JOHN DAVID'S
RAMBLINGS
Willy Bartlett breaks his novice status
The 2011 old bird season got off to a great start in my local Llantwit Fardre club who fly in the South West Glamorgan Federation in what can only be described as a wonderful opening race of the season. Flying from the new race point of Swindon five very keen members entered 111 birds for this pipe opener of the season. Much of the talk in the Welsh Valleys of late has been that the season starts too early and of course the winter has once again proved to be a very hard one and as a consequence many fanciers delayed pairing their birds at an early date. This was the case in my loft when I delayed pairing by two months because of the extreme weather conditions. As a consequence my race team are still rearing their first round of babies and the stress of this coupled with their lack of fitness at this time of the year can result in losses on the road if they are raced especially in poor weather conditions. However I did manage to muster up 12 birds for this race which consisted of eight cocks and four hens because of the very good forecast for race day. In the past I have always found that these early races give you a good idea of the likely form of your loft later in the season.
This year I hope to send the majority of my race team down to Folkestone in a South Easterly route before turning them south for the National races. However I will give the less experienced birds a few races on the South Route prior to them getting some channel experience for future years. There are a few reasons for this, one being that both my clubs now basket early and it is impossible for me to be at both clubs as my wife works on basketing days and my youngest daughter Ruth (14) has to be picked up from Cowbridge school in the afternoon.
Basketing at Llantwit Fardre constitutional club took place on Friday 8th April with glorious weather conditions prevailing resulting from a high pressure system sitting right over the UK. Having collected my wife from work at 4.45pm I was just able to make it to the club in time for the 5.30pm start. Here the talk centred on the number of sparrow hawk attacks that had taken place during the previous week. Four of us had experienced hawk attacks during the week and Alan Greenslade was most upset as his young bird that had not yet taken to the air; that is until a female sparrow hawk scattered them from his lawn in all directions earlier that day. The Bricon ETS system was then updated for all members clocks before basketing commenced which went without a hitch. Mostly widowhood cocks were basketed which I must say were in sparkling condition and bodes well for a good season for the Llantwit Fardre club in the coming months at Federation and National level. News filtered through that the Federation transporter had left Llanharry before 7pm and arrived bang on schedule at 7.10pm at club HQ with the birds soon being loaded in time for one or two of our older members who wanted to get home in time for “Coronation Street” although they tell me its not quite the same since Jack Duckworth” passed on! Saturday morning dawned in glorious sunshine with the weather forecast indicating a barometric pressure of 1025 MB, with only 64% humidity and temperatures rising to 18 degrees C by mid-day. The wind had settled into an easterly quarter and was showing 9mph at Royal St Athan at 7am so a fast race was on the cards. The lib line was not operating first thing in the morning so I gave Alan Greenslade a ring who was still very worried as none of his missing young birds had turned up! There was no news of liberation at 7.15am but Steve Bright and Alan kindly rang me back around 7.55 to say the birds were away at 7.45am and by this time three of Alan’s young birds had returned so he was optimistic that more would get back during the day!
I quickly connected up my ETS clock which is operated from a power pack and was sitting out waiting for the birds to arrive by 8.45am which were expected to make a mile a minute even though winds appeared very light at the home end. It was around 8.53 when my first two were in the air and after clocking at 8.55 was very pleased to have five cocks home in two minutes. After the first six there was a two hour gap before my next arrivals which did not surprise me as birds often overshoot their loft in fast races and end up a long way off course. All of the first five arriving home were feeding babies between 14 and 25 days so I was more than satisfied with their performance as they were only a few minutes off the pace.
When I arrived at the club for clock opening at 1pm it soon became clear that the youngest club member Willy Bartlett of Beddau was going to have a field day with his widowhood cocks clocking “5” in just 27 seconds to win 1st, 2nd, 5th, 7th and 8th in this very competitive club with the leading velocity of his first bird being 1815 after being clocked at 8.50.55am. Willy told me that his widowhood team had been paired in mid January and had reared a single young one before going back down on eggs for up to 10 days before being separated once again. They had been given a toss from High Cross Newport followed by 6 tosses from the Severn Bridge before racing as well as a few tosses with the Parry Bros from Magor. The hens had been showed for just a few minutes before basketing. Willy has only been flying pigeons for 3 seasons but had been greatly encouraged throughout this time by his fellow fanciers especially Steve Bright and George Bryant from whom he has had received many gift birds. In fact the first bird clocked a blue 2-year old cock was a first cross between Steve’s Vandenabeele`s and George’s Lefebre Daenen`s. The second bird winning second club was a yearling acquired as a YB from Lee Payne of Llanharan and had flown as far as Guildford as a YB. George Bryant was 3rd club and Steve Bright 4th.
Willy Bartlett
This week when basketing at the club George said to Willy “you should not be putting your birds in such a big pannier as it will make them nervous and difficult to catch” which sounded like good advice at that time. However after this performance I don’t think Willy will be changing anything soon as whatever he’s doing its clearly working.
There are no fewer than “5” National winners in this club who will all be delighted with this fantastic win by Willy to break his OB novice status. Willy did in fact win his first young bird race last season but this is his first win in the old bird series. The photograph shows Willy holding his winning pigeon outside his racing loft.
John David Havachat Bungalow, Mwyndy, Pontyclun RCT CF728PN phone 01443-226809 Email
