Life in the North East of England (53)
Rod Adams
My friend and I were strolling home, late one evening, from my local pub where we had just managed the last pint after having attended the Annual General Meeting of the North East of England Greater Distance Club. “Pavlov” he said “yes I’ve heard of him” and so he should have! I had been trying to explain to him about the differences (if there are indeed any) between what some fanciers call “motivation” and what I call conditioned reflexes and between what I see as an organism doing nothing more than what most organisms try to do, which is to survive and reproduce their kind, and what some fanciers call “intelligence” in pigeons. Of course at that time of night my brain is usually in overdrive and my mouth is speaking shorthand, but when you are both at exactly the same state of inebriation it seems to make perfect sense. It’s when one of you is sober that it isn’t straightforward!
Sorry, I digress. Ivan Petrovitch Pavlov was a famous Russian scientist whose name will forever be associated with dogs and the conditioned reflex. In a very simple experiment he found that if he introduced a mild acid solution into the mouth of a dog it produced the usual defence reactions of active movements of the mouth to get rid of the solution and a copious flow of saliva to dilute the acid and wash it away. But, if he rang a bell just before introducing the acid as previously, after a while the sound alone would produce the same reactions of mouth movements and salivation. Obviously two different mechanisms were involved. The first pure reflex and the second (the sound of the bell alone) a conditioned reflex, so what is a pure nervous reflex? Well it is nothing more than an inborn, involuntary, response to a stimulus, the so-called “knee jerk reflex” so beloved by the tabloids. The conditioned reflex by contrast depends on previous experience. In the dogs case the sound of the bell is associated with acid being placed in the mouth and it produces the salivation.
The commonest, most basic conditioned reflex used by pigeon fanciers is the one produced by the association of food with a sound or a signal. The whistle, the rattle of the corn tin or the waving of a handkerchief used to get them in. Pigeon fanciers, whether they are conscious of it or not, are setting up conditioned reflexes in their birds all the time and bad as well as beneficial ones are just as easy to set up, often completely by accident. In an experiment on captive geese confined in a pen, investigators ran cardboard cut-outs of the classical predator shape of short neck, long tail and rounded wings overhead on a wire to test their reactions. They found, predictably enough, that the classic shape produced alarm reactions but when the shape was reversed, i.e. long neck, short tail and rounded wings (like say a swan) it produced no panic. For a while. Then it did. The geese had associated the investigator climbing the tree with the hawk shape going overhead and panicked when they saw him going up, regardless of what shape he was about to hoist.
In short a classic conditioned reflex but an unwanted one! In a perfect environment an animal could theoretically survive on its unconditioned reflexes alone, but in the ever changing real environment without conditioned reflexes it would have no chance. A wild pigeon couldn’t live just by eating what happened to be in front of it, it has to “know” where and how to find its food and which “clues” or conditioned “signals” will eventually lead to it. The Widowhood system of “jam tomorrow” i.e. sex as a reward, is nothing if not a conditioned reflex, beneficial to the fancier and pigeons frightened by rough handling into becoming “bad trappers” another, but an unwanted one. And so it goes on. Motivation and intelligence are only words and as the man once said, “words are the cause of much misunderstanding.”
Of course I hadn’t levelled my caravan correctly. Nobody told me about dropping down the legs to stabilise it so it rocked alarmingly when I first went in for a cup of tea. It took me right back to the time in Amsterdam when I finished up one night drinking lager on a concrete houseboat moored in a canal in Aalsmeer. With a Dutchman called Jan and my friend Ash. It began in Blackpool when I met Jan in the queue to get into the Winter Gardens for the big show and we spent a bit of time together afterwards. “If ever you come to Holland” he said “let me know and I’ll pick you up and show you some proper distance pigeons.” We were in Utrecht the following weekend for the Olympiad so we let him know and he picked us up at our hotel. He kept his own pigeons on a narrow finger of land between the canal where he lives and the next canal. All the waterways running like fingers behind the houses off the main street. Even the local cats are good swimmers. I know because Jan casually picked one up and lobbed it into the water. The last I saw of it, it was doing a very passable breast stroke and heading strongly for the far side!
We went to see Leo, a mate of his, who was winner of the West European Super Marathon in 1990 and won the National from Perpignon (668 miles) in 1993. We had an excellent day and three things still stick in my mind. The fact that he only kept four pairs of stock birds. The sign above his racing loft which welcomed the birds home reading “Hinene”, (Hebrew “for here I am”) and the fact that given enough beer I can speak Dutch, well double- Dutch actually, as good as the next man! The pigeons were beautiful and the man genuine. His pooling, he told us, was always moderate, albeit the fact that he is a champion. He waits he says “for the birds to come home–not for guilders.” Back on Jan’s houseboat we met his English born wife and were shown around the well-furnished, centrally heated set up, complete with telephone, fax and computer and the small sea-going yacht moored next to it. “With so much water around” he said “you must have something that can actually travel.” His houseboat rocked with each passing vessel. But not nearly as much as my unstable caravan did!
The late Jed Jackson was a close friend of mine for many years. Long before he won the Pau National in 1980 with his good hen Genista. One day I thought to myself, I know just the man who would like to read this, i.e. the book that I was currently reading. So I wrote to him, via his editor who passed my letter on, telling him about it. The book was called “The Peregrine” by J.A. Baker which I was sure he would appreciate. It was the story of one mans obsession with this bird. And of how he had followed it around the coast in its winter wanderings. Of course I knew he was blind when I used the word “read” but Jed never made any concessions to his blindness. He was from my neck of the woods originally, not a Geordie but from not that far away, where no sympathy is offered and none sought. And so we became friends. At the time he was operating a telephone switchboard and many were the long lunch time conversations that we had about pigeons. No doubt at the expense of more legitimate would-be callers! He had the same love of nature as me and a wonderful, self deprecating, sense of humour. He used to tell the following tale himself. And with relish.
Looking for a hobby after losing his sight Jed fancied racing pigeons, only to meet with the usual negative response. “It’s hard enough winning races when you can see, but for a blind man–no chance.” A friend of his however thought differently. “Go do it Jed” he said, “It’s for sure you won’t get eye-strain looking out for them on a Saturday!” And Jed did it! When he won the Pau National I remember thinking to myself that there is a god in heaven after all. It took me three days to reach him by telephone so popular was that victory. I have kept every letter he ever sent me. There are doubtless people better qualified than me but I would dearly love to write up his life story.
Now that Jed is gone let me tell you about an event that really happened. He was judging an invitation class in a major show, with me as his steward, and he selected, as Best in Show, a Red Chequer Cock. He then asked me what colour it was. Later on that afternoon, standing by his selection, he was approached by the bird’s owner and asked why he had picked that particular bird. This is what he said. “It handles superbly well and the feather texture is quite beautiful. It’s a red isn’t it?” And followed this up by nonchalantly saying, to the by now dumbfounded owner, “you can always tell a red by the quality of its feathers!” That was Jed. We chuckled about that incident for years afterwards. I miss him badly.
