midnight_son

My dad forgot to get the reply back to Andy Garven in time for the advert but we will be putting a youngster in the sale.

http://www.biccpigeons.com/provisional/earlytimes.pdf

Thanks for kind words. Hard to know what has been achieved with so little to compare against. I'm sure if it had been a SNFC race with 1500 birds and a bit more company to keep them going there would have been quite a few on the night.

Success ! Timed at 5.28 and 6.57, two hens. First one direct daughter of Midnight Son when paired to the dam of the hen who has been 6th open and 14th open Niort and Ancenis last couple of years. She is very fresh so got close last night, probably just hit some downpours in the last 120 miles or so to slow her up. Happy enough with that, not disgraced anyway and better returns proportionately than the YBs managed out of 60 miles on Saturday.

Nothing to report tonight, slightly disappointing but not all that surprising, all 3 of these were 2nd afternoon at Alencon and not averse to a night out. We'll see how they do in the morning.

Pouring now

I'm sitting on the step of the patio, a few black clouds around and very dull to the south east which is where the birds are !

Bird into Washington flying 482 miles in 11 hours 8 mins. Equivalent up here sometime between 8 and half past.

Just waiting for the full Early Times list to appear on BICC website but I know of one fancier on the south coast who was doing around 1570ypm and expects others to be faster. MNFC doing 1800ypm out of Vire so that would be expected.

Birds are off at 7 am south west wind so hopefully if this home end clears up we have a chance of day pigeons

Who knows Dale, our first priority will always be the SNFC but the long distance programme as it stands is quite condensed so makes it tricky to get birds across the channel twice in one season. I'd much rather see the SNFC tweak the race programme to give the long distance birds more options than see other specialist clubs formed. This race suited us this year because we had very good returns from Alencon and wanted to send them back but Clermont didn't fit too well for some of them, fine for widowhood cocks but not so much for natural hens. It might be a one-off, it might be something we try again, just see how it goes and what the long distance programme is next year.

Unsurprisingly they're held over, shocking forecast through northern France and channel today. Alnwick young birds to entertain us instead

Thanks all. I believe somewhere around 2,200 birds in the convoy.

We've sent 3 birds to BICC Le Mans this week flying around 563 miles to Elphinstone. The 3 of them were at SNFC Alencon but were amongst the also-rans. As far as I'm aware there are no other birds away from Scotland and just a handful within 200 miles of us. It was a slightly late decision and I'd like to thank John Tyerman and Carol Francis for helping fast-track our BICC membership application, Les Blacklock for doing likewise with our RPRA application, John Rumney from Houghton-Le-Spring for ferrying our pigeons down to the Northampton marking station, the workers at the Northampton station for feeding and watering our birds before they were race marked and last but not least Bobby Dickson who knocks his pan in for EOS Fed and SNFC all year and has kindly agreed to deal with clock setting and checking for us when he probably has better things to do. This is a great game when you have friendly, helpful people willing to co-operate to help folk out. All of the above are a credit to Pigeon Racing and there is no way I could have sent to this race without the help of every one of them. Now we'll see if it has been worth the effort and get a time-in but sadly looks like a holdover tomorrow.

Thanks for comments. got a 3rd one at 11.00 another cock who flew Alencon last month

Got 2nd bird at 9.43 another cock from the Alencon result.

Got our 3yo cock who was our timer at Alencon 3 weeks ago. We got a new loft erected in february and kept one section for five widowhood cocks and this cock is one of them. First time we have tried widowhood as we were doing ok on natural but it's so hard to get clean training nowadays we wanted to try and the nationals without training so committed to keeping the five of them on the system no matter what even though there was a big temptation to pair them up. This cock has had two tosses in April and none since so I'm happy that we can get them at the distance without running the gauntlet of training on the lead up to the race. Well done to the others who timed in and hope there are a few more birds about soon.

Sending 5 hens all on 1 to 3 day old babies. 2 x 2YOs having first attempt at channel but closely related to good Tours birds, a 3YO on 2nd attempt but first time properly motivated, a 4YO who was 19th open in 2011 but was hawked last year so missed the race and finally a 6YO hen was 6th open Niort last year. Hoping for a nice clean race with winners doing 14-16 hours into central belt on the night. Good luck all.

Thanks John, I know what you mean but when you've seen the only day bird in Scotland swooshing over the fence to Mr B next door and then the McEwens up the road are in at 5.53am, it feels like an eternity has passed by the time its 9.54 and the impression at the time was that we were having a shocker ! Me and the old man were in full scale post-mortem mode by 9.30, wondering if the birds are no good, has the new loft upset them, are they ill or something ? Of course, nothing was wrong with them, they just weren't good enough on the day and looking back on it now we had a steady enough race and can look forward to Ancenis with some hope. That was a very good pigeon you had yourself, well done !

Returns 8/9, 6 up to 4.20pm and another 2 after 8.20pm tonight. No complaints, just not fast enough with first one only 9.54am but should scrape a couple of section prizes. Hopefully might be a bit closer to the front at the remaining channel races. Well done to all the winners, some brilliant performances as ever.

The lib line info is posted on the website for free so that is not the reason. I guess if the members want it and are willing to invest club funds in it then it would happen. It has never been raised at the AGM as far as I recall but I agree, would be great to see a modernised website with rolling real-time results like the NFC and MNFC sites plus making use of Twitter although members can do that themselves, just have to agree a #hashtag for the club so that it becomes searchable. Its a brilliant tool for spreading the word amonst the non-pigeon folk and potential sponsors.

38/41 Peterborough. Nothing since 11am Sunday morning. Two yearling cocks and one channel hen down. Bad enough but looked a lot worse on the cards at 5pm on Saturday.

Thanks Andy, well done yourself, good bird you had today.

30/41 from Peterborough with EOS/Pentland, hardest federation OB race I can remember in recent times. Had 19 at the clocks and thought we might get away with it but its been slow going this evening. Three after 9pm with last one just before 10pm, the last son to race off our old Gold Award and Dewar Trophy winner Midnight Son who died at the start of the season. No worries about channel birds getting their time on the wing this year but missing 4 of my main fancies for the gold cup so hope they come in the morning but fear the damage may be done already. That's Plan A out the window for nationals, must have lasted at least 4 days !

42/44 Newark with Pentland/EOS, early birds scattered then battered in in from 11.45 until 12.45. Only 2 home since 13:20, 2 yearlings to come.