Zeolite

Volcanic origin mineral that can be added to the drinking water. Many benefits and cheap. A must in all lofts.

Twenty words or less TCC Loft series

Detailed use within Vet's Tips for Fanciers

Edited by Dr. Zsolt Talaber

There's No Place Like Home For These Birds

Scholastic

Upfront

Kyle Burridge, 15, of Oswego, N.Y., has been breeding and racing homing pigeons with his father since he was 8 years old. A member of the Syracuse Racing Pigeon Club, Burridge cares for 200 birds and trains them to fly home from up to 300 miles away. The Oswego High School sophomore talked to Upfront about his hobby.

Why do you race pigeons?

My whole family has been doing it forever. And I just think it's fun. The competition is a big part, too. It's just amazing how these birds can fly back from 300 miles away and how accurate and fast they are.

How do you prepare your birds for racing?

Every other day, we'll drive them 5, then 10, eventually 50 miles away, let them go, and have them fly home, just building their instincts of the area around us. We don't feed them before we take them training, which makes them want to come home even more.

What's been the biggest challenge?

Over the past year, we've lost a lot of birds. In most cases, they're probably getting killed by hawks and other animals. We also think it's because of all the technology—the antennas and satellites that are leading them off-track.

Any drawbacks to the hobby?

Just the time it takes: Twenty minutes, twice a day, and then if you're working on the coops, up to three hours just maintaining them. And it can be expensive. Sometimes you'll have to buy birds costing up to $1,000, plus all their food and medication. But it's worth it.

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Scholastic

Dust and the Respiratory Tract

Dust carries the majority of pigeon ailments and it cannot but harm birds that are continually exposed to drawing dust and germs into their systems especially their respiratory tract. A pigeon that is required to fly 500 miles must be able to breathe with complete freedom and take the full benefit of the air it breathes. If not, what chance has it of success? Very little, and no human athlete would have much chance in an endurance test if his breathing system was less than perfect.

S. G. "Jim" Biss

Widowhood Old and New

Edited by Colin Osman

Avian athletes over Ivy

The Barrie Examiner, Saturday, August 9, 1997
By Eric Skelton, Photo by J.T. McVeigh

Skies of Simcoe County fill with birds as pigeon racers hold sport's main event today near Barrie

HEADING HOME - Upon release, birds like these immediately start flying toward home, even when released somewhere they've never been before, hundreds of kilometres from the roost

With a tailwind, a championship pigeon can average 110 km/h - about highway speed - over a trip of several hundred kilometres. That's more than twice the top speed a human can run, but then, "Ben Johnson didn't have feathers," notes David Rodgers, of Ivy, one of dozens of Central Ontario breeders who are racing their top birds today.

The skies of Simcoe county will be thick with southbound birds, including some of Rodger's, all of them racing to their home lofts in Barrie, Orillia, and points to the south. August marks the start of the season for flying younger birds, whereas more seasoned pigeons race in spring months, all of them under the wing, so to speak, of the Canadian Union of Racing Pigeons.

Unlike a human athlete, a pigeon can never be barred for life because there are no random drug tests in this sport of honor, in which each breeder records when his own flock returns to roost from a common release point. On Friday night, organizers were to place footbands on hundreds of birds from lofts in Toronto, York Region and Simcoe County and then truck them by the thousand to Burk's Falls for release this morning at 7 A.M. Rodgers has a flock of 25 birds in the Burk's Falls release, along with birds from 50 breeders in Orillia, Barrie, Borden and as far south as Toronto.

PRIDE AND JOY - Tony Paszterko holds one of his prize racers as the Essa Township pigeon breeder and racer readies for this weekend's fundraiser near Ivy. Racers from around Ontario will converge on Ivy, bringing with them nearly four hundred homing pigeons for the event to raise money for Big Brothers.

The distance to each breeder's loft has been measured by satellite to an accuracy of a fraction of a metre. The winner is the breeder whose fastest bird flies home at the highest average speed. Such is the uncanny navigation of the birds that upon release they immediately start flying toward home even when released somewhere they've never been before, hundreds of kilometres from the roost.

It may be a low-profile sport in Canada, but pigeon-breeding and racing is huge in Europe. Among countries of the world, Holland is the pigeon-racing champion, a nation which boasts 80,000 breeders. A premium Dutch pigeon has fetched $268,000. For the past several years, local pigeon racers have also found a way to turn their event into a fundraiser for worthy causes. On Saturday, Huronia Pigeon Racing Promotions is holding a barbecue for the Barrie, Midland and Orillia districts of Big Brothers with games for the kids. The racers have hinted that surprise guests may attend, perhaps even Mariposa Skating Club trainer Doug Leigh and his star student, Elvis Stojko.

Past sports promotions
Pigeon racing

Sun's Rays

Put your food outside in the sun as much as possible, not under glass but in the open. Ordinary glass will nullify the benefit of the sun's rays.

by W. S. "Billy" Pearson

Widowhood Old and New

Edited by Colin Osman

Startled Pigeons Whistle With Their Wings

Discovery News

By Michael Reilly

Wed Sep 2, 2009

Pigeons manipulate the shape of their wings when spooked so they emit a unique whistle during take-off.

Crested pigeons, as the one shown here, emit an audible whistle from their wings whenever they fly, and are known to beat faster and harder when taking off in fear. iStockPhoto

Startled pigeons give off a shrill, rattling whistle when they take flight that signals the flock to scatter, according to a new study.

But it doesn't come from their mouths; a specially-evolved wing feather seems to be the noise-maker, vibrating to sound the alarm.

In urban parks and city squares the world over pigeons humbly peck away at the ground, wobble up to passersby in search of handouts, and generally make a nuisance of themselves. For decades, they've also jealously guarded a mystery of science: how does a flock of perhaps hundreds of pigeons flee simultaneously?

Mae Hingee and Robert Magrath of the Australian National University in Canberra have found the answer hiding in the wings of Crested Pigeons (Ocyphaps lophotes). The foot-long birds emit an audible whistle from their wings whenever they fly, and are known to beat faster and harder when taking off in fear.

Magrath and Hingee recorded the sound of the birds flying happily around a feeder, then sent in a decoy of a hawk, and recorded their flight from the faux predator.

When the researchers later played the sound back for a flock of birds, they didn't so much as twitch at the normal recording. But the rapid clap-clap-clap of the alarmed bird sent them fleeing. Similarly, when the volume or speed of the recording was manipulated, birds only reacted to emergency wing whistles.

"Alarmed take-off whistles were louder and had a faster tempo than routine take-offs," Magrath said. "The sound of the whistle -- probably including the tempo -- is the key feature letting others know whether the bird that took off was alarmed, not how loud it is."

Their findings were published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Academy B.

Without high-speed cameras to take footage of fleeing birds' wings, it's hard to say exactly how they produce the whistle. But one of the primary feathers on each wing is much narrower than the rest, like a reed. Magrath suspects the feather vibrates to make the high-pitched sound, and the clapping comes when it clangs against adjacent feathers.

Crested Pigeons are only common in Australia, but Seth Coleman of Gonzaga University believes wing whistles could be an important means of communication for a host of other species.

"Whistles seem to be ubiquitous among the pigeon and dove family," he said. "All birds have feathers, and all flying birds make some sort of noise when they fly. It's an enormous evolutionary opportunity to be able to co-opt that for communication."

Their discovery could also one day be useful as a repellent in areas where birds are unwelcome guests, such as park statues or airports.

Read more ...

Discovery News

Widowhood Hens on Race Day

On the morning of the race all hens are allowed out for a good fly and when they trap in, to the widowhood loft naturally, they are fed  and are locked in their nest boxes to await the home coming of the cocks.

When the hens are not shown on shipping night they are exercised after the cocks are gone and trapped into the cocks loft and fed there.

Taken from Widowhood Flying

by Mark Gordon

Rubber Ball

The muscles surrounding the keel should feel like a rubber ball.

Twenty words or less TCC Loft series

Welcoming Pigeons Back into our Cities

Looking Glass

Published 2006

Germany and Holland show new humane ways that enable people and pigeons in cities to live side by side.

Pigeon loft on the roof of the Bijenkorf store in Amsterdam

Pigeons and city life go hand in hand, but it's a love-hate relationship.

We feed them in the park, we photograph them around tourists attractions in city centres and there is always the air of romance and perhaps melancholy seeing pigeons take off from town squares at sunset on late autumn evenings. In fact, cities wouldn't be quite the same without our inquisitive feathered residents. But at the same time, many town dwellers around the world have also scorned pigeons as pests and vermin, often resulting in solutions that cause a painful, slow death either by traps or poison. And we have all seen the sad sight of limping pigeons who have had their feet ripped apart by sharp metal traps.

But now, groundbreaking new projects have been springing up in Germany and Holland, providing habitats for pigeons on city rooftops in a clean, controlled environment.

Innovative designs of pigeon lofts allow easy maintenance, whereby population numbers can be regulated by replacing eggs with plaster ones. Because of regular feeding inside the lofts, the pigeons sleep and brood there instead of window ledges and gutters where they can cause a nuisance.

Landelijke Werkgroep Duivenoverlast is a group in Holland who are actively promoting this new approach to pigeon problems in cities. They point out that the age-old methods of capture and killing of pigeons doesn't cure the problem. They will always return, and often in higher numbers because the remaining birds are driven to reproduce more frequently to make up for those killed.

With the new easily accessible lofts being situated in Dutch and German cities, along with low-shock wiring to deter pigeons from unwanted areas, these new projects are hoped to inspire the councils of other world cities like London, New York and Rome to reconsider their approach to the "nuisance" of pigeons.

For more information visit: http://www.duivenoverlast.nl/

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Looking Glass

Racing Pigeon Goes First Class

ABC News / International
By Lucrezia Cuen

L O N D O N, July 11

A British racing pigeon that went missing over the English Channel was discovered on the other side of the Atlantic — after hitching a ride to New York on the QE2 luxury liner.

The pigeon, appropriately named “Liberty,” set off from Nantes in France four weeks ago on what was supposed to be a nine-hour, 400-mile homing race back to Derbyshire, England.

Caught in fog over the Channel, the three-year-old hen took a wrong turn and settled on the cruise liner leaving Southhampton heading for New York.

Can Pigeons Get Suntans? Two weeks ago, as the QE2 neared the Caribbean, it faxed the Royal Pigeon Racing Association to say that it had found and safely captured “Liberty” along with another racing pigeon from the same race. The two pigeons were apparently sunning themselves on deck when they were discovered.

The feathered freeloaders were caught by crew members who identified them by their leg tags. As the birds were too far asea to safely reach home, they were placed in the cruiseliner’s kennels for safe-keeping.

The British Royal Pigeon Racing Association tracked down owner Vince Webster.

“I doubt they have pigeon food on the QE2 so they probably gave her a bit of caviar or something,” Webster told reporters.

Webster has been raising racing pigeons for 34 years but has never had one go quite so far astray. This adventure took Liberty to New York, the Caribbean and back to Southhampton — a 5,000-mile diversion.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

Read more ...

 ABC News / International