Life in the North East of England (54)
Rod Adams
“Did you know” said the barman in my local pub, “that more people die in the early hours of the morning than at any other time of day?” My friend looked nonplussed but I had an answer for the barman. “And did you know” I countered, “that the emergence of the “eggs” of Coccidia, living in a pigeons intestines, takes place mainly at night and for why?” The barman’s reply was predictable enough. “What on earth are Coccidia?” he asked? My friend smiled, a rare event at the best of times, he knew I had the barman beaten “It’s a parasite” I said, “and believe it or not there is a connection between the two things. Coccidia and early morning deaths.” And there is. Both have a connection with Circadian Rhythms. I had the floor by now so I explained that many of the bodily processes revolve around a period of about, but rarely exactly, 24 hours, more usually nearer 25 hours, and hence the name Circadian, which is derived from the Latin “Circa” meaning about, and “dies” meaning a day hence Circadian meaning “about a day.”
These rhythms are tied in with our and the pigeons Biological Clocks and in birds control things like body temperature, egg laying, general activity, feeding of themselves and their young, and even compass orientation. These rhythms, which in some species of birds are critical for survival, have several interesting features, controlling those periods when they are most active and when they go to roost. Some of these rhythms are very persistent but others can be more easily forced into a new phase by controlling external influences. Think darkness youngsters and you are getting the general idea. Think jet lag. Think of people who work different shifts, week in week out. Then think of the effects of these things!
“Getting back to business” I said, “these rhythms ensure that we are, by and large, wakeful through the day when we need to be alert and at maximum efficiency, and tired and sleepy at night when we would normally be at rest. For example, during the day our body temperature goes up which is conducive to muscular and mental activity and drops at night. The flow of urine is reduced at night as well to help achieve uninterrupted sleep. In short Paul, our system is at it’s lowest ebb in the small hours, more than at any other time of day and that’s why there are more deaths then like you said.” My friend was almost putting his hand up to ask a question by now, but I continued relentlessly. “The reason there are more cocci “eggs” at night is simple, it’s because at night time individual pigeons and most other birds, gather together to roost and the conditions then are at their most advantageous for the spread of the cocci “eggs” and hence the infection.”
Once the slightly dazed barman had gone back to his business of serving beer my friend and I got to talking about management rhythms, an entirely different proposition altogether, and how these are set up. The rhythmic patterns of feeding, exercise, rest, repetition and regularity that every fancier knows are essential for success. Tie these patterns to the Circadian Rhythms we were discussing earlier and you are laughing – all the way to the bank! Look into it. The two obvious examples are training and feeding. Birds are naturally most active early morning and early evening and use the middle of the day to loaf about. Who hasn’t noticed that their pigeons exercise and train much better early in the morning than at mid-day? So, if your life-style allows it, push them about then and feed them when they would naturally feed as their Circadian Rhythms direct them to, early morning and in the evening. The most difficult thing for a lot of fanciers to do is to change their own, personal, rhythms. Getting out of bed at 4.30 a.m. in the morning, as I did for six months of the year for 42 years, takes some getting used to, that’s for sure.
Steven Gerrard, as a brilliant young footballer once struggled to play more than two games on the trot for Liverpool and pulled out of eleven of the first fourteen times he was selected to play for England. He was twenty year old then and he had back problems! The top medical brass reckoned it related to his posture and was probably caused by a rapid growth spurt and “playing too much football as a teenager.” Michael Owen, at twenty one, had also been out through injuries more often than seemed reasonable for one so young. It made me wonder about physical maturity in young athletes who are being worked hard, and if a parallel situation is/can/could be happening in our pigeons. We are pushing them as darkness youngsters far harder than we pushed natural youngsters in the past. Falsely maturing them and flying them ever harder and at ever greater distances. If, (and I accept that the point is indeed debatable) it affects their future racing performances, is that the price we have to pay in order to compete with youngsters in this day and age?
I have seen Whippets that were trained too hard at too young an age left with obvious running abnormalities, tennis players burnt out while still teenagers, noted the number of young athletes, gymnasts and footballers, that never carried their talents forward into adult life and now I wonder. What gain is there in asking a boy to do a man’s job and are we doing ourselves any favours, long term, by asking the same of our birds? Progress is inevitable and is to be welcomed, but surely not as a short term strategy in the pursuit of profit or glory. Be that as it may, the real beauty of this game still is that the man who pays the corn bill flies his birds the way he chooses to fly them. And long may that be so. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Would you?
Pigeons are not machines but living things subject to all the various reflexes, drives and instincts that this implies. What is the point of needlessly blunting these drives, slowing the reflexes and blurring the instincts earlier than would be the case naturally by training them too hard, too soon? During any racing season, especially with youngsters, you can see the zip going out of the batches as they get further down the road. Taken to extremes the average pigeon becomes bad, the good racer becomes a plodder and the brilliant racer an average one, and who wants that? I would be the first to argue that the hard taskmasters get more than their share, but a hard taskmaster isn’t necessarily a stupid one and incessant, repetitive training in unsuitable weather too early in the year will for sure eventually “take yards off them.” It’s great watching birds fighting the wind, against a background of snow clouds, so long as they are somebody else’s pigeons and not mine!
For a number of years, before it was lost when I moved house, I kept a cannonball the size of a Grapefruit on the hearth in my living room. It was salvaged from the wreck of the “El Gran Grifon,” driven ashore on Fair Isle in 1588. She was the flagship of the Hulk Squadron of hired transports and stores ships commanded by Juan Gomez de Medina of Rostock. Scattered by Sir Francis Drake, the remnants of the Spanish Armada were trying to make for home around the northern tip of Scotland and the “El Gran Grifon” had rounded Cape Wrath and actually got as far south as Galway Bay before a storm drove her north-eastwards to be wrecked on Fair Isle with her complement of 300 soldiers and marines. All very interesting, but what has this to do with pigeons? They weren’t racing in 1588 and certainly not on Fair Isle!
The story goes a bit like this. Longer ago than I care to remember I was on the island for two or three autumns running, staying at the internationally famous Bird Observatory there and studying the migration of birds in the best place in the British Isles to do so. A team of divers were also staying on the island at that time, salvaging what they could from the “El Gran Grifon.” So, on the whole of Fair Isle, which isn’t very big, there would be the divers, all male, the birdwatchers, mostly male, some Youth Volunteers, mostly “paired up” and the resident crofters. Maybe seventeen families of them. Consisting mainly of married couples with small children as all the young men and women had left the island to seek work on the mainland.
The Bird Observatory had the only two “spare hens” on the island. And boy were they in demand! The reason I mention all this is because I was asked a question, at a recent quiz about so-called “love matings.” Did I think hens picked this way by their males or the other way around held more sway over each other than those paired by the usual method of planned matings. You can see where I’m heading can’t you?
Fresh on the island, I marvelled at the queue. Of all these virile, handsome young males, practically fighting each other for the favours of two not particularly attractive, ordinary young ladies. In fact, to be honest, one of them had more than a suspicion of a moustache, and the other one was a prime candidate for a weight watchers club had there been one in operation at that time!
I could not understand it when I first arrived. Even though I’m no oil painting myself. After a couple of weeks though, I was right there in that queue with the rest of them! Love had nothing to do with it. There is nothing like forced abstinence to concentrate the mind on what is available. Here and now! What the future might bring is not a consideration! “Love matings?” Absolute rubbish. Sex rules. And don’t let anyone tell you differently!