Once again many thanks to everyone who has offered congratulations to me on this site, on others and by phone and text. I am really grateful. Just to illustrate the ups and downs of pigeon racing I trained my racers today---not far about 25 miles flying and yes you can all imagine what bird was last home. I went from a high to rock bottom in the space of 24 hours because of 1 pigeon. Now I wonder if sending a pigeon on which has done well is really worth the emotional trauma. We could do it in the past with a degree of certainty but now pigeon racing is so random I really wonder.
Thanks to everyone for the congratulations. Amid all the downs associated with pigeons there are definitely many highs. Most of these highs are people related.
According to the met office the visibility in the Preston area was poor to moderate from before 09:00 till after 14:00 so even if it wasn't raining it was not good racing weather.
I had a visit last night from a young fancier who witnessed his youngsters being herded into a ball last year by 2 adult Peregrines. They kept the pigeons in this formation to allow the young peregrines to dive into them several times. Obviously this is their training routine. This happened in South Ayrshire and my birds must find their way through this irrespective of where they are liberated. The bonus is that when they are close at hand we can start work to alleviate the problem.
Absolutely correct. If a change of route is envisaged then the time to do so is with youngsters of the previous year. Ayrshire raced youngsters down the east last year then switched them to west this year. That, in my opinion, was ill conceived.
There is very little sun and full cloud cover in some areas. There are also pockets of mist with little wind to disperse it. Hard to believe while Scotland basks in wall to wall sunshine.
ok Thanks for that they are definitely at Nantwich on the 31st. If they are Welsh then that is all to the good. My fear was that they going in an easterly direction. Thanks for the replies I will phone the guy- Mr Bowen tonight.
Does anyone know which area this organisation fly into? The reason I ask is that they are liberating about 25 miles from my federation on Saturday and I would like to have an idea of their line of flight. I can always phone the race controller but thought I would try this method first.
I lose very few in winter. Peregrine attacks start around the second week in February. There are so many migratory birds in this area in winter that keeping the birds confined has little impact. The highest losses occur when their young are fledged and learning to kill. That is when we should confine our racers and fly only a few select youngsters.
We can all do our bit in a small way. However, that will only tackle the tip of the iceberg. We are the reason that the Peregrine has prospered-we feed it. We need to start from scratch and rearrange our breeding and racing schedules to restrict the food supply. It can be done easily but needs to be coordinated at the highest level.
The wind is a concern but so is the fact that forecasts are changing every time I look at them. Even now different forecasts paint a different picture. Maybe that's just the fact that some are updated more often than others but it makes life complicated.