By AMY MCGILLIVRAY - Shore Times

PIGEON fanciers are a breed unto themselves.

There are races for almost every animal imaginable: Ostriches, cows, crabs, snails, dogs – you name it.

So it shouldn't have come as a surprise to find there is still a very active pigeon racing community in Auckland – but it did.

When I stumbled across the Auckland Racing Pigeon Federation website I imagined birds waddling along a track towards a finish line before my brain kicked in and stories of homing pigeons delivering mail sprung to mind.

To most they are the rats of the sky but to enthusiast Tony Thumb, 61, they are the athletes of the sky.

Mr Thumb is relatively new to the sport, having only kept pigeons for the last five years.

"I had pigeons when I was very young but never raced them. But I've always been interested in birds and wanted to have an aviary with parrots and stuff," he says.

The Mellons Bay resident discovered his passion for the sport when he found himself watching a friend's pigeons come home after a race.

"They were just coming home from Wellington and that sort of impressed me. The way they came home just like little missiles on to the landing deck."

And watching them come home is still just as exciting.

"I get a big kick out of the time they arrive from a race – when they turn up and still look as fresh and fit as the day you put them in.

"The first bird home often looks the freshest."

With breeding stock, young birds, hens and cocks combined, Mr Thumb can have up to 60 pigeons in the loft at the back of his property.

A lot of work and strategy goes into breeding and training the creatures for racing.

Mr Thumb carefully selects his breeders and experiments with the pairings in order to produce the best possible racing pigeons.

Then begins the training.

The birds are let out of the loft once a day to explore the area and get some exercise.

Initially the young birds stay close to home but by the time they are about two months old they are venturing further afield with their older counterparts.

"They'll just take off and you won't see them again for an hour. God knows where they go," Mr Thumb says.

The young pigeons' first big adventure comes at four or five months when Mr Thumb takes them to the back of Howick and releases them to find their way home.

From there they are slowly taken further away for training runs – Manukau, then Papakura, Bombay and then Hamilton.

But racing birds well is not as simple as loading them onto a truck and sending them to the starting point.

Federation secretary and treasurer Fred Van Lier, 58, says there are many different ways to fly pigeons but one thing remains the same.

"The motivation to come back is a lot to do with the way pigeons fly," he says.

A popular technique is the widowhood method.

The cocks and hens are separated, but still able to see each other, before the cocks are sent to the race. Ad Feedback

It is the desire to be with their partner that encourages the birds to get home as fast as possible.

"It's all sex driven," Mr Van Lier says.

Another method is to fly birds who are nesting.

If there are eggs or young chicks in the nest both parents have extra motivation to get home quickly.

Pigeon racing veteran of 40 years Dave Brough, 65, prefers the latter method.

This relies heavily on the timing with which the breeder allows the birds to nest.

"I just race on a more natural system so they're coming home to hens on eggs," he says.

"I like racing hens. The hens race best when they are sitting on eggs 10 days old."

In good conditions the creatures can move fast, reaching a top speed of about 120kmh.

Last year's race from Invercargill saw the winning bird make the 1290km journey in 15 hours – an average speed of 86kmh.

Mr Thumb says he has great respect for the birds and how they navigate their way back to the loft.

"They go head over heels just to come home."

But he has stopped short of naming his pigeons – although he has been tempted. "You get attached to them."

"They're fun to have and they've all got a bit of character to them."

Mr Van Lier has been racing pigeons for 14 years and agrees the birds are not quite pets.

"It's different to pets. We all have a major love affair with the pigeons but not so much with the particular pigeons," he says.

By Keith Mott

I’ve known Terry Goodsell of Mitcham since the mid 1970s when he was put up brilliant performances in the Surrey Federation and SMT Combine with his widowhood cocks, and I featured him in the fancy press. He was a brilliant fancier then and he is still a brilliant fancier today, winning many 1st Federations through the years! He now races his pigeons, with his partner, Pauline, to their loft in Sutton and they have enjoyed a wonderful 2009 old bird racing season in the Three Borders Federation, winning many premier positions including 1st Federation Kingsdown (1,205 birds). The partners good blue pied widowhood cock, ‘Bibby’, won the Federation by 27 ypm clear and he is the nest mate to the ‘ace’ blue chequer pied cock, ‘The Workman’, winner of 2nd South Downs Premier FC twice, plus several hundred pounds in the 2009 season. Another premier performer in the 2009 old bird season was the blue cock, ‘The South Downs Cock’, and he won one the club’s races, also lifting several hundred pounds for Terry and Pauline.

Terry has been a pigeon club member for 45 years and his father and uncles flew as Goodsell Brothers back in the late 1920’s, and Terry tells me he still has some of their racing diplomas’ from those early days. He started keeping pigeons at the age of ten, at which time he used to help his friend to clean out his father’s pigeons and became interested. His uncle built his first loft which was 8ft. x 6ft. and his first birds were obtained from the late Alf Neal of Mitcham and some youngsters of the Sion strain from G. Lay. Terry tells me, Alf Neal gave him a lot of help to get started and Bill Shepherd’s great performances always stood out in his mind as brilliant in those early days. He had been racing ten years, being a member of the Mitcham Common Club from the start. The Goodsell lofts housed some of the Billy Shepherd of Mitcham pigeons and Terry told me that Billy had been a great help with advice since he started up.

In 1974 Terry was lucky enough to meet Louie Govarts; a Belgium fancier won lived in Luton and raced successfully in the very strong Phoenix club at that time. He knew the widowhood system of racing cocks inside out and he taught Terry how to race his birds on the system, which has kept him successful for over 40 years. Terry was one of the first fanciers to race on the widowhood in the Surrey Federation at that time and was premier prize winner for seven years on the trot and was rarely out of the first six positions in the Federation race results. These early days saw the Goodsell loft win 2nd open Combine three times and after a house move in the 1980’s, three years were spent re-building his racing team. I have heard of some bad luck since I started up in our sport, but Terry Goodsell’s 1979 racing story of twice being beaten on decimals for 1st open SMT Combine must take the cake. In fact Terry had been 2nd open Combine three times in three years as in 1977 he was 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th club, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th Surrey Federation (3,060 birds), 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, 7th open S.M.T. Combine (7,787 birds) Plymouth. The sad fact about Terry being 2nd open S.M.T. Combine twice in the 1979 season was that he was beaten twice by club mates and was thus pushed into 2nd club, 2nd Surrey Federation. He was premier prize winner in the very strong Mitcham Common Flying Club in 1974, 1976, 1977 and 1978 and had lifted the highly rated old bird points trophy three times. Terry won the Surrey Federation points trophy in 1977 when he was the Federation top prize winner and was third highest in the 1978 season, when he won the Inland Average Cup. Terry was highly rated by many premier Surrey fanciers and although he was mostly known as a sprint fancier, he chalked up 2nd open SMT Combine Bergerac (455 miles) in 1979. The long over due 1st open Combine win came in the 2002 season and this was achieved with a Janssen crossed pigeon from the Ponderosa UK Stud and Fountainhead Stud lines.

In the 1970s Terry was the pioneer of the widowhood system in the Surrey area and many premier fancier visited his garden to adopt his system, with many of them achieving devastating success. One such partnership was the Besant Brothers of New Malden and Terry rates Bobby Besant the very best ever pigeon racer in the South of England. He says methods have not changed through the years as far as the widowhood and feeding go, but he thinks people medicate far too much these days and consequently are weakening the pigeons. He maintains his current 24ft x 7ft, three section loft, he built recently at the new address at Sutton is his best yet, with the biggest improvement being his ETS system. Terry likes his new clocking system and says it’s great to just stand back and watch them drop in and clock them selves in.

As I’ve stated the Goodsell pigeons are raced on the widowhood system, which consists of a team of 20 cocks and Terry says he liked to keep the widowhood cocks warm in the loft. The birds are paired up after the BHW Blackpool Show in January and the families raced are mainly Soontjens and Janssen of Arendonk, with the Janssens being obtained from the Ponderosa Stud in Holland and Fountainhead Stud. He maintains the Janssen are good right through the programme to 455 miles, although the Soontjens are very good up to 250 miles. Terry is a very keen on gardening and the lofts and garden are a real credit to him. As far as his pigeon loft is concerned he is very keen to have warmth, a good dry floor, together with good ventilation, with no draughts in his lofts. He told me over feeding was the biggest mistake a fancier can make and was totally against fat pigeons at any time of the year. He says, many fanciers make the mistake of over exciting their birds and feed them too much hemp. Terry feeds the birds according to the temperature in the loft, using a good racing mixture, but with more carbohydrate when it was colder. The old birds are trained before the season started, up to 50 miles as often as possible, then it is regular exercise around the loft when racing starts. The 50 young birds are trained twice a day, a 20 mile toss in the morning and a five mile single up in the evening. Terry liked to see a nice rich eye, but his families are mostly ‘pearl’ or ‘gravel’ eyed and says some fanciers would call them anaemic eyed.

Terry maintains that fanciers should be dedicated to their pigeons 52 weeks a year and not just in the racing season. He doesn’t like deep litter as it affected his breathing, but said it’s a good idea if kept dry. Terry scrapes the widowhood loft out every day and is a believer in the old adage that prevention is better than cure. The birds are given preventatives against coccidiosis, worms and canker, but in moderation. The birds are kept 100% healthy at all times and are paired together in such a way to keep the family intact. He reckons selection should be severe at all times and the basket takes care of the rest. Terry mentioned one little trick with his widowhood system, which is throw in a handful of nesting straw about an hour before basketing to go for race marking, which he said, keys the birds up without over exciting them. He thinks there are many little tricks with racing widowhood, but the main one is not to let them get bored. Terry likes the young birds to be as tame as possible and spends a lot of time in the loft last thing at night, getting to know the birds and their temperament, which helps him to select his future widowers.

Betty and I really enjoyed Terry and Pauline’s recent visit, when they came to Claygate to have their current premier pigeons photographed for this article. They are two very nice people! Terry was very impressed with our new stock birds, especially the Keith Arnold / Staf Van Reets and after viewing the new DVD said his widowhood system was very much the same as Keith’s highly successful UK Championship winning system. Pauline is a very good judge of a pigeon and she picked out our two new direct Brian Denney youngsters, a daughter of Champion ‘Tuff Nut’ and a daughter of Champion ‘Dark Charm’. Terry told me, ‘sometimes I get a bit disappointed that through the years a lot of fanciers have been very successful with my advice on the widowhood system and gift birds from my loft, but many of them never mention the fact’. There you have it Terry and Pauline of Sutton! After all these years of outstanding success, Terry must rate as one of the all time great in the London area! I really enjoyed doing this one, Terry has been a great worker for the sport and deserves all the praise he is given! Any comments to me on telephone: 01372 463480. See yer!

TEXT & PHOTOS BY KEITH MOTT.

By Ian Herbert

The hero of the latest British war movie is a pigeon called Valiant. A flight of fancy? No, it's based on real life

The farthest Daniella had ventured from home was a 28-mile trip down the M6 in the back of a white Vauxhall Astra van, so no one could be sure how she might respond when she was plonked in a field near Cherbourg and left to find her own way home. She made it, of course, extending her white wing tips to make the 300-mile trip to a loft at Audenshaw, north Manchester, in five hours with the rain and the wind on her nose - a performance that had some hard-bitten old pigeon men tipping their caps. It's not too often that a 12-week-old pigeon hen from the North pinches a national championship from under the beaks of the southern cocks.

The farthest Daniella had ventured from home was a 28-mile trip down the M6 in the back of a white Vauxhall Astra van, so no one could be sure how she might respond when she was plonked in a field near Cherbourg and left to find her own way home. She made it, of course, extending her white wing tips to make the 300-mile trip to a loft at Audenshaw, north Manchester, in five hours with the rain and the wind on her nose - a performance that had some hard-bitten old pigeon men tipping their caps. It's not too often that a 12-week-old pigeon hen from the North pinches a national championship from under the beaks of the southern cocks.

It also left the bird's owner, Gerry Clements, with the thought that has preoccupied him many a time in the 55 years he has been breeding pigeons. "All that bird's known is her training run home from Stoke," he says. "She's never seen the sea but suddenly she's flying over water - more and more and more of it. Some birds will turn back but the best ones, like her, they just keep going. Where does she get the courage from?"

There's no room for philosophising like that in the pages ofBritish Homing World - the pigeon fanciers' bible, where Daniella's win made her front-page news last year. But the bravest of the brave will finally get their dues this week in the £20m Ealing Studios filmValiant, which is already being touted as a successor to the Oscar-winningShrek, one of Hollywood's biggest animation films.

Inspired by the role played by racing pigeons during the Second World War, the film, which will be released on Friday, is about plucky young Valiant, a wood pigeon who decides to serve his country in the only way he knows how. Accompanied by a rather less motivated young friend, Bugsy, he dons goggles and a bomber jacket and prepares to brave Von Talon, a sinister falcon with a Germanic rasp.

The film's voices include Ewan McGregor, who plays Valiant, and Ricky Gervais as Bugsy, as well as John Cleese, John Hurt and Hugh Laurie. It also provides a directorial debut for Gary Chapman, a 44-year-old Mancunian brought in as a designer, drawing and sculpting maquettes of the characters. He was offered the directing job because his ideas forValiant were so extraordinary.

But the most improbable name on the credit list is Gerry Francis - the former England football captain, ex-manager of Tottenham Hotspur and a dedicated pigeon fancier who was drafted in to ensureValiant was historically accurate and the illustrations were anatomically correct.

Like Gerry Clements, Mr Francis is passionate about the birds of the RAF's Homing Pigeon Service, who were carted into battle in wicker baskets on infantrymen's backs. Amid radio silence they were set free to fly across the Channel with vital information tucked into steel phials tied to their legs, dodging snipers and hawks deployed by the German falcon brigades.

One of Mr Francis's favourite pigeon stories involves Winkie, who was travelling in a Beaufort bomber forced down in the North Sea. Despite being heavily oiled, she escaped from her container and flew 129 miles to Scotland, leaving her crew behind in a dinghy. The crew were rescued and later held a dinner for Winkie, who basked in her cage as she was toasted by the officers.

Mr Clements also talks of the cock pigeon Gustav, the finest of the lot for many fanciers. His name might sound suspiciously foreign, but he was as English as they come. Released from a ship close to the coast of Normandy as the D-Day landings began, he faced a headwind of 30mph and the sun, which he used to navigate with, was hidden behind dense cloud. Yet he still managed the 150-mile trip to a pigeon loft in Thorney Island, near Portsmouth, after a flight lasting five hours and 16 minutes.

His handler, Sgt Harry Halsey, took the message strapped to Gustav's leg that read: "We are just 20 miles or so off the beaches. First assault troops landed 0750. Signal says no interference from enemy gunfire on beach ... Steaming steadily in formation. Lightnings, Typhoons, Fortresses crossing since 0545. No enemy aircraft seen."

Gustav was one of 32 racing pigeons awarded the Dickin Medal, the animal equivalent of the Victoria Cross, of which only 60 have been awarded across the entire animal kingdom. Although his war-hero status did not guarantee him a rosy retirement, it should be said. He met a sorry end when someone mucking out his loft stepped on him by mistake.

During the Napoleonic Wars, Belgian and Dutch newspapers also relied heavily on birds to receive reports from the front. News of Napoleon's defeat at the Battle of Waterloo arrived in England by pigeon.

Pigeons' feats of avian heroism during the First World War are commemorated at a memorial in Lille, northern France, that recalls the more than 20,000 military pigeons killed during the conflict. However, during the war, German forces took possession of thousands of birds from Belgium alone.

But the Second World War was the pigeons' finest hour. Many nations deployed them, including the United States, which had more than 3,000 soldiers and 150 officers in the United States Pigeon Service to take care of 54,000 military pigeons.

Few could match the British, though. The birds have a place in the same pantheon of heroes as Churchill and General Montgomery and many are listed in the honourable roll-call of Dickin medal winners, named after Maria Dickin, founder of the People's Dispensary for Sick Animals. There was Cologne, who made it home, severely injured, from a British aircraft that ditched in the German city in 1943; Commando, who made three trips from occupied France; Princess, who flew 500 miles from Alexandria, Egypt, to allied forces; and GI Joe, America's finest, who raced home to Air Support Command at 60 miles an hour, just in time to reveal that a heavily fortified German position had been taken by the Allies and should not be bombed. One hundred lives were saved.

And what thanks did they get? So grateful was the Ministry of Defence that after the war it considered establishing a squad of germ warfare suicide pigeons to carry biological agents being developed at its chemical and biological research station at Porton Down in Wiltshire into the Soviet Union, in the event of war.

Valiant creates the uplifting impression that courage alone drove these humble creatures to glory. But another explanation of the flights they made - employing the sun, the earth's magnetic field and their rarefied sense of smell to guide them - has more to do with nurture: the prosaic, breeder's process of pairing those males and females that have the most acute desire to get home fast.

If Mr Clements had to send one of his 140 birds into battle it would be his retired racer Bouncer, or GB97N27828, as the racing world knew him in his prime, a blue pied pigeon with flecks of iridescent purple in his feathers who could never get back to Audenshaw fast enough in his five-year racing career, which ended in 2002.

He was sired by one of Belgium's finest cocks and, Mr Clements says, was destined to be one of the best because "the apple never falls far from the tree". The bird, like his war-time predecessors, also underwent gentle encouragement in what the pigeon world knows as the widowhood system. This allows the male a five-minute unconsummated liaison with the female on the day before a race. "By the time of the race, his hunger to nest - and do what males are supposed to do - means he's raring to get back," says Mr Clements. "Let's just say you wouldn't catch him stopping off at the pub on the way home from work."

There are other ways of encouraging a pigeon to get home quickly. When Daniella won the national, she was returning to a seven-day-old chick she had been encouraged to foster before competing. Or there is the more chaotic Spanish way, in which fanciers set off a hen that the cocks are allowed to dash after. Speed isn't everything: the winning Spanish cock must reach the hen first, then persuade her to venture home with him.

Spain also has a habit of turning the event into a circus. The pigeons are fed food dye that turns their feathers every colour of the rainbow - quite a spectacle as they leave en masse. But above all, the charm test brings out the harmonious, gregarious, companionable qualities in racing pigeons that are often overlooked in the stories of normal dour breeds that no one wants to see in Trafalgar Square.

Mr Clements - who hopes Ewan McGregor and co will finally add such qualities to our perception of a much-mocked bird - hasn't had a serious pigeon fight in his lofts for six years - only the occasional wrestle which accompanies one bird trying to annex another's box. After sleeping on their feet for as few as five hours a night, his birds will perch side by side from before dawn, hardly ever squatting. The training regime is the same as it would have been for the war birds: a single hour's exercise at 7am and 7pm, occasional 30-mile training jaunts and a strict diet of maize, peas, wheat and sunflower hearts.

Rumours of these birds' intelligence can be overstated. When BBC television crews pitched up a few years ago to investigate the (ridiculous) story that pigeons used the motorway network to navigate their way home, one of Mr Clements' birds was placed on a road atlas to see if it followed the blue lines. Predictably, it failed the test.

But their "brains, stamina and speed" makes them formidable, Mr Clements concludes, as he demonstrates the fuselage of a male bird, which made it 450 miles home with a broken keel bone and a foot that remains badly damaged to this day.

"There were cases in the war where they brought messages home after their chests had been ripped out and once they have delivered them they just dropped dead," he says. "It's because of those qualities we like to call them the athletes of the skies."

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