Life in the North East of England (55)
Rod Adams
My friend had become interested in “Wing Theory,” his words not mine. Last night we sat in the club, each with a glass of Irish Whisky, as he asked the questions and I sketched out my answers on the margins of the local newspaper. There was a time when I had a fair collection of the wings of various birds, found dead by myself and others, which I later photographed and combined with pictures that I’d taken of birds in flight, and those I’d trapped when I was a bird ringer, to produce a series of articles published in the fancy press. My friend, of course, wouldn’t have read any of this, but he is at present working his way through a different explanation of flight in pigeons. A much better way of describing things than using the term “Wing Theory” as I did at the time. Although to be fair I did prefix it with the words “Flight in Birds.”
The flapping wing of the pigeon is only one of eight basic wing types, the others being the gliding wing, the soaring wing, the hovering wing, the high speed wing, the low speed wing, the fast take-off wing and the inefficient wing. Flapping wings are versatile, manoeuvrable and capable of a wide range of speeds. However over the intervening years I have come to realise that although there are distinct differences between the wings of different pigeons such as Rock Doves, Collared Doves, Wood pigeons and the wings of modern day racing pigeons, it is not so easy to “read” the wings of racing pigeons as to what they are most suitable for, in terms of distance and speed. Wing loading, the amount of weight the wings have to support in the air, is what haunts me. Surplus weight kills. For anyone wanting further, more comprehensive, relevant and up to date reading on the subject, I can recommend Wim Peter’s book “Born To Win”, chapters six and seven in particular. Take your time digesting them. You will be surprised!
It is a very popular misconception that there are only two kinds of pigeons. Winners and sick ones. And that of course that is nonsense. Healthy pigeons get beaten by other healthy pigeons which happen to be fitter, in better form, luckier or simply more suited to the type of race they are in. Pigeons do not have to be sick to lose races! You can make a case, or otherwise, for preventative treatment and sick pigeons undoubtedly need expert help, and fast, but some of the do-it-yourself stuff I witness every day is quite frightening. Modern pigeons must have the constitution of a horse to cope with all the “medications” poured down their necks! I know the days of “clean water and good corn” have long gone but it high time all this random amateur medication is stopped. For everyone’s sake, not least of all the pigeons. We keep them in pigeon lofts not pharmacies!
For a couple of weeks now I have been watching two cock Blackbirds drawing up the boundaries of their territories across my front lawn by frequently skirmishing with each other.
Flying up in the air, as they do, with feet locked together. I once very nearly lost a Bourges race because of a fight between two Blackbirds. It was unbelievable. No day birds and I was up and at the loft for 4.00 a.m. I saw the Mealy cock coming from miles away. Precisely at the moment when he was diving down to the loft these two squawking Blackbirds shot up right in front of him, feet tangled together and feathers flying. He climbed steeply back up in the air in fright and went around in a big circle. Which gave me plenty of time to remind the fighters, with a lump of clay right up their backsides, that there are bigger dangers to a Blackbird than those presented by another Blackbird!
Birds and territorial disputes go hand in hand. Just watch your own pigeons and how they share out between themselves, as individuals or pairs, all the available space in the loft. Invisible boundaries exist, almost like lines drawn across the floor, for each territory and in a dispute the owner of the territory invariably prevails over any interloper. Who seems very uneasy once he has steeped outside his own boundaries but who will fight like a Tiger inside of it. Most of the females in a territorial species are unresponsive to a male who isn’t actually holding a territory, but once paired they too will vigorously defend whatever area the pair holds. Every bird in the loft knows it’s own place and those of all the other inmates, and if you doubt this just watch the chaos caused when a stray enters the loft. It doesn’t have a territory. Doesn’t know the “regulars.” And doesn’t know the rules. It will pretty quickly get a short sharp lesson from all and sundry. Who will hound it mercilessly from pillar to post!
It is traditionally cold and often snowy in the North East at this time of the year. Unrelenting northerly winds and bad weather are not helping the early season training, with the first race only five weeks away. Think head winds and you think of injuries. The birds were going over very low as they battled their way north and I knew some would be damaged. Too much hard work too soon in the season can be the undoing of many a pigeon. The pigeon hasn’t been born that can’t be lost from 30 miles on a cold day in March if it isn’t fit. In all sports you get sports injuries. It is the name of the game and is a risk you take. Pigeons have remarkable powers of healing. You will find them quite happily running around without any trace of a limp 2-3 weeks after you have set a broken leg. Fanciers have traditionally used all sorts of materials to do this. Ranging from matchsticks and electricians tape, to hollowed out Elderberry twigs and bark from trees,. But why bother when you can purchase a Gypsum bandage from any chemists shop, and it only takes moments to put a very professional looking cast on the affected limb. Light, easy to shape with your fingers ,and equally easy to remove. I have set more broken legs in my time than I can remember and I wouldn’t use anything else.
In an article entitled “The Biography of My Strain” the late great Dr. M. E. Tresidder gives an account of his 50 years developing a strain of long distance pigeons. Quoting wholesale from his article is not the business of this column, but some of the points he makes are as valid now as they were when he wrote them. Take for example his comment that “any bird that flies fifteen hours in a day is something more than a good bird.” Tell me about it! He states that “the eternal question is to produce speed in a stayer” and that if “what we want are 600 mile winners we cannot afford to use sprinters as a cross”, something I learned myself, the hard way, many years ago. “Winners of 200 mile races crossed with 600 mile stayers will not produce 600 mile winners!” And this was evident all those many years ago. What really got to me though was his assertion that in his efforts to fly the distance he came to the conclusion that “experience very soon showed that a course between extreme caution and gambling with numbers was the solution.” God always was on the side of the big battalions and caution always the watchword.
We got to talking about Sumo Wrestlers as we waited for the trainers to arrive. Actually it was about the difference between strength and fitness, not Sumo Wrestlers as such, though they did come into the picture. I was ten minutes behind the winner once with a two year old hen having its first race of the season at 150 miles. After having had nothing more than one 45 mile training flight. And was of the opinion that it was its strength and experience and not fitness that had carried it through in a decent enough time. There is a world of difference between strength and fitness.
In my working days I was once was called upon to move a piece of equipment from one room to another and brought in some experts in heavy lifting from a local removal firm to do the job. Scintillation Counters deal with small amounts of radioactivity and contain a lot of lead shielding. This beast weighed in at a little more than half a ton so I needed people with proper expertise in moving weights like that. The experts duly arrived. Four middle-aged, big fat men with huge beer bellies. They looked at the machine, asked me its weight, walked around it, then sent one of their number back to the van to “get the gear.”
This turned out not to be the platform jacks, roller bars or sophisticated hydraulic lifting devices that I had expected but two pieces of nylon webbing a few inches wide and maybe twelve feet in length. Which they passed under the machine, one at the front and one at the back. With a man on each corner they wrapped the webbing around their wrists, got a good grip on it, one of them said “hup.” The man nearest to me said “where do you want it son” and off they went. As easy as that! Loads of strength and experience, but no fitness whatsoever. When a bird has strength, fitness and experience you have a real pigeon on your hands. There is no doubt about that!
Newly weaned young birds that are strange to a loft always take more settling down than those reared in it, even when these home birds are themselves moved to a separate compartment. I learned this the hard way once when I moved some youngsters from my stock loft over home to the racing loft on the allotment. I put them in with the others in the morning and let them out with the others the same evening. They toddled out like little ducks, took one look around and although they had no wings to speak off, scattered in all directions. One even managing to reach the roof of a bungalow about twenty yards away. The rest ended up amongst the rhubarb, in the cabbage patch, on various fences and on the roof of the loft. It took some time collecting them all in and a couple of days before I got the one on the roof back.
What I do now is to give all the babies a week in the young bird end before I even let them out. Then they get a week sitting around on the gantry and the loft top before I “put the brush amongst them” as we say around here, and scatter them. You want them up before they get too strong on the wing and they can’t get very far. After that it’s plain sailing. I can do this you see because there isn’t another fancier within half a mile of me. If you’re sat on a big allotment site with maybe thirty or forty lofts around you, the tactics for settling young birds are of necessity somewhat different! You scatter thirty youngsters like I do and you’ll find yourself going around thirty lofts that night collecting a young bird from each of them–if you are lucky! The allotment lads are releasing their youngsters from baskets just ten yards from the loft when they are real babies. Thereafter increasing the distance to the bottom of the garden, then the bottom of the garden in front of that. And it is essential that they spend a large part of the day in a raised basket or a “hanting cage” just looking at the front of their loft to even have a chance of settling them! Needs must. Different tactics for different situations. I am not sure what I hate the most. Settling young birds or writing out pedigrees!