Why Pigeons?

Another guest post, this one by semi- regular commentator Jake Sewall.

The "Why" of the Pigeon

Sometime in the not-too-distant past Steve made a comment about looking at racing pigeon mags periodically and not finding what it was that initially attracted him to pigeon racing. Which, if you look at the way it is practiced now, does indeed seem to be very far from the way that we seem to enjoy our pigeons. But that comment got me thinking, along with the way I have approached birds recently, about what exactly it was that attracted me to pigeon racing. I came to some rather interesting conclusions. The most counterintuitive of them being that I'm not actually a huge fan of watching pigeons fly. Maybe that is because racing pigeons aren't the most aerially interesting birds. But mostly I think it is just personality. Don't get me wrong, I love the sight of a team up there in the blue, wings twinkling. But I don't have the attention span, or feel like I should be doing other things, to just sit and watch birds fly for an hour or more. But I do enjoy "flying" birds -- sit down show pigeons, other than as interesting gene pools, don't grab me very much.

All striking me as rather odd until I thought about *how* I got into birds, not just pigeons, but birds period. I was 9 and I wanted a falcon something fierce. There was a book in our school library. A story. About a girl whose family moved to a rundown country house for the summer. When they moved in she found a young kestrel in an attic room and spent her summer raising, training, and hunting the little falcon. I was captivated. Not so much by the hunting (grasshoppers didn't seem like that exciting a prey) but by the concept. The ability to have, hold, train a bird and release it to fly, and then return. I read everything I could get my hands on (which amounted to snippets in 3 or 4 books) on falconry. And from that great children's book "My Side of the Mountain" (also responsible for a proliferation of woodland shelters, deadfall traps, and rabbit snares behind our house) I learned to tie a jess knot. I didn't have anything to apply them to. But a local "resource center" (lots of "junk" that could be recycled for other uses) provided dozens of leather straps and jesses proliferated in the household (a couple of years later I would try to fit one of my first pigeons with a pair with spectacularly unsuccessful results). What I wanted was a falcon. Just a Kestrel, but a pint-sized lord of the sky nevertheless. What I seized upon were finches (Zebra) as some friends had a few and they were lively little birds. By the time my Quaker Cornmeal container with the slit in the lid and "Finch Savings" on the side was full (my grandmother would pay a quarter for shoveling her driveway, raking leaves etc. so mounting up $15 took some time), the intended expenditure had converted to a parakeet which materialized as a green female (I believe) named "Tiercel" and I had my "falcon".

I carefully started training Tiercel (whose legs proved too fragile for jesses) by clipping her wings as some books suggested. My training was a flop. She wouldn't ride around on me. And clipping her wings at a young age ended up rendering her almost flightless (she was rather plump and I assume that her wing muscles never had the opportunity to develop enough to support her body weight) such that when she was released she would "fly" about just off the ground, sweeping the floor with her tail. Needless to say, my interest in cage birds quickly waned though the parakeets (my sister had a companion bird name "Jr. Blue" who was an aerial menace. An agile flier with a burning desire for escape, a sharp beak, and a strong dislike of humans) lingered for years.

At this point I discovered racing pigeons and finally I had my lords of the air. Birds that I knew by name (or at least number), that I trained, that gazed at me regally out of brilliant eyes and swept the skies each morning only to return punctually and trap on command. And that, for me, is the "why" of the pigeon. I wanted a bird that I could train and interact with, that I could release for flight, that was powerful and agile in the air, and that would return to me. That is the magic of all pigeons, but maybe the racers in particular, that you release them to freedom in the sky and they will return to you. While I gloried in their flight, it was the training and the "team" -- the interaction between me and a working animal -- that really grabbed me and was the attraction to racing in a way that other flying birds can never quite capture. While the sport was a part of it, it was never the "end" of it. In fact, the sport was more the "means" to the end. The only racing season I can really remember is the year I flew one cock (It started as a team of 9, but the others were all lost) through the entire old bird series to 500 miles. He was a yearling and I carried him to the club each Saturday in his little crate, wooden, about a foot cube, with a doweled front -- approximately the same size as my clock. I always pooled "last place" (my first bird was the "last" first bird to a loft each week) for $0.50 and enjoyed "winning" the $5 or so on Sunday. But what I enjoyed most was getting that bird home. I was ecstatic when he came in on the 500 after 5 days. I loved that pigeon not because of the sport, or because of the winning (which he didn't) but because I could let him go, he would conquer the sky and the elements, and come home. And because the sport gave me that, I loved the sport and I loved the pigeons.

Somewhere, somehow, the sport of racing pigeons became the SPORT (a la NBA and NFL) or racing pigeons and the men who fly them morphed from sportsmen into "competitors". No one ever plays to lose, but sometime they play to play and winning is a part of playing. Racing pigeon mags today are glitz and glamour. The writing is of technology, antiseptic lofts, pills, powders, price tags. The racing pigeon is a formula one race car to be dialed in to WIN. The home built, dirt strip dragger is no more and no one runs "what they brung" just to run. And so pigeon mags today don't have what attracted me to the sport, or you Steve, and presumably not you either Patrick. The new writing is all technical, without feeling. The "old" books had feeling. Read Alf Baker "Winning Naturally". Read Piet de Weerd "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter" -- I've never seen the actual text, but in the late 80's the (now long gone) American Racing Pigeon News published one of the 12 chapters each month and I managed to scrounge together 10 of them. Delightful reading. Read even the late Steve Spinks' writings which, while they reveal a fierce competitor, have a strong flavor of the sportsman and pigeon man (a great series is here: http://www.boglinmarsh.com/noviceindex.htm ).

Falconry still appeals, but the pigeons are, well, pigeons and have their family life, and genetics, and personalities and falconry has more bureaucracy than I care to wade through. Diving pigeons (Dewlaps only, both because they are flown mated and because the others -- Doneks, Wutas -- are too damn ugly), might be contenders for training, control, mastery of the air. But racing pigeons and pigeon racing hooked me because the birds disappear and then they come home. Pure and simple. Somehow the "control" of that freedom imparts some of the freedom to me and sporting is a cherry on top. I could give a shit for "thoroughbreds of the sky" and one loft races, but if you gents move in down the street I'll drive 'em 50 miles myself and put a buck on my red checker cock to blow the doors off whatever you basket.

Jake