Flying High--April 2002

Feathered World April 2002

My way with pigeons is to keep them for my own pleasure and my pleasure is
to fly them--twice on every possible day.
A couple of hours after sunrise, I turn out my entire flock. At the time of
writing this, September, I have 25 cocks and 18 hens, all of which are kit
pigeons, well established at my loft. I have no stock pairs and nothing that
cannot fly with confidence. Then, in the afternoon, I have another fly with
the entire flock again.

At breeding time, late March, I select three or four pairs and in a couple
of months, I produce a few young ones for replacements. All of them fail
eventually and, as soon as they start to fail, I kill them.
They last for three to 12 years.

The main fault is when they fly wide of the kit. If they continue with this
fault, irrespective of age, I kill them. But as long as they continue to
work with the kit I keep them, irrespective of age.

Sometimes, very old ones work well but, with age, fail to moult properly or
in other ways start to look unsightly. Some of them seem to become rather
large, not excessively heavy, but rather loose in feather. This makes them
appear to be, superficially, big and in all cases I will not keep unsightly
pigeons. However, as I've said, they often last three to
12 years in really sleek condition.

Sometimes, though not often, a young one, or one that is not that old, will
fail to respond or conform to my system. In spite of the fact that such as
these may be extremely attractive and well marked. I ill them.
All must conform and respond. Of course, any pigeon, or any man, may have an
off day' -- when physically or mentally everything is too much bother. Did
you ever has one of those days when everything is wrong and everyone's hand
seems to be turned against you?

When I asked a 90 year-old pigeon friend that question, he answered, "Yes,
Jack--every b. day!", and of course we both laughed -- what else could we
do?

Well, with this in mind, I am prepared to allow tolerance and usually after
a few days' detention, the mood or whatever, disappears. It had just better,
otherwise it will not be tolerated.

In this way I maintain a very efficient kit that I can fly every day as long
as the weather is not so ridiculously bad of course. however, there are not
many days when I can't fly. I stick to a rigid time schedule. It suits me
and it suits my birds. My ideal fly is one hour's good flying with mass
performance. I cannot sit and watch them closely for more than an hour and
after that time, I want to get them inside, ready for the next session. I
can get on with other things. I have other things to do.

Now, one would think that this routine, combined with a standard feed of
wheat at the total ration of 1oz per day per bird, would produce uniformity
of flying on these daily exercises. I am here to tell you it does not. I see
a vast range of flying styles, altitudes, ranges, etc. This means that the
weather, rather than the feed, is responsible for these variations. Some
days they fly too high for sensible observation, other days they are
reluctant to fly. Some days they fly extremely well but very seldom perform.
Some days they perform mass acrobatics to a most spectacular degree, but do
not fly far more than half an hour.

As my good friend Bill O' Callaghan said, "Sure, it's a lottery with the
weather." He should know 0-- for he is one of the most respected roller men.
He also makes a splendid cup of tea and sandwich -- I will swear to that!

But, I fly for pleasure and I haven't a competitive bone in my body. I
simply do not care about trophies, cards and praise. I have a hobby here not
a business enterprise.

Usual behaviour? Well, this is my specialty. Not that isolated observations
of unusual behaviour have any real constructive use. My old red book is full
of unusual behaviour details -- all of which signify very little and are of
no use to the man who wants to win contests. Take today for example. my
routine 8am fly ended with a downpour of rain.
Normally my kit would have been eager to enter the lot after exercise, for
their feed. However, as expected, I was in for (what I call) a fandango (a
farce).

The entire kit, on the loft top after a good fly, were not interested in
food and wouldn't enter the loft. They were in a kind of stupor, enjoying
the rain and getting soaked. No use cursing them, so I went home for a
couple of hours and left them to it. On my return, they were ready to enter
the loft and the liberty had done them no harm anyway.
The afternoon fly was pathetic due to the outing, but the next day was
really good.