suffolk Fed 1,853birds,1st Beverley Essex & Suffolk Fed 3,148 birds. 1st Stour Valley Fed 1,204 birds, 1st Peterborough Colchester Championship Club, 4th Essex & Suffolk Fed Beverley 4,221 birds. Also 4th Essex & Suffolk Fed Beverley 2,191 birds, 5th Essex & Suffolk Fed Beverley 4,428 birds, 6th Essex & Suffolk Fed Beverley 3,318 birds. Only raced till two years of age then retired to stock. In 23 competitions entered he won a remarkable 19 x 1st prizes. He is sire, grandsire, great grandsire winner after winner, generation after generation.
WORLD CLASS RACER-PRODUCER
As you can see we soon realised that we possessed a bird of exceptional and special ability. Little did we realise his breeding accomplishments would surpass his racing achievements, and retiring him to stock at two years of age was the best decision we have ever made. It was our aspiration and goal to try and establish a genetically multi-winning family of our own based around him. This we feel we have established. But only after years of selective breeding, and maybe just as importantly being very critical and selective with the birds representing us in the racing section. We feel the strength and depth of winninq genes in this family, make this family capable of producing winners at most levels of competition!
This family has been created and blended over the last 15 years. During this period it has brought us great excitement, enjoyment, and satisfaction. To list the winners descended from him would be an impossible task. His ability to pass on his winning genes has been prolific. These pages will give a small but informative insight for you the fancier to make up your own mind about the ability of this remarkable pigeon. We would never dare say or suggest that he may be the best racer/producer in his lifetime. For in our opinion no one person has the best for very long, some just have better than others on the day. The reasons being, evolution combined with nature is ever shaping, always creating. However, we do believe that this family is better than most at producing good honest racing pigeons, something we are all striving to achieve.
Racing and breeding pigeons has been our passion for over 30 years. It has given Linda and myself great pleasure and it has enabled us to make many friendships and acquaintances. One such friend is Richie Ryder from the Wirral. So much so, that we decided to form a partnership in 2004. Richie now has specially selected stock, breeding in his stock lofts. Prior to our becoming partners, Richie's ability as a stockman had been well documented in the sport, and testimonials could be found in all areas of the media. Linda and Richie are responsible for the stock birds and the breeding plans. My major focus is on the racing side and the progeny testing of our fabulous “Red Daniel” family. - Keith Turner.
This little pigeon
BY: BECKY CRUM, Herald Reporter
Mother Mae’s Kitchen got an unexpected guest on Jan. 4. David Munoz, son of Marvin and Mae, stopped by the restaurant and when he approached the back door he noticed a pigeon huddled by the door stoop that looked frozen.
“I thought he was dead at first. He was cold and curled up. I got closer to him and I saw he was barely moving. I called my dad to see what I should do with him,” David said.
Marvin Munoz told his son to put the pigeon in a box and see if he could thaw him to help him live. It was ten below zero outside.
“I got a Frito Lay box and slid it by him. He went into the box. He had a tag on his leg so I knew if he was tagged, he must belong to someone. I took him to my parents house,” David said.
Marvin Munoz said that night they gave the pigeon some birdseed and water.
“At first he wouldn’t eat or drink; however, after a while, he ate some of the birdseed and took a drink of the water,” Munoz said.
He said they didn’t know how long he had been at the back door of the restaurant frozen and without food.
“We mainly took care of him Sunday night and Monday, and then on Tuesday evening, our daughter, Tammy Buechner, wrote down the number 144 that was on his leg band. Through the Internet, she was able to find out he was a registered racing pigeon. Tammy entered the number on his band and it identified him with a racing club in West Jordan, Utah,” Munoz said.
Munoz said he called the phone number and the secretary of the club gave him the phone number to Mike Westenskow, the man who raised the pigeon.
Westenskow told Munoz that he had sold that particular pigeon to a man named John who lived in Wyoming.
Pigeon history
Westenskow gave Munoz some background information about No. 144 and racing pigeons. Munoz said that Westenskow told him that a lot of people don’t know about racing pigeons. He said they are bred to race, just like racing horses. The pigeons have three different races that they compete in — a 100-mile race, a 300-mile race and a 600-mile race.
One of the pigeons that came out of the same batch as No. 144 won the 600-mile race for the state of Utah in 2008. He started the race at the Canadian border and flew non-stop to his coop in South Jordan, Utah in 14 hours.
The Munoz family continued their search on the history of racing birds. They found out that this particular breed of pigeon originated in Belgium. The pigeons were used in World War II to carry messages across enemy lines. They discovered that ten World War II pigeons were decorated for their military service.
The most decorated World War II racing pigeon was called G.I. Joe. He saved the lives of more than 1,000 people by carrying a message to warn a village that the enemy was gong to bomb them.
G. I Joe flew over 50 missions through enemy lines and was never hit. He was presented a medal for gallantry after the war. When he died, he was mounted and is on display at the U. S. Army Communications Electronics Museum in Fort Monmouth, N.J..
History of Pigeon
No. 144
Munoz called John, the pigeon’s current owner, and found out that he works at the sheriff’s department in Lincoln County. He was out of town, so Munoz told him they would keep No. 144 until John came back and was able to retrieve his pigeon.
John told them that he bought No. 144’s family from Westenskow. The family consisted of the father, mother, No. 144 and another sibling. No. 144 is less than a year old. John told him that No. 144 was in a race with a group of pigeons when he went missing. The race started in Salt Lake City and was to end in Cokeville. They assume he was caught in the storm or that it became too windy for him to fly. Once he stopped, he might have become too cold or disoriented and was not able to continue in the race.
He has raced in preliminary races such as this one before and done quite well.
The owner of the pigeon said that pigeons are odd. Sometimes they will disappear for a year and then show up the next year to race. It is unknown what happens to them during the time they are missing. He said it is a mystery how No. 144 showed up in Evanston, and particularly at Mother Mae’s Kitchen.
Third bird to show up at Mother Mae’s
No. 144 is not the first bird to take refuge at Mother Mae’s.
“No. 144 is unique because I don’t know how he chose our restaurant. Some of the other doors might have been warmer than ours. What is even stranger is that this is the third bird to show up here. Last year when they were tarring the roofs, two baby birds showed up here. They were covered in oil and we tried to help them. We called people and they gave us solutions to get the oil off the birds, but we were unable to save them,” Munoz said.
Another strange thing about No. 144 is that he’s bonded with the Munoz’s Jack Russell Terrier. Two years ago, a man came into the restaurant and told the Munozes’ that he had a dog and if he couldn’t find someone to take him, he was going to take him to the dog pound.
“We couldn’t let that happen, so we took him. His name is Sonny,” Munoz said. “I have to wonder if they have bonded because they both had similar circumstances. They are so cute together. Sonny will lick No. 144. No. 144 doesn’t act afraid or try to get away. They act like they’ve grown up together or understand each other. It’s unusual. I put the bird in a spare bedroom in a little box with a clothes basket over him so he can have light. The dog lies outside the bedroom and keeps an eye on him.”
Munoz said he has received help from others in his life and he tries to pass that practice on whenever he can.
“I tell my family that it doesn’t matter if it’s a human or an animal; when someone needs help, I think we should take the time to do what we can to help them,” Munoz said.
Racing Pigeon News
zaterdag 24 april 2010
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
Racing Pigeon News
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
Racing Pigeon News
zaterdag 17 april 2010
RACING PIGEON NEWSLETTER ISSUE 263
In This Issue:
Local man raises
Ced and Clive Allwright
The race is on
- Local man raises, races pigeons.
By Rich Myhre - Heraldnet
For pigeon racing enthusiasts like Marysville's Roald Haugen, nothing's better than watching one of your birds fly home and win a race at the same time.
MARYSVILLE -- Roald Haugen got hooked on pigeon racing as a boy growing up in his north Everett neighborhood.
Today, more than a half-century later, Haugen lives in Marysville and is long retired from his career as an installer of commercial fire-protection systems. But over the years he never outgrew his love for racing pigeons.
"I've just always been fascinated by it," said the 69-year-old Haugen. "These are amazing animals. They'll come home from anywhere. They'll fly through anything. And they'll die trying to get home."
Years ago, when his kids were in high school, Haugen began feeling guilty about the time he was spending with his birds. He ended up selling his flock.
"And I was miserable," he admitted. "My wife finally said, 'Shoot, get the birds back. I liked you better then.'"
And these days he's as passionate as ever. "I haven't been able to shake it," he said with a smile. "I just enjoy seeing (the pigeons) come home."
Pigeon racing might not be as popular as football or basketball, but there are enthusiasts all around the United States and elsewhere in the world, particularly Europe, South Africa and Australia. There are several clubs in and around Snohomish County, where members share their love for raising and racing homing pigeons.
"If you like sports, this has all the thrills," said Herb Cartmell, who is president of Woodinville's Sno-King Racing Pigeon Club and is also a board member of the American Racing Pigeon Union. "It's the best game in town, it really is."
Like thoroughbred race horses, pigeons -- the specific breed is Racing Homer -- can be bred and trained, and top animals are sold for their breeding potential, sometimes for many thousands of dollars.
Haugen, who has about 40 birds, is more of a hobbyist than an entrepreneur. He occasionally buys pigeons, but more often he raises his own. Trying to find the right breeding mix is part of the sport's appeal, he said.
"I know each one of them, and each year I'll switch the breeding around," he said. "You're trying to improve the blood all the time. If you get one excellent flyer out of six babies a year, that's good. And if you get a (good male and female) pair, you want to keep that pair together."
The most gratifying thing "is seeing your breeding come to fruition," he added.
In a typical year, Haugen estimates he spends only a few hundred dollars on his hobby, and much of that is the fuel cost for the truck to transport the pigeons to races.
"We call it the poor man's horse racing," he said with a chuckle.
Haugen is a member of the Everett Racing Pigeon Club, which has around a dozen members from Snohomish and Island counties. One of the club members is the elder statesmen of pigeon racing in western Washington, 89-year-old Elwin Anderson of Everett, who has been competing and winning longer than many of his rivals have been alive.
"He is still tearing up these guys out here with his pigeons," Cartmell said.
Races are held through the spring and summer, with an old bird season for pigeons upwards of one year, followed by a young bird season for the youngsters. The day before a race, a truck travels from home to home to pick up caged pigeons and take them to the starting point, which is usually somewhere in southwest Washington or Oregon.
The next day there is a countdown to zero, at which point the cages fly open simultaneously and the birds depart en masse. They start out in a large flock, but eventually start to separate, each one flying to its home destination.
Hours later, they begin arriving. Each bird has a distinguishing leg band and they are timed to the second with special equipment. Because of the varying distances to different homes -- and those distances are measured by GPS to one-thousandth of a mile -- winners are determined not by elapsed time, but by speed.
And not every pigeon arrives on schedule. On occasion, birds get injured and even lost.
"Some days the bell just doesn't ring for them," Haugen said. "They just don't figure it out, for whatever reason. But they'll come home days, weeks and even months later."
A pigeon racer, Cartmell said, "gets to be the team's general manager, doctor, trainer and coach. You have to train these birds, like you would any athlete. And you have to keep them healthy, so you have to make sure they get enough diet, rest and exercise. So you put a lot of work into these birds.
"And you expect them all to come home, but sometimes things happen," he said. "There are obstacles and there are risks, but it's a great thrill to watch a bird come home from 200 miles away."Four of Roald Haugen’s racing pigeons fly above his Marysville home.Roald Haugen watches a group of six male homing pigeons fly out of their coop where they live at Haugen’s home in Marysville.Roald Haugen holds a 3-day-old homing pigeon.Roald Haugen shows the band around the leg of a homing pigeon that has kept track of the pigeon since just days after it was born.
- Ced and Clive Allwright
By Keith Mott
The National Flying Club ended the 2003 season with a brilliant Young Bird National from Falaise in northern France, when members entered 6,175 birds and enjoyed excellent returns. The day of the National started off dodgy with rain in northern France, but the sun soon broke through and the NFC chief convoyer, Colin Bates, cut the strings at 0835hrs and liberated into a light south-west wind. The wind was north-west in the Channel, turning to west in mainland England and favoured members on the east side of the country, especially Section E, as the final result confirmed to be correct. This National proved to be a great delight for me personally, as my good friends, Ced and Clive Allwright of Ashford, won the young bird race and recorded their second NFC win. The father and son partnership sent 15 youngsters to the National, recording their first bird, a 'darkness' blue chequer cock, now named ‘Falaise Supreme’, at 11.28, flying 164 miles. They topped up a brilliant day by recording the best five young birds and best old hen, by 30 minutes, in their local clock station. Ced and Clive's old bird looked like finishing up 7th Open in the Old Hens National result, this hen being clocked approx. 18 minutes after the Young Bird National winner.
The partners won the Young Bird National for the first time from Pontorson (6,469 birds) in 1998 with their champion Haelterman blue pied hen, Champion 'Starlett', and both the parents where bred by Frank and Anne Tasker, from their fantastic 'Filmstar' bloodlines. Frank's 'Filmstar' was a champion racer and breeding cock, winning many premier prizes, including 26 times 1st, 12 times 1st Open Federation and is responsible for breeding countless winners. The latest National winner, Champion ‘Falaise Supreme’, is a Haelterman/Allwright distance family cross with the dam of 'Starlett' being the grand dam of the Falaise National winner. The Allwright's latest champion had three short club races, from Littlehampton and Fareham, on his build up to the Falaise National and was sent playing around with a young hen. Ced and Clive use the Frank Tasker 'darkness' system and their small 6ft x 4ft 'darkness' loft is a converted garden shed. The partners breed 70 young birds every season and half are put on the 'darkness' system and half are left natural. Ced says he would not put his whole team of young birds on the 'darkness' because he is not happy with their performances as yearlings. The youngsters are trained. very hard from the west and north, and race through to 230 miles in their first season. They are fed on Junior Plus and are allowed to pair up if they want to. The 'darkness' young birds are put on the system when they are weaned. The natural youngsters are housed in a 12ft loft and all the lofts are painted out in light blue, which is very restful for the inmates. Ced and Clive keep ten pairs of stock birds and these are paired up in January because, they like a few early youngsters. The main families kept are the Frank and Anne Tasker 'Filmstar' family; Jim Biss, Eric and Pat Cannon and their own long distance family, which they have blended over the years. The stock loft has a nice big wire flight that the inmates can get out into the weather. When bringing in new stock they go for good winning lines, and say the only type they like is 'the winning type'.
The day after the Falaise National my good friend, Tony Dann and I made the 65 mile drive down to Ashford, to see Ced and Clive's latest champion and offer our congratulations in person. I must say, the Allwrights are some of the nicest people I've had the pleasure to meet in my 35 years in the sport of pigeon racing and their latest National win has given my wife Batty and I much delight. I must take this opportunity to thank my ol’ mucker, Tony Dann, for his help with the photography on this article. Ced showed us many of his top performers including his good, dark chequer cock which has secured the British Barcelona Club 'Spanish Diploma' in the 2003 season, when he completed his three times in the open result from Palamos (647 miles). This game cock is off their own long-distance family and on his build up to Palamos each year, is only raced lightly, with two inland and one Channel race before the main event and in the 2002 season the was the only bird timed in the Kent 500 Mile Specialist Club. His dam is one of the loft's best Channel racers, winning many firsts on the long distance, and on handling this wonderful dark cock, Tony and I both agreed he was the perfect pigeon in the hand, being medium sized and long cast, with silky feathering. Ced and Clive enjoy racing every week, but their main interest is in the long distance events with the N.F.C., B.B.C., B.I.C.C. and L.& S.E.C.C. The Allwright loft has won many 1st Federations through the years and the 2002 season saw them win 13 firsts in the local club. Their good Eric Cannon blue white flight hen recorded 1st S. E. Section, 12th Open London & South East Classic Club Pau in 2002 and was the only bird clocked in Kent. This game hen was bred from a direct son of Champion 'Culmer Marion', Eric Cannon's N.F.C. Sartilly Young Bird National winner. We also handled their latest National winner, Champion ‘Falaise Supreme’, and on inspecting him, I noticed that he had just cast his third flight and was beginning to drop his body feathers. He was medium sized and apple bodied in the hand and I thought, although he was a cross, he was very much like the Haelterman type.
Ced has been in the sport for 60 years, starting during the war years with the help of a friend who was a local National Pigeon Service rep. His father was an outstanding fancier in London and specialised in long-distance racing, winning many premier positions in the London N.R. Combine. In turn his father was a great fancier, making Clive the fourth generation of pigeon fanciers in the Allwright family and Ced has racing diplomas dating back to 1912. For many years Ced flew on the north road in partnership with his late wife, Vera, and says that she was a great worker with the pigeons. She clocked in many winners from the long distance, when Ced was at work. Clive became interested in his father's pigeons at the age of four and has been a partner for over 30 years. Ced says, Clive is a great worker in the partnership and selects, and purchases the new stock for breeding. They race their 25 pairs on the natural system, with Channel racing in mind, but like to compete in the shorter races. They have raced the odd pigeon on the widowhood system, but say they enjoy seeing their birds in the garden. They stagger their pairing up, starting in the first section in January and work through the loft, finishing the job in mid-March. The main racing loft is 30ft long, five sections, and all trapping is in to sputniks. The whole loft set up is in a big wire compound to keep out cats: The old birds are hopper fed on winter mixture and in one of their best seasons they were fed maple peas only. They say all corn must be of premier quality. Old bird training is from the west and north, wherever Clive is working, and he likes to take them 30 or 40 miles if he can. Ced has been an all round bird man for most of his life and for many years had a big bird room at the top of his garden where he bred prize Canaries and foreign Finches. On my many visits to the Allwright’s Kent home, I took great delight in looking around Ced’s bird room, when they were breeding. The partners enjoy showing their Racing Pigeons and at one time they kept one or two Show Racers, and have been very successful, winning most of the local club shows and points trophies. Ced Allwright is a great stock man and is always being asked to judge at the premier local shows.
The Allwrights are a wonderful family and deserve all the great success they have enjoyed with their pigeons. That’s it for this week! My Telephone number is: 01372 463480. See yer!
-The race is on
By Emily Sweeney - Boston.com
Pigeons overhead may be flying in from Buffalo
It was a warm Thursday afternoon, and the members of the Braintree Racing Pigeon Club were readying their pigeons for a 400-mile race. The feathered competitors cooed in their cages. Each bird wore two plastic leg bands -- one with an identification number, much like a marathon runner's bib, and the second with a microchip that would serve as a miniature stopwatch.
The winged athletes were loaded into a truck bound for upstate New York, where they would be released. From that point on, they would depend on navigational instincts to fly back home to Massachusetts. The first to return would win.
Their estimated flying time from Buffalo: About seven hours.
Races like this happen almost every weekend during the warm months. At any given time, the pigeons you see flying across the South Shore may not be your average park pigeon, but a prized racer from a club in Braintree, Norwood, Plymouth, or Quincy, heading very purposefully for their respective finish lines.
"The sport," says Peter Hultman of Weymouth, "is incredibly competitive," and a bird can be worth thousands of dollars. The owners feed their birds the best grain and seed, and monitor their health carefully, as they develop their own motivational techniques.
They are not just racers, Hultman says. "They're our pets."
For centuries, people have marveled at a pigeon's ability to find its way home. Researchers at Cornell University believe that pigeons use the sun as a compass to navigate the skies, and that they can detect the earth's magnetic fields.
The races are organized by the Greater Boston Concourse, a league of 10 local clubs that breed "thoroughbreds of the sky." The Concourse has been around since 1928, but the sport itself has evolved over centuries.
Many of the enthusiasts were introduced to this backyard hobby by their fathers, or grew up in a neighborhood where a neighbor had a pigeon loft, and most have been racing for decades. Chuck Houghton of Hingham, who owns several pigeons, including a white one nicknamed Moneybags, is typical. He joined the club in 1974.
Today's racing pigeons face challenges that their forebears did not. Town ordinances often view pigeons as rats rather than thoroughbreds -- a view that the American Racing Pigeon Union, a national organization based in Oklahoma, is doing its best to counter. The Braintree Racing Pigeon Club ran in to trouble in 1999, when it was headquartered at the Weymouth Sportsmen's Club. Tensions between the gun-shooting members of the sportsmen's club and the pigeon - racing members led to an order from the town's public health agent that pigeons should not be brought indoors. Thus, the pigeon-racing faction was evicted. The Braintree Racing Pigeon Club's new home -- a trailer parked at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy -- is not exactly fancy digs. But the pigeons don't seem to mind.
It was a warm Thursday afternoon, and the members of the Braintree Racing Pigeon Club were readying their pigeons for a 400-mile race. The feathered competitors cooed in their cages. Each bird wore two plastic leg bands -- one with an identification number, much like a marathon runner's bib, and the second with a microchip that would serve as a miniature stopwatch.
The winged athletes were loaded into a truck bound for upstate New York, where they would be released. From that point on, they would depend on navigational instincts to fly back home to Massachusetts. The first to return would win.
Their estimated flying time from Buffalo: About seven hours.
Races like this happen almost every weekend during the warm months. At any given time, the pigeons you see flying across the South Shore may not be your average park pigeon, but a prized racer from a club in Braintree, Norwood, Plymouth, or Quincy, heading very purposefully for their respective finish lines.
"The sport," says Peter Hultman of Weymouth, "is incredibly competitive," and a bird can be worth thousands of dollars. The owners feed their birds the best grain and seed, and monitor their health carefully, as they develop their own motivational techniques.
They are not just racers, Hultman says. "They're our pets."
For centuries, people have marveled at a pigeon's ability to find its way home. Researchers at Cornell University believe that pigeons use the sun as a compass to navigate the skies, and that they can detect the earth's magnetic fields.
The races are organized by the Greater Boston Concourse, a league of 10 local clubs that breed "thoroughbreds of the sky." The Concourse has been around since 1928, but the sport itself has evolved over centuries.
Many of the enthusiasts were introduced to this backyard hobby by their fathers, or grew up in a neighborhood where a neighbor had a pigeon loft, and most have been racing for decades. Chuck Houghton of Hingham, who owns several pigeons, including a white one nicknamed Moneybags, is typical. He joined the club in 1974.
Today's racing pigeons face challenges that their forebears did not. Town ordinances often view pigeons as rats rather than thoroughbreds -- a view that the American Racing Pigeon Union, a national organization based in Oklahoma, is doing its best to counter.
The Braintree Racing Pigeon Club ran in to trouble in 1999, when it was headquartered at the Weymouth Sportsmen's Club. Tensions between the gun-shooting members of the sportsmen's club and the pigeon - racing members led to an order from the town's public health agent that pigeons should not be brought indoors. Thus, the pigeon-racing faction was evicted.
The Braintree Racing Pigeon Club's new home -- a trailer parked at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy -- is not exactly fancy digs. But the pigeons don't seem to mind.
The members meet at the clubhouse before every race. The walls are speckled with photos of club members and their birds, trophies, and plaques. Club member Al Cappellini hung up a certificate his father received in 1943 from the commander of the Army Pigeon Service, thanking him for donating homing pigeons to the military during World War II. On the opposite wall, a panoramic black-and-white photograph shows hundreds of Boston Concourse members posing for a group photo. It is dated Dec. 20, 1931.
This is where the club members gather on "shipping night," and wait for Arthur MacKinnon to arrive. MacKinnon, a retired truck driver from Carver with tattooed forearms, serves as the official chauffeur for birds competing in the Greater Boston Concourse. He drives the league's truck that pulls a long trailer especially designed for birds: There are troughs for grain and water, and ceiling fans to provide ventilation. It can hold up to 4,000 pigeons.
Each built-in pigeon basket is labeled with a club's name: "NWP" in orange paint indicates the Norwood Homing Pigeon Club; red stickers spell out "PLY" for the Plymouth Racing Pigeon Club.
On a typical shipping night, MacKinnon stops first in Plymouth, then Quincy, and then Braintree to pick up the South Shore Flyers' birds. Then he will drive between 100 to 600 miles west. The shortest race starts in Berkshire County, and the longest in Sandusky, Ohio.
For the 400-mile race starting in Buffalo, MacKinnon released the birds -- all 756 of them -- on a Saturday morning at 6:15. The skies were partly cloudy and the temperature a comfortable 52 degrees as the South Shore pigeons started on their 400-mile flight.
Back home, club members watched the skies.
The Plymouth Racing Pigeon Club proved to have the fastest birds in this race (varying distances to the birds' home lofts were factored in to the rankings). Four pigeons belonging to Aldo and Jeff Morini of Kingston took first, second, third, and fourth place. The birds from the Braintree Racing Pigeon Club performed well, with two of them finishing in the top 10. The fastest bird from the Braintree club, owned by Kevin Williams, ranked seventh place overall.
Typically pigeons will race nonstop on trips less than 300 miles and make one stop for a drink on longer races.
"It's the end of the race for the birds when they return to loft," Hultman said. "It's the end for the guys when they find out the results, and we figure out who won."
To do that, members meet at the trailer and upload their results to the clubhouse computer using WinSpeed racing pigeon software. Results are posted on the Greater Boston Concourse website, boston-concourse.com. Racers compete for trophies, bragging rights, and occasionally cash prizes of up to $2,000.
Hultman, who raises his pigeons in a backyard loft, says it's more than a casual pastime. The racing season may start in April and end in October, he says, but success in the sport requires "365 days a year of preparation."
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Local man raises
Ced and Clive Allwright
The race is on
- Local man raises, races pigeons.
By Rich Myhre - Heraldnet
For pigeon racing enthusiasts like Marysville's Roald Haugen, nothing's better than watching one of your birds fly home and win a race at the same time.
MARYSVILLE -- Roald Haugen got hooked on pigeon racing as a boy growing up in his north Everett neighborhood.
Today, more than a half-century later, Haugen lives in Marysville and is long retired from his career as an installer of commercial fire-protection systems. But over the years he never outgrew his love for racing pigeons.
"I've just always been fascinated by it," said the 69-year-old Haugen. "These are amazing animals. They'll come home from anywhere. They'll fly through anything. And they'll die trying to get home."
Years ago, when his kids were in high school, Haugen began feeling guilty about the time he was spending with his birds. He ended up selling his flock.
"And I was miserable," he admitted. "My wife finally said, 'Shoot, get the birds back. I liked you better then.'"
And these days he's as passionate as ever. "I haven't been able to shake it," he said with a smile. "I just enjoy seeing (the pigeons) come home."
Pigeon racing might not be as popular as football or basketball, but there are enthusiasts all around the United States and elsewhere in the world, particularly Europe, South Africa and Australia. There are several clubs in and around Snohomish County, where members share their love for raising and racing homing pigeons.
"If you like sports, this has all the thrills," said Herb Cartmell, who is president of Woodinville's Sno-King Racing Pigeon Club and is also a board member of the American Racing Pigeon Union. "It's the best game in town, it really is."
Like thoroughbred race horses, pigeons -- the specific breed is Racing Homer -- can be bred and trained, and top animals are sold for their breeding potential, sometimes for many thousands of dollars.
Haugen, who has about 40 birds, is more of a hobbyist than an entrepreneur. He occasionally buys pigeons, but more often he raises his own. Trying to find the right breeding mix is part of the sport's appeal, he said.
"I know each one of them, and each year I'll switch the breeding around," he said. "You're trying to improve the blood all the time. If you get one excellent flyer out of six babies a year, that's good. And if you get a (good male and female) pair, you want to keep that pair together."
The most gratifying thing "is seeing your breeding come to fruition," he added.
In a typical year, Haugen estimates he spends only a few hundred dollars on his hobby, and much of that is the fuel cost for the truck to transport the pigeons to races.
"We call it the poor man's horse racing," he said with a chuckle.
Haugen is a member of the Everett Racing Pigeon Club, which has around a dozen members from Snohomish and Island counties. One of the club members is the elder statesmen of pigeon racing in western Washington, 89-year-old Elwin Anderson of Everett, who has been competing and winning longer than many of his rivals have been alive.
"He is still tearing up these guys out here with his pigeons," Cartmell said.
Races are held through the spring and summer, with an old bird season for pigeons upwards of one year, followed by a young bird season for the youngsters. The day before a race, a truck travels from home to home to pick up caged pigeons and take them to the starting point, which is usually somewhere in southwest Washington or Oregon.
The next day there is a countdown to zero, at which point the cages fly open simultaneously and the birds depart en masse. They start out in a large flock, but eventually start to separate, each one flying to its home destination.
Hours later, they begin arriving. Each bird has a distinguishing leg band and they are timed to the second with special equipment. Because of the varying distances to different homes -- and those distances are measured by GPS to one-thousandth of a mile -- winners are determined not by elapsed time, but by speed.
And not every pigeon arrives on schedule. On occasion, birds get injured and even lost.
"Some days the bell just doesn't ring for them," Haugen said. "They just don't figure it out, for whatever reason. But they'll come home days, weeks and even months later."
A pigeon racer, Cartmell said, "gets to be the team's general manager, doctor, trainer and coach. You have to train these birds, like you would any athlete. And you have to keep them healthy, so you have to make sure they get enough diet, rest and exercise. So you put a lot of work into these birds.
"And you expect them all to come home, but sometimes things happen," he said. "There are obstacles and there are risks, but it's a great thrill to watch a bird come home from 200 miles away."Four of Roald Haugen’s racing pigeons fly above his Marysville home.Roald Haugen watches a group of six male homing pigeons fly out of their coop where they live at Haugen’s home in Marysville.Roald Haugen holds a 3-day-old homing pigeon.Roald Haugen shows the band around the leg of a homing pigeon that has kept track of the pigeon since just days after it was born.
- Ced and Clive Allwright
By Keith Mott
The National Flying Club ended the 2003 season with a brilliant Young Bird National from Falaise in northern France, when members entered 6,175 birds and enjoyed excellent returns. The day of the National started off dodgy with rain in northern France, but the sun soon broke through and the NFC chief convoyer, Colin Bates, cut the strings at 0835hrs and liberated into a light south-west wind. The wind was north-west in the Channel, turning to west in mainland England and favoured members on the east side of the country, especially Section E, as the final result confirmed to be correct. This National proved to be a great delight for me personally, as my good friends, Ced and Clive Allwright of Ashford, won the young bird race and recorded their second NFC win. The father and son partnership sent 15 youngsters to the National, recording their first bird, a 'darkness' blue chequer cock, now named ‘Falaise Supreme’, at 11.28, flying 164 miles. They topped up a brilliant day by recording the best five young birds and best old hen, by 30 minutes, in their local clock station. Ced and Clive's old bird looked like finishing up 7th Open in the Old Hens National result, this hen being clocked approx. 18 minutes after the Young Bird National winner.
The partners won the Young Bird National for the first time from Pontorson (6,469 birds) in 1998 with their champion Haelterman blue pied hen, Champion 'Starlett', and both the parents where bred by Frank and Anne Tasker, from their fantastic 'Filmstar' bloodlines. Frank's 'Filmstar' was a champion racer and breeding cock, winning many premier prizes, including 26 times 1st, 12 times 1st Open Federation and is responsible for breeding countless winners. The latest National winner, Champion ‘Falaise Supreme’, is a Haelterman/Allwright distance family cross with the dam of 'Starlett' being the grand dam of the Falaise National winner. The Allwright's latest champion had three short club races, from Littlehampton and Fareham, on his build up to the Falaise National and was sent playing around with a young hen. Ced and Clive use the Frank Tasker 'darkness' system and their small 6ft x 4ft 'darkness' loft is a converted garden shed. The partners breed 70 young birds every season and half are put on the 'darkness' system and half are left natural. Ced says he would not put his whole team of young birds on the 'darkness' because he is not happy with their performances as yearlings. The youngsters are trained. very hard from the west and north, and race through to 230 miles in their first season. They are fed on Junior Plus and are allowed to pair up if they want to. The 'darkness' young birds are put on the system when they are weaned. The natural youngsters are housed in a 12ft loft and all the lofts are painted out in light blue, which is very restful for the inmates. Ced and Clive keep ten pairs of stock birds and these are paired up in January because, they like a few early youngsters. The main families kept are the Frank and Anne Tasker 'Filmstar' family; Jim Biss, Eric and Pat Cannon and their own long distance family, which they have blended over the years. The stock loft has a nice big wire flight that the inmates can get out into the weather. When bringing in new stock they go for good winning lines, and say the only type they like is 'the winning type'.
The day after the Falaise National my good friend, Tony Dann and I made the 65 mile drive down to Ashford, to see Ced and Clive's latest champion and offer our congratulations in person. I must say, the Allwrights are some of the nicest people I've had the pleasure to meet in my 35 years in the sport of pigeon racing and their latest National win has given my wife Batty and I much delight. I must take this opportunity to thank my ol’ mucker, Tony Dann, for his help with the photography on this article. Ced showed us many of his top performers including his good, dark chequer cock which has secured the British Barcelona Club 'Spanish Diploma' in the 2003 season, when he completed his three times in the open result from Palamos (647 miles). This game cock is off their own long-distance family and on his build up to Palamos each year, is only raced lightly, with two inland and one Channel race before the main event and in the 2002 season the was the only bird timed in the Kent 500 Mile Specialist Club. His dam is one of the loft's best Channel racers, winning many firsts on the long distance, and on handling this wonderful dark cock, Tony and I both agreed he was the perfect pigeon in the hand, being medium sized and long cast, with silky feathering. Ced and Clive enjoy racing every week, but their main interest is in the long distance events with the N.F.C., B.B.C., B.I.C.C. and L.& S.E.C.C. The Allwright loft has won many 1st Federations through the years and the 2002 season saw them win 13 firsts in the local club. Their good Eric Cannon blue white flight hen recorded 1st S. E. Section, 12th Open London & South East Classic Club Pau in 2002 and was the only bird clocked in Kent. This game hen was bred from a direct son of Champion 'Culmer Marion', Eric Cannon's N.F.C. Sartilly Young Bird National winner. We also handled their latest National winner, Champion ‘Falaise Supreme’, and on inspecting him, I noticed that he had just cast his third flight and was beginning to drop his body feathers. He was medium sized and apple bodied in the hand and I thought, although he was a cross, he was very much like the Haelterman type.
Ced has been in the sport for 60 years, starting during the war years with the help of a friend who was a local National Pigeon Service rep. His father was an outstanding fancier in London and specialised in long-distance racing, winning many premier positions in the London N.R. Combine. In turn his father was a great fancier, making Clive the fourth generation of pigeon fanciers in the Allwright family and Ced has racing diplomas dating back to 1912. For many years Ced flew on the north road in partnership with his late wife, Vera, and says that she was a great worker with the pigeons. She clocked in many winners from the long distance, when Ced was at work. Clive became interested in his father's pigeons at the age of four and has been a partner for over 30 years. Ced says, Clive is a great worker in the partnership and selects, and purchases the new stock for breeding. They race their 25 pairs on the natural system, with Channel racing in mind, but like to compete in the shorter races. They have raced the odd pigeon on the widowhood system, but say they enjoy seeing their birds in the garden. They stagger their pairing up, starting in the first section in January and work through the loft, finishing the job in mid-March. The main racing loft is 30ft long, five sections, and all trapping is in to sputniks. The whole loft set up is in a big wire compound to keep out cats: The old birds are hopper fed on winter mixture and in one of their best seasons they were fed maple peas only. They say all corn must be of premier quality. Old bird training is from the west and north, wherever Clive is working, and he likes to take them 30 or 40 miles if he can. Ced has been an all round bird man for most of his life and for many years had a big bird room at the top of his garden where he bred prize Canaries and foreign Finches. On my many visits to the Allwright’s Kent home, I took great delight in looking around Ced’s bird room, when they were breeding. The partners enjoy showing their Racing Pigeons and at one time they kept one or two Show Racers, and have been very successful, winning most of the local club shows and points trophies. Ced Allwright is a great stock man and is always being asked to judge at the premier local shows.
The Allwrights are a wonderful family and deserve all the great success they have enjoyed with their pigeons. That’s it for this week! My Telephone number is: 01372 463480. See yer!
-The race is on
By Emily Sweeney - Boston.com
Pigeons overhead may be flying in from Buffalo
It was a warm Thursday afternoon, and the members of the Braintree Racing Pigeon Club were readying their pigeons for a 400-mile race. The feathered competitors cooed in their cages. Each bird wore two plastic leg bands -- one with an identification number, much like a marathon runner's bib, and the second with a microchip that would serve as a miniature stopwatch.
The winged athletes were loaded into a truck bound for upstate New York, where they would be released. From that point on, they would depend on navigational instincts to fly back home to Massachusetts. The first to return would win.
Their estimated flying time from Buffalo: About seven hours.
Races like this happen almost every weekend during the warm months. At any given time, the pigeons you see flying across the South Shore may not be your average park pigeon, but a prized racer from a club in Braintree, Norwood, Plymouth, or Quincy, heading very purposefully for their respective finish lines.
"The sport," says Peter Hultman of Weymouth, "is incredibly competitive," and a bird can be worth thousands of dollars. The owners feed their birds the best grain and seed, and monitor their health carefully, as they develop their own motivational techniques.
They are not just racers, Hultman says. "They're our pets."
For centuries, people have marveled at a pigeon's ability to find its way home. Researchers at Cornell University believe that pigeons use the sun as a compass to navigate the skies, and that they can detect the earth's magnetic fields.
The races are organized by the Greater Boston Concourse, a league of 10 local clubs that breed "thoroughbreds of the sky." The Concourse has been around since 1928, but the sport itself has evolved over centuries.
Many of the enthusiasts were introduced to this backyard hobby by their fathers, or grew up in a neighborhood where a neighbor had a pigeon loft, and most have been racing for decades. Chuck Houghton of Hingham, who owns several pigeons, including a white one nicknamed Moneybags, is typical. He joined the club in 1974.
Today's racing pigeons face challenges that their forebears did not. Town ordinances often view pigeons as rats rather than thoroughbreds -- a view that the American Racing Pigeon Union, a national organization based in Oklahoma, is doing its best to counter. The Braintree Racing Pigeon Club ran in to trouble in 1999, when it was headquartered at the Weymouth Sportsmen's Club. Tensions between the gun-shooting members of the sportsmen's club and the pigeon - racing members led to an order from the town's public health agent that pigeons should not be brought indoors. Thus, the pigeon-racing faction was evicted. The Braintree Racing Pigeon Club's new home -- a trailer parked at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy -- is not exactly fancy digs. But the pigeons don't seem to mind.
It was a warm Thursday afternoon, and the members of the Braintree Racing Pigeon Club were readying their pigeons for a 400-mile race. The feathered competitors cooed in their cages. Each bird wore two plastic leg bands -- one with an identification number, much like a marathon runner's bib, and the second with a microchip that would serve as a miniature stopwatch.
The winged athletes were loaded into a truck bound for upstate New York, where they would be released. From that point on, they would depend on navigational instincts to fly back home to Massachusetts. The first to return would win.
Their estimated flying time from Buffalo: About seven hours.
Races like this happen almost every weekend during the warm months. At any given time, the pigeons you see flying across the South Shore may not be your average park pigeon, but a prized racer from a club in Braintree, Norwood, Plymouth, or Quincy, heading very purposefully for their respective finish lines.
"The sport," says Peter Hultman of Weymouth, "is incredibly competitive," and a bird can be worth thousands of dollars. The owners feed their birds the best grain and seed, and monitor their health carefully, as they develop their own motivational techniques.
They are not just racers, Hultman says. "They're our pets."
For centuries, people have marveled at a pigeon's ability to find its way home. Researchers at Cornell University believe that pigeons use the sun as a compass to navigate the skies, and that they can detect the earth's magnetic fields.
The races are organized by the Greater Boston Concourse, a league of 10 local clubs that breed "thoroughbreds of the sky." The Concourse has been around since 1928, but the sport itself has evolved over centuries.
Many of the enthusiasts were introduced to this backyard hobby by their fathers, or grew up in a neighborhood where a neighbor had a pigeon loft, and most have been racing for decades. Chuck Houghton of Hingham, who owns several pigeons, including a white one nicknamed Moneybags, is typical. He joined the club in 1974.
Today's racing pigeons face challenges that their forebears did not. Town ordinances often view pigeons as rats rather than thoroughbreds -- a view that the American Racing Pigeon Union, a national organization based in Oklahoma, is doing its best to counter.
The Braintree Racing Pigeon Club ran in to trouble in 1999, when it was headquartered at the Weymouth Sportsmen's Club. Tensions between the gun-shooting members of the sportsmen's club and the pigeon - racing members led to an order from the town's public health agent that pigeons should not be brought indoors. Thus, the pigeon-racing faction was evicted.
The Braintree Racing Pigeon Club's new home -- a trailer parked at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy -- is not exactly fancy digs. But the pigeons don't seem to mind.
The members meet at the clubhouse before every race. The walls are speckled with photos of club members and their birds, trophies, and plaques. Club member Al Cappellini hung up a certificate his father received in 1943 from the commander of the Army Pigeon Service, thanking him for donating homing pigeons to the military during World War II. On the opposite wall, a panoramic black-and-white photograph shows hundreds of Boston Concourse members posing for a group photo. It is dated Dec. 20, 1931.
This is where the club members gather on "shipping night," and wait for Arthur MacKinnon to arrive. MacKinnon, a retired truck driver from Carver with tattooed forearms, serves as the official chauffeur for birds competing in the Greater Boston Concourse. He drives the league's truck that pulls a long trailer especially designed for birds: There are troughs for grain and water, and ceiling fans to provide ventilation. It can hold up to 4,000 pigeons.
Each built-in pigeon basket is labeled with a club's name: "NWP" in orange paint indicates the Norwood Homing Pigeon Club; red stickers spell out "PLY" for the Plymouth Racing Pigeon Club.
On a typical shipping night, MacKinnon stops first in Plymouth, then Quincy, and then Braintree to pick up the South Shore Flyers' birds. Then he will drive between 100 to 600 miles west. The shortest race starts in Berkshire County, and the longest in Sandusky, Ohio.
For the 400-mile race starting in Buffalo, MacKinnon released the birds -- all 756 of them -- on a Saturday morning at 6:15. The skies were partly cloudy and the temperature a comfortable 52 degrees as the South Shore pigeons started on their 400-mile flight.
Back home, club members watched the skies.
The Plymouth Racing Pigeon Club proved to have the fastest birds in this race (varying distances to the birds' home lofts were factored in to the rankings). Four pigeons belonging to Aldo and Jeff Morini of Kingston took first, second, third, and fourth place. The birds from the Braintree Racing Pigeon Club performed well, with two of them finishing in the top 10. The fastest bird from the Braintree club, owned by Kevin Williams, ranked seventh place overall.
Typically pigeons will race nonstop on trips less than 300 miles and make one stop for a drink on longer races.
"It's the end of the race for the birds when they return to loft," Hultman said. "It's the end for the guys when they find out the results, and we figure out who won."
To do that, members meet at the trailer and upload their results to the clubhouse computer using WinSpeed racing pigeon software. Results are posted on the Greater Boston Concourse website, boston-concourse.com. Racers compete for trophies, bragging rights, and occasionally cash prizes of up to $2,000.
Hultman, who raises his pigeons in a backyard loft, says it's more than a casual pastime. The racing season may start in April and end in October, he says, but success in the sport requires "365 days a year of preparation."
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