The Sky’s Not the Limit : Hobbies: Salvador Gascon’s racing pigeons may win 100-mile races, but they lost favor at Carson City Hall. He’s been ordered to comply with an ordinance reducing his flock from more than 30 birds to just three.

Salvador Gascon has always admired his racing pigeons for their uncanny ability to find their way home after being released hundreds of miles away.

But they do not always endure the journey unruffled.

Last spring, No. 2504 almost lost a wing in a tangle with a hungry hawk in the skies over the San Fernando Valley. A fellow pigeon racer found the wounded bird and Gascon nursed it back to health.

Last year, just as No. 0003 landed on Gascon’s garage roof after flapping through a 200-mile race, a gunshot came from somewhere in the neighborhood, piercing the pigeon’s wing and dropping it gracelessly to the ground. He, too, survived.

Now comes Carson City Hall, which in the end may prove to be the biggest challenge for Gascon’s pigeons.

On Tuesday, the City Council denied Gascon’s request to keep more than three birds in his back-yard loft. The city gave him six months to reduce the number of birds to comply with a city ordinance.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Gascon said, staring at his loft, a small shed with wire mesh and trapdoors containing more than 30 pigeons. “I hate to give up the birds.”

Gascon’s troubles stem from a neighbor’s anonymous complaint in June that the number of caged pigeons exceeds the three permitted by the city code.

Gascon asked the Planning Commission to amend the ordinance so that pigeon racers could keep 45 birds, which is about the number that hobbyists need to stay competitive, he said.

The Planning Commission drafted an amended ordinance after an inspection found Gascon’s loft “exceptionally clean and tidy” and pigeon cooing barely audible. A survey of neighbors also failed to turn up complaints, according to a staff report.

Gascon said he thought things were going in his favor; the Planning Commission had recommended a change in the ordinance that would let him keep his birds.

But in a 3-2 vote, the City Council decided that three birds are enough and scrapped the idea of allowing more birds, racing or otherwise. Mayor Michael Mitoma and Councilwomen Juanita McDonald and Kay Calas voted to maintain the current ordinance. Council members Peter Fajardo and Sylvia Muise-Perez voted to revise the ordinance.

“Once you let one person, how many other people are going to want to keep that many pigeons?” Calas said Thursday. “I know I wouldn’t want (the coop) next door to me. I wouldn’t want the noise or the mess. I just think it’s healthier not to have.”

“When he has a lot, you see a lot of flies,” said one of Gascon’s next-door neighbors, who declined to give her name. “A large number do create problems. They can be a nuisance.”

But other neighbors said the pigeons never bothered them.

“I really feel for him,” said next-door neighbor Maria Gonzalez. “They never bother me. I see them once in a while, and the kids like to watch them fly.”

Pigeon racers say that from time to time they run up against neighbors who they claim mistake wild pigeons for the well-bred racing kind.

Racing pigeons, they said, rarely leave droppings anywhere but the coop because the owners usually don’t feed them until after they have a training or exercise flight. The birds fly better without a full stomach weighing them down.

Those exercise flights, they maintained, also rarely last more than an hour or so, and most owners only let a handful of pigeons go at one time.

When they race, the birds are trucked to the starting point, usually more than 100 miles away, and released simultaneously. When they return to the coop, the owner removes a metal identification band from the pigeon’s leg and inserts it in a sealed clock that registers the time.

The times are compared and the pigeon that covered the greatest distance in the fastest time, measured in yards per second, is declared the winner.

Under ideal conditions, with a tail wind, it can take the bird three hours to get home from 100 miles away. But crosswinds, fights with predators or dodging hunters’ gunfire can make for an all-day voyage.

Still, keeping up the hobby in urban areas can be difficult.

“In every neighborhood there’s always some one person who objects,” said Roger Mortvedt, a Torrance racer and past president of the Southern California Racing Pigeon Combine, a coalition of clubs. A few years ago, Mortvedt faced heavy neighborhood opposition and had to reduce his flock.

Nevertheless, Gascon, a 66-year-old retired barber, said he will find it difficult to give up his hobby of 32 years, even if his birds seldom win races.

“It’s just a big thrill watching the pigeons fly,” said Gascon, who is awed at the pigeons’ remarkable, if little understood, ability to return home from great distances. Scientists believe the pigeons rely on infrared light and ultrasound, as well as the Earth’s magnetic field, but so far they have not established exactly how the pigeons put it all together.

“They are amazing little birds. When they are coming in from a race, you can see them from quite a ways, and then they spot their home surroundings, tuck in their wings and go right into the loft,” Gascon said.

If he can’t get city officials to change their minds, Gascon said he would probably auction the birds to other racers or donate them to whoever will take them.

But he would keep three, including No. 554, who earned him a first-place trophy in 1983. He is also Gascon’s oldest bird.

“He’s a heck of a breeder and a heck of flier,” Gascon said.