Life in the North East of England (36)
Rod Adams
I hate it when an old favourite pigeon goes into terminal decline and their isn’t a thing you can do about it except end its suffering. It is very similar to having the family dog put down. This, unfortunately, is what I shall have to do with one of the two best racing and breeding hens it has ever been my good fortune to have if she doesn’t die naturally. And soon. Nest-mates and fine birds, I can still picture them as three week old babies in their carrying boxes. They were outstanding and I will always be grateful to Alan Hindhaugh for giving them to me. She has, almost certainly, an Air Sac Granuloma, well beyond the operable stage even if I could find someone skilled enough to try. I have no intention of opening her up after death to find out if I was right or not, nor will I cut her ring off. She will be buried intact facing the loft as all my best birds have been. In the garden she graced and raced to for all too short a time. The likes of her don’t grow on trees and are not for the local fox. He gets the also-rans not the retired champions of yester-year and even if she was a champion in my eyes only, it’s a full state funeral for her. I wish I had another one like her---but ten years younger! Still, the loft is full of her blood and I will see her every day in her sons, daughters and grand-children as she and her nest-mate have stamped their style and colours on their offspring as all good pre-potent birds do, and it is nice to have them around.
Behind my loft is Green Belt land. Low lying and wet it is the home of Frogs, Rabbits, Foxes, and in winter, Curlews and Ducks. I have seen rare birds like a Rose-Coloured Starling, a Little Auk and even a Killdeer plover out of my cabin window but the downside is that “Tomma” has permission to shoot over the land which he does on a somewhat irregular basis. He is a pigeon man’s son himself and causes me no problems with his activities although I don’t like the idea of birds being blasted out of the sky for “sport.” I know a surprising number of pigeon men who shoot, which I find rather hard to understand as they would be extremely angry at the thought of someone else doing the same thing to their birds. There are fine distinctions here which I don’t want to get into, but anyway “Tomma” stirred things up a bit this week ---did he not!
The police spotter plane was first to arrive on the scene as “Tomma” stalked the hedgerows in the back fields, shotgun at the ready and it wasn’t long before the police helicopter was circling low over the area. But I never expected an armed response team at the bottom of the garden path and I bet neither did “Tomma!” When a large, armed, flak-jacketed policeman tells you “to put your gun down on the ground and back away from it, hands on your head and get over here” that is exactly what you do whether you have a valid gun licence and permission from the landowner to be shooting where you are shooting or not! “Tomma” might only have one eye but he is not stupid! I saw all this activity from my back bedroom window and thought of all kinds of possible scenarios but not “Tomma.” It was definitely a case of overkill but that’s what anonymous phone calls can do for you, I guess the police have to take them seriously even though they might well be malicious in origin. There are some funny folks about but it is an ill wind that blows no good and it has been very quiet in the back fields lately.
In the event we got a good race with good returns and the birds were in excellent condition, seeking neither food nor water on their return, but the same old problem of long hold-overs showed itself, as it always does, the next morning, and there is nothing the most diligent and conscientious convoyer can do about it. I am referring to stiffness in one or both wings in a small number of the birds that were away. And nearly always they are cocks. I sent 37 and have 4, maybe 5, affected birds. All cocks. All which have difficulty in even getting up to their boxes. I first noticed this effect after a week long hold-over from France many years ago and the race panniers were much higher then, giving the birds more room to stretch. It has little to do with the numbers in each crate which normally are about right for the longer races but a lot to do with size, inactivity and lack of use of the wing muscles over several days followed by a long or longish flight home. A bit like playing a first game of football after not playing for months or even years. It’s not a problem at the time but you can’t bend down to put your trousers on the next day! The old bird season is finished now so the affected birds can be left to recover in their own time but I have found that giving them a mild purge followed by one Brewers Yeast tablet a day for a few days and not trying to force fly them around the loft, simply letting them go from your hand a couple of feet away from their nest boxes each and every time you go into the loft works wonders. Just don’t panic and ring me up to say you think you have Salmonella in the loft. You won’t be the first one and you haven’t!
Tired, hungry youngsters are usually a good bet for the short early races. They are going nowhere but home. And fast. They are not going past on a tail wind---no way! Keeping a grip on them via their feeding is not straightforward during the training period when birds go missing or arrive at different times and it is easy to overload them with corn. Many times when I have been on the ringer I have handled youngsters so full of corn that I wonder that they can even get off the ground I think then of Miss Piggy of “The Muppet Show” fame and her memorable saying that “you should never eat more than you can lift!” I don’t think she had pigeons in mind at the time but it applies to them. And how! I am not a fan of the starvation merchants that show briefly, early on in the programme, they soon fade out of the picture, but there is and has to be a balance between under and over feeding your youngsters or, one way or another, you are in trouble!
One Saturday, a couple of years ago, I had my youngsters out and they had just reappeared around the loft when one of the Red Arrows aerobatic display team, coming from Newcastle Airport to the west of me, screamed over at zero feet. I could see the pilot’s head turning quite clearly as he passed, now you see it now you don’t, and what a racket! It scared the hell out of the pigeons and they tightened up into a batch again and went like bats out of hell in the other direction. Although by the time they reacted the plane was well out of sight! Big Willy looked up and watched them fast disappearing into the big blue yonder, shrugged his massive shoulders, and giving me his best Oliver Hardy smile said pleasantly “you won’t see those again.” And I didn’t. Not for nearly two hours anyway. I wasn’t going to be caught out twice so on the Sunday I let them out two hours earlier. Of course the Air Show started two hours earlier and as luck would have it all my youngsters were on the ground pecking about as the Red Arrows once more flashed over the loft. Very low again, on their run in to where they were displaying out over the sea. Not a single young bird missed the door. They were in the loft like a shot. Once bitten eh? Who says pigeons are stupid!
Coming home from the pub last night with an elderly Scottish Physiotherapist we got to talking about walking and about how a lot of people use their legs only for keeping their backsides off the ground. I happened to mention that I do all my best thinking when I am walking. That I never use public transport but walk everywhere, thinking as I go. The Physiotherapist nodded. “aye Rod. I do the same. Thinking why the hell am I walking. I should have got that bus!” Fair comment I guess. The beer must be slowing me down!
