Winging It : Lofty Sport of Pigeon Racing Puts Pedigree, Patience to the Test
Bob Lent stood in the cool morning air outside his comfortable brick home and peered skyward. Overhead, a phalanx of pigeons wheeled and swooped in formation, wings seeming to beat in unison.
A slight, easy smile creased the 65-year-old man’s face as he watched his prized charges demonstrate their aerial agility. After nearly an hour, it was time to call the birds back into their loft.
Lent placed his house keys into an empty tin coffee can and began to shake it. The racket quickly caught the attention of the flock. They dove toward the coop.
“This is when the neighbors call for the men in the white coats,” Lent joked as he watched the birds flutter into the loft, “when there’s a man outside shaking a can with rocks in it.”
Bob Lent has a passion for pigeons.
Not just any pigeons, mind you, but pedigreed, highly trained racing birds. He is not alone. There are scores of pigeon racing enthusiasts and a half dozen clubs in San Diego County. Nationwide, more than 20,000 people are participating in racing the birds.
While it may lack the wide following of baseball or football, pigeon racing enthusiasts like Lent are serious about their sport. Breeding has been developed to an art. The training regimen is tough. And tactical moves on race day are every bit as intricate as an NFL playbook.
“In a lot of ways, they’re a poor man’s race horse,” Lent said. “Just like horse racing, you’re making conscious decisions on breeding, training.”
And like those who play the ponies, competitors in pigeon racing traditionally place a few bets on which bird will win. Although Lent’s association, the Palomar Racing Pigeon Club, isn’t big on betting, he said some groups go hog wild, with pools ranging up to $100,000 on a single race.
But pigeon racing is not 90 seconds of excitement. Race lengths vary from a little more than 100 miles to up to 600 miles, distances that can require days to complete.
Before race day, each bird is given a numbered rubber leg band for the upcoming competition. The pigeons are loaded by their owners into separated cages aboard specially built trailers, up to 5,000 birds on a trailer. They’re then hauled by a trucker to a distant drop-off point, as far away as Tempe, Ariz., or Redding, Calif., for the big races.
With the flick of a lever, each cage is opened and the birds ascend to the heavens. Typically, they gather in a flock, heading for home.
All pigeons have a homing instinct, but these expensive birds have been bred to bring out a particularly strong trait--a desire to quickly return to their nesting loft.
Just what guides them on the journey is not fully understood.
“It’s still a big mystery,” Lent said. “Scientists have studied it, but the best theory they’ve come up with is that somehow these birds have a connection with the earth’s magnetic force.”
Whether it’s magnetics or road maps, the birds generally find their way home, traveling at speeds up to 50 m.p.h.
During the long hours of the race, most owners stay put at their houses. They typically don’t head out to the pigeon loft until several hours have passed. The best racers can determine almost to the minute when a bird will arrive.
“We figure in the wind, the weather,” said Tony Palecki, 75, a Vista resident who has raced pigeons since he was a boy. “We even figure the sunspots and all the TV and electronics up in the mountains. It affects the birds, kind of throws off their gyros.”
“It’s a waiting game,” Lent said. “You get an easy chair and relax.”
Indeed, a good racing enthusiast has done his work before the competition has begun. Breeding is a key factor, as is training, and preparations on the eve of the race also come into play.
Some owners think they can coax a championship effort from their birds by sequestering them from their mates. The couple is reunited for a few brief minutes before they are shipped off to race. The resultant ardor is enough, they say, to spur the bird home in a hurry.
Others take advantage of a bird’s instinct to return to its young. They race only those birds that have eggs ready to hatch or young in the nest. Others create that situation artificially by placing a live bee in a hollow egg then gingerly laying it in the nest. Most birds can’t tell the difference.
If all goes well, the pigeon eventually finds home. When it flutters into its loft at the end of the race, the owner quickly pulls the numbered leg band off the bird. The band is placed in a hollow metal capsule, which is then stuck in a specially built clock that is sealed from tampering.
A crank on the clock’s lever and the capsule is locked into the device, which records the exact time and date. Later, the race committee checks each participant’s clock to determine which bird won.
While races take several hours to complete, seconds sometimes separate the winner from the losers. Because of that, competitors take pains to develop a quick technique of collecting their birds in the loft and “punching the clock,” Lent said.
The advent of the clock, he said, came about in an effort to keep “honest men honest.” In the old days, competitors would simply call in the number of a bird’s leg band to the race committee. Even with the modern-day safeguards, cheating can happen.
Lent recalls how one man taught his pigeons to fly to a loft on the back of his pickup. The man would park near the point of release. Once his birds were collected and the clock punched, the cheater would rush to collect his trophy.
Several participants were suspicious, especially because the man’s birds were winning so consistently. The scam was discovered when another competitor spotted several pigeons descending into a highway rest area and pulled off to discover the wrongdoer.
But such instances are exceedingly rare, Lent and other participants say. Most become involved in pigeon racing for the joy of good competition and the love of the birds.
J.P. (Blackie) Weinel, a retired admiral now living in Bonsall, has about 100 birds. For him, it’s the anticipation of breeding a champion that makes the sport special.
“It’s a never-ending cycle of expectations,” Weinel said. “For example, you race a pigeon, it does well, maybe becomes a champion. But that’s only the beginning. You then breed him, and you can’t wait to see the youngster that’s produced. Then you can’t wait to train the youngster. And if it does better than its parent, the cycle of expectations continues.”
Pigeons can live for decades, but are only used for racing until they are about 7 years old.
Weinel has been breeding birds for several decades, beginning back in the days when he’d keep pigeons on the ships he commanded. His current crop all come from one champion bird he obtained more than 20 years ago.
Palecki also takes pains with the breeding of his pigeons, using a home computer his son programmed to keep track of his birds.
Other competitors have likewise adopted modern-day aids. One man has his pigeon coop outfitted with an electric eye that triggers a bell when his birds return. Still others have rigged up air conditioning units that keep their birds cool in the summer.
“At one time this was considered a poor man’s sport, but that’s all changed,” Weinel said, noting that everything from pigeon feed to shipping costs for races to the price tags on the birds themselves has skyrocketed in recent years. A good racing pigeon generally fetches from $100 to $500 or more. In Europe a champion bird can go for several thousand dollars.
Palecki also lamented the rise in costs. For him, pigeons have been a part of life since childhood.
During World War II, Palecki served with an Army Signal Corps unit that used pigeons to relay messages. These birds played a role in the war effort by flying dispatches during periods of radio silence or delivering SOS messages from downed British and American pilots.
It is in Europe that the sport enjoys its greatest following, particularly in Belgium, where pigeon racing is considered a national pastime. Recently, the sport has caught on like wildfire in Japan, according to Lent. In the United States, it retains a healthy following, he said.
“It’s better than hanging out in a bar,” Lent joked as he headed into his pigeon loft to clean up a night’s worth of bird droppings. “And it keeps you humble having to shovel” out the cages every morning.
