JOHN DAVID'S
RAMBLINGS
Weather conditions for racing change with a vengeance
After what can only be described as the best ever start to the season with glorious weather conditions, almost unheard of in April in past years. Unfortunately this was not to last - a dramatic change was on the way. In fact the Met Office announced that April was the warmest ever recorded since records were first kept which shows how seasons are changing. However it was all change on the weekend of 7th May with rain, mist, strong winds accompanied by thunder storms which were widely forecasted. My daughter Ruth aged 14 was off on a camping/walking expedition to the Hay-On-Wye area of Powys on the Friday night so it was going to be difficult to fly my pigeons as Ruth was leaving Cowbridge School at 5.45pm on Friday and returning 4pm on the Sunday. Federations throughout South Wales were mixed in their decisions as how to overcome these extreme climatic conditions and I understand some went Thursday for Friday, some Friday for Saturday, some Saturday for Sunday and some Sunday for Monday so you can see there was no consensus of opinion as to the best procedure to follow.
Earlier in the season Ruth had contacted Llantwit Fardre HS to ask the club whether she could help them in a community organisation perspective to cover part of her duties required for the Duke of Edinburgh Silver Award volunteering scheme. They kindly agreed and as a consequence since the start of the season she has been actively involved helping in such ways as linking ETS (electronic timing system) rings via a master system to pigeons own identity rings and generally helping out on marking and clock opening times. After four weeks of taking part it is safe to say she has almost mastered the ETS system and has immensely enjoyed the experience. Thanks go out to the members of Llantwit Fardre for their cooperation and in particular the secretary Mervyn Robins for his enthusiasm and the chairman Alan Greenslade for his expertise. However in view of Ruth’s activities which included two 10-15 mile hikes in the Brecon Beacons National Park area over the weekend and the decision of the Welsh South Road Federation to return to the shortest race point of Salisbury for a Sunday liberation I decided to enter most of my team (16) in the Newbury race with the South West Glamorgan Federation which went Friday for Saturday.
The bus leaving Cowbridge with 54 very keen participants for the Duke of Edinburgh Awards was delayed until after 6pm and I was lucky to reach the club in time for basketing. Ruth was due to arrive by 8pm in the first camp site at Hay-On Wye in Powys which would give the students an hour or so before dark to erect their tents but the heavy rain falling in the area would not have helped matters. The minimum requirements to be carried in their back packs were laid down by the organisers but seemed to weigh a ton and it was certainly a tall order to expect 14 year old girls to carry these weights on their backs over twenty plus miles of rugged terrain. But it is easy to underestimate these teenagers ability and of course this has all been done many times before but nevertheless as a parent you are always concerned about issues like this. The weather Friday night was horrendous with torrential rain throughout South and Mid Wales and when some of the most intense thunder and lightning storms occurred overnight it was even more concerning. Coupled with this of course phones were not working because of the storm conditions but it was comforting to know that 5 very experienced hikers and teachers were included in the party. The first walk was about ten miles south to Llanthony in the Black mountains where they would set up camp for the night and cook a meal and the second walk was to Skirrid Mountain Inn starting out at 9am where the coach would meet them by 2pm on Sunday afternoon.
On Saturday morning the weather at home was very poor and it came as quite a shock to hear the pigeons had been liberated at 8.45am so I assumed the weather at Newbury must have been a lot better than at the home end where it was raining and visibility was not good. My concerns were increased when my friend Malcolm from Newport rang at 9.45am to say the weather was appalling there with black skies and heavy thundery rain tamping off the ground with high humidity levels. Of course this was 16 miles away on the line of flight; then I heard from Dave Bradshaw that when driving through the Bristol area that morning on his way to the airport for a business trip flight to Cyprus he had encountered some of the worst weather conditions for driving in living memory. Coming from Dave who drives for a living this was indeed most concerning.
Because of the easterly tail wind, under normal conditions the birds would have flown at 60mph, but when it dropped to 40 mph and no birds appeared it was obvious that it was not a good race. I had great concerns when velocities dropped to 35 mph and still no birds home or seen crossing the skies. At 11.32am my two year old mealy pied cock dropped and immediately went looking for his hen as he saw a blue hen out in the bottom aviary. I sent him back and clocked him at 11.34am recording a velocity of 1020. I had 3 by 12 noon and noticed they were all very experienced channel birds and two more before I left for the club at 12.45am. One of these was a hen having her very first race having only had 6 tosses up to Magor so that was particularly pleasing. Everyone at the club without exception were concerned about the race and returns were bad across the board. Young Willy Bartlett won his fourth race of the season out of five starts and his birds are really flying out of their skin but said his previous winners were still flying. Interestingly the races held so far had winning velocities of 1815, 1432. 1544 and 1809 respectively with very close results in races but for this race the winning velocity was 1075(37mph) which was 88 ypm ahead of the second pigeon clocked by Nigel Holloway with 25 minutes covering the first 12 positions in the club out of 216 pigeons entered in the race.
When I returned from the club three more had returned, then one more returned later. Of the 7 missing on the day two arrived before 8am the next morning and the blue yearling cock who was having his first race after receiving 12 stitches for injuries when returning from a toss got back by 1pm. It must be said that the Fed have provided excellent racing up to now and of course the birds have had such easy races so far but clearly something drastic went wrong on this occasion and it is now up to clubs to enquire what went wrong to help prevent the same thing happening in the future.
My photos this week are of Welsh South Road National committee member Dai Evans with his son from Dyffryn Villa, Cwmtwrch (D & J Evans) who clocked an excellent bird from Bedhampton to win the very strong Ystradgynlais club. This is the first win since the partnership was formed three years ago. The winning yearling hen was sent to the race just after weaning her pair of youngsters and is of Jos Thone bloodlines the parents were purchased in the one loft race Europa sale.
D & J Evans outside their racing loft
The other photo shows Ray Butler from the Midlands on a recent visit to my home to collect a young bird donated to Charity from my loft and I also presented Ray with the nestmate. In fact both parents were gift birds to me. The Sire blue cock was one of the last three pigeons of Patrick King of Grove, Wantage kindly presented to me in March 2008. He was bred from a 2nd Open National San Sabastian when paired to a 4th Open Pau WSR Nat winner. Sadly Pat King died last year but was truly proud to tell me of his wonderful success breeding winners for others. This wonderful small family base of Grooters with a touch of Emile Denys famous “Tee Line” also contained the bloodlines of High Noon Scottish National winner, Grove Supreme Irish National winner, Nom George Welsh National winner plus the hen “Little Margaret”1st Open Pau National for Eammon Kelly and Frank Lloyd winners of 1st Pau NFC in 2004. Incredibly this remarkable little hen bred the 2nd Pau NFC the same year who was only two minutes behind her. This bird “Fast Eddie”was a gift from Eammon and Frank to Peter Gilbert and Lawrence Le Carre an incredible achievement by both partners. For a mother and son to win 1st and 2nd Pau NFC has never been done before in the history of pigeon racing. “Little Margaret” a gay blue pied hen was bred by Pat King and is a pure Grooter. She is a nice small to medium bird with silky feathering and lots of character. In fact Pat told me he must have bred 8-10 Bergerac winners from this family from 480 miles. Also a host of top winners for others who finished very high in open results in the BICC and other classic races.
The dam of the pair for Ray was a gift hen to me bred by Georges Henry Bodson who is secretary of the Royal Belgian Flying Club. It was little wonder that Ray was impressed with this hen as she contains the blood of two great champions of the sport in Belgium the late Emile Matterne (the Barcelona specialist) from Overhespen and Roger Vereecke of Deerlicht. She was actually bred from Georges-Henry’s highly successful Barcelona team sent in the hard race of 2009 when he clocked 16 in the prizes on the winning day.
Ray Butler observing the parents of his YBs from John David
