BOP by Jimmy Wood

[sapper756]

Copied from Facebook 

With the 2025 race programme meeting coming up on Saturday 7th Dec here’s a reminder that on the south rd we’ll be racing through the most densely populated areas with peregrines in the UK which in my opinion are responsible for 95% of the bad races that we in Lanarkshire experience. Forget about the wind turbines and mobile phones it’s the peregrines that gives us these erratic races that we are all familiar with for example on race day getting good steady returns in the first 20 to 30 minutes then nothing for hours after apart from dribs and drabs then we get a flurry of pigeons just before darkness we have all seen it. Unfortunately us pigeon men in Lanarkshire and Ayrshire have the most Difficult route to contend with from the south road it just can’t be avoided. Guys I’ve been a pigeon fancier for 56 years now from a boy at 10 years old and I can remember pigeon racing back in the 70s when on a Saturday you could see lines and lines of pigeons racing home especially YB racing but these days that doesn’t happen the reason being they’re getting scattered by the peregrines on the road home,simple as that. Over the past few years I’ve been watching the racing results and returns for the Guys that race with the North of Scotland federation which covers areas like Aberdeen Peterhead Fraserburgh etc etc these guys race a south east route in scotland and I can honestly say there returns on a Saturday are excellent compared to Lanarkshires and the only time they get really bad races is when they go over the Border into Bandit country. This year myself and clubmate Kevin Docherty decided to draw up a North Rd race programme in the hope that we in lanarkshire can get some sort of decent racing.

[Dooheed 5]

If you think there are no or very little Peregrine Falcons up here your very much mistaken !! there is not one area in the uk nowadays that is not inhabited by them in thats a fact ! Yes I fully agree certain areas like the route south of Lanarkshire as you state are more populated than others but they are present everywhere ! Incidentally a club up here has proposed a program for 2025 flying down that route lanark,langholm,tebay etc which I personally think is suicidal !! Just my opinion obviously !