Marathon in the Sky

I recently watched a fascinating news report on homing pigeons on CBS. A member of Staten Island Pigeon Club was interviewed about his preparation for a 340-mile race. He calls it a "poor man's horse racing". They basically release the pigeons about 340 miles away, and time their arrival back into their cages. These fanciers have some neat gadgets for electronically timing arrival of the pigeons without human presence. Here is an excerpt of an article from Racing Pigeon Digest.

It is often claimed that the first homing pigeon was the dove released by Noah, but the sport of racing homing pigeons is of more recent vintage. And no, the homing pigeon is not extinct -- that is the passenger pigeon! Pigeons have been used as message carriers for centuries, but in the 1800s a sport evolved, not over the issue of whether a bird could home, but how fast it could negotiate the distance. By the late 1800s there were races in regularly conducted competitions in the United States of America as in Belgium, Holland and Great Britain.

The homing pigeon is a specifically bred variety of pigeon, unlike the feral pigeons which plague most cities. Homing pigeons are pedigreed and range in cost from free to $250,000. They are free because many fanciers will assist new flyers.

The racing pigeon is reported to be the product of several crossings of different varieties of domesticated pigeons which were then subjected to training and racing. From these evolved pigeons capable of being released several hundred miles from their loft. They could return home with average speeds of 45 to 50 m.p.h., depending on wind conditions. It is very common today to have racing pigeons released shortly after daybreak, 500 air miles from home and the birds are able to orient, and fly all day, arriving at home before nightfall.

How do racing pigeons find their way home? No one knows for sure. Research at Cornell and the University of Pittsburgh indicate that pigeons may have multiple facilities allowing them to determine the correct direction of home. There is little doubt that the sun is the primary orientation clue used by homing pigeons, but there have been experiments which have developed night flying pigeons, thus showing that the sun is not the only available orientation reference. Some scientists believe that pigeons also perceive the earth's magnetic field and utilize it for finding their way home. Other scientists have opined that pigeons may orient through a sense of smell or even low frequency sound via their hearing. Research is still going on at several universities trying to learn the secret of this bird's ability to navigate distances of 1,000 miles or more to return to its owner's backyard loft. But as far as breeders are concerned, the only way to discover if a bird possesses the required homing instinct, as well as athletic ability to do so quickly, is to race them.

Two race seasons are usually conducted every year. Birds bred in any given year are raced in the late summer and fall of that year in a series of races called "young bird races." These races usually start from distances of 100 miles and extend out to 300 miles. There are clubs which regularly engage in 400 mile young bird races and one or two that have 500 mile young bird races. The other season is in the spring and early summer in which all birds hatched in preceding years are allowed to compete. These are the "old bird races" and some birds are raced until seven years of age. These races usually begin at 100 miles and may go out to 600 miles, or even farther. Very few 1000 mile races are flown today.

The rest of this article can be read on the Racing Pigeon Digest