Update verkoop-vente-sale-Verkauf Belgian Master 2010

By Maharaja Features

Pheroz Kharegat discovers that 'kabutar-baazi,' once a leisurely hobby of the 'Nawabs,' is still being patronised by those who love its traditional charm but are also reinventing it with technology.

Pigeon racing (kabutar bazi) did not end with the era of Maharajas and Nawabs and in keeping with the times has become a technologically advanced sport.

Of the old veterans there are still a sizable number, mainly in old Delhi, Agra, Lucknow, Hyderabad and other citadels of the Mughal era. For example Allauddin Mian ( name changed to protect identity) a prosperous mithai shop owner in Chandni Chowk is a classic example of the old traditions. “Kabooter bazi was a sport of Nawabs,” says Allaudin and adds, “Not many people are doing it the old way anymore.”

Before independence, pigeon handling was the pastime of gentlemen. For men like Allaudin, a khalifa- or master - of the pigeon world, it still is. While there are thousands of pigeon handlers in old Delhi, there are only a few dozen khalifas, men who trained under earlier masters and for whom pigeon handling is a serious craft. To them, overt competition is crass. Allaudin has a veritable pigeon empire, with perhaps a dozen coops scattered across the neighborhood. He has breeding coops and coops for sick birds. He has coops full of pigeons from India, Afghanistan, Iran and places he can’t even name. He has workers to help care for them.

On the other side of the spectrum, we have Dr Noel Kannan of Kottivakkam, Tamilnadu, who has returned after a stint as a dental surgeon in Dammam, Saudi Arabia, and boasts of a whopping 50 birds in his loft. In 1992, Dr Kannan took time off from his practice and travelled across Europe. He went from country to country to pick the brains of famous pigeon breeders and in Belgium bought five pairs of the famous Silvere Toye racing pigeons worth Rs 1 lakh a pair and today he has dozens of these in his lofts.

Today most of our metros have associations of racing pigeon enthusiasts and Chennai has the maximum number. There are now 300 to 500 pigeon handlers/racers at least five racing pigeon clubs in Chennai. An All India Racing Pigeons Federation has been formed to coordinate the activities of all the Indian pigeon clubs.

Next comes Kolkata with its Kolkata Racing Pigeons Club which is the oldest in India. The third place goes to Bangalore where there are around 150 professional pigeon racers. The Coimbatore Racing Pigeon Association came into being last September and is already three races old.

Pigeon racing is more of an endurance test. It involves transporting the birds from their lofts across the intended course of the race and then releasing them to see which one finds its way back to homestead the fastest. Before being released for the flight, each of the racing pigeons are tagged with a ring around their legs containing details of name, gender, age, address of the loft, and a certain identification number.

The pigeon-racing season in India runs from January to April, before the acute summer heat sets in. Pigeon owners set out in vans or on trains, carrying medical certificates and police clearances and forestry permits, and their birds in flat steel cages..

Pigeons of a good bloodline can fly a 600-mile race in a day. If a racing bird is released at six am from Allahabad, it reaches its home in Kolkata by evening. So you can imagine the speed ( nearly 50 miles an hour) at which they fly with their sense of direction Once the pigeons return, observers on the rooftops match their colour, sex, number and identification band tied to their feet with the registration details to confirm the authenticity of the pigeon’s ownership.

The pigeon, that clocks the fastest time to enter its own loft is declared the winner and its owner is presented with a trophy and a certificate. As the winning bird has to reach its loft first, some trainers fly female pigeons who are taking care of their young. The mothers desperate to return home, fly with increased effort. This is an exercise that may rankle animal lovers who have no stakes in pigeon racing but it goes on still. Some handlers separate males and females from their mates the day before, giving them an incentive to fly faster to be united with their loved ones.

As the age of the bird also impacts its speed, races fall under two categories divided between old birds and new birds.

There is also an open category in which birds of all ages can compete. “To take care of a loft of 100 birds, one has to spend around Rs 2,000 every month, on feeding, providing medicinal help, vitamins and minerals,” says Thamburaj, a pigeon breeder from Chennai His pigeons are fed mostly with mixtures of corn, ragi, maize and peas.

It is estimated that out of 100 birds released from a 100 km away, a bird racer could lose as many as 40; as on an average, only one in 10 returns. The main danger to the racing pigeon comes from predators like eagles/vultures/falcons and international pigeon racing associations are trying to find out a solution.

Today the greatest problem faced by pigeon race enthusiasts are the cell phone towers that have sprouted all over India, especially in metros. Experts believe that pigeons develop a keen sense of direction by following the position of the sun, stars and even the path of the earth’s magnetic field that ‘draws’ or ‘pulls’ them home from over hundreds of miles. With the radio signals of the the cell phone towers , all the pigeons go off track and many are lost.

By Dick Hagen The Land Staff Writer

JANESVILLE — Some play golf. Some plant potatoes. Some collect old tractors. And then there’s Chuck Stensrud of rural Janesville. He flies racing pigeons.

Stensrud and his special birds literally travel middle America for special pigeon racing events. After the birds are liberated, Stensrud drives back to Janesville. His racing pigeons, however, fly home — and usually get there before he does.

Rare birds? Not really. The racing homer was developed in Europe in the 1800s. It is a blend of five different breeds of domestic pigeons. Originally they were bred to carry messages and were used by the military as recently as World War II.

Competitive sport

Today they are raced for pleasure. Stensrud belongs to a club called Gopher State Racers. Two national organizations of Racing Pigeon clubs exist in the United States. The organization that Gopher State Racers is a part of consists of about 700 clubs. Clubs are organized along geographic boundaries — the intent for club members to live in proximity to each other so there is less racing advantage due to distance or prevailing winds within a club.

This unusual hobby is indeed a competitive sport. “We fly in competition within our club plus there are two other clubs in our combine which we also compete against. We compete with other clubs at the state level and at the Midwest level,” Stensrud said. He said there are probably a dozen racing pigeon clubs in Minnesota.

On a quiet Saturday afternoon this spring, he, his pickup and three baskets, each with eight to 12 birds, were parked along a country road near St. Clair. “This is the first time out this year for my birds so this is just a warm-up flight,” Stensrud said. “We’re only about eight to 10 miles from my house.”

Baby birds must be “settled” to their loft upon leaving the nest. The first thing they have to learn is how to get back into the loft. As they get stronger, they make their “maiden flight” around the yard and back to the loft. With each passing day, they fly farther until pretty soon they are “traveling” for up to an hour at a time and will venture several miles into the countryside.

Homing instinct

Their homing instinct brings them to within 12 to 15 miles of the loft, but from there on they must know the area. Almost everyone breeds and raises their own birds, and each bird has an imprint of its home loft.

“They always try to come back to the loft,” Stensrud said. “I had a bird that I had sold eight years previously that got loose from its owner and came back to my loft. That was only about 40 miles.”

Stensrud said he has birds that have flown 500 miles on a single race day. A race is from a given liberation point to the bird’s home loft. The race winner is determined by speed, essentially yards per minute.

“We know the longitude and latitude of the release point, and the same information for the home loft. We compute the distance down to one-tenth of a yard. We know the release time, the arrival time at home loft, so we compute the elapsed time. From that we figure the speed in yards per minute and the fastest bird wins.”

An electronic chip fastened to a pigeon’s leg registers the arrival time of each racing pigeon back in its home loft. Racing pigeons average about 35 miles an hour, but they have been clocked as high as 75 and 80 mph. “I’ve had pigeons released in Rapid City, S.D., at 6:30 in the morning and they were home at 4:30 that afternoon,” Stensrud said.

What is this “homing instinct” of the carrier pigeon? Scientists have experimented with the birds and theorize they can sense the earth’s magnetic fields. They home better on sunny days, but sunspots have an adverse effect upon returns.

Old birds, young birds

There are two seasons each year: Old Birds and Young Birds. The old bird season is for birds hatched in previous years, their races held during May and June. Young birds are those hatched during the current year, and their races are held in August and September. With younger birds, only a couple are released and they are taken shorter distances from the home loft.

During “spring training” for his birds, each time Stensrud takes a bird out he doubles the distance. On this day it was only about 10 miles back to the loft, but the first race of the 2010 season is 100 miles. Birds, just like marathon runners, need to be in shape.

How did Stensrud get into this unique hobby?

“I first read about it as a boy when racing pigeons were used as carrier pigeons for relaying messages,” he said. “So I caught some barn pigeons and made pets out of them. After high school I bought some homing pigeons. I flew my first race in 1970 and I’ve been racing ever since.”

He doesn’t know precise “flight patterns” of his birds but estimates they’re flying at 300 to 400 feet. That depends, however, upon winds on any given day. When the birds are flying into a headwind, they will fly low to the ground, sometimes so low that they have to go up and over fence lines. He doesn’t sell “breeding stock,” but he does raise a few baby pigeons as gifts to folks who want to get into the sport.

He mixes his own feed, with different rations for different times of the year. Corn, wheat, millet, milo, safflower, sunflower seeds and a couple of different kinds of peas are part of the formula.

“It’s the only hobby I’ve ever had, and it truly is a great sport. In Europe, especially Holland and Belgium, racing pigeons is as popular as baseball is in the United States. Yep, give it a try and it grows on you.”

by Michael Booth - Surrey Now

How do they do it?

Scientists have marveled at it. Military spies have taken advantage of it to send secret messages without figuring out exactly why it works.

It's a question to which, even after more than 50 years of working with pigeons, Dick Ausma and his wife Rockly remain unable to offer a definitive explanation.

Exactly how are homing pigeons able to uncannily return to their nests?

No road maps, no access to global positioning satellite data, no back-seat drivers offering advice. The female birds won't even stop to ask for directions. Yet somehow, the birds zero in on the correct direction in which their home loft lies and steadily flap their wings back to the roost.

Drop them off in the flatlands of Alberta or the hills of Northern California and 10 to 12 hours later, the pigeons begin arriving at the Ausma home on the northern edge of Cloverdale.

"We love to see them come home," Dick says. "Sometimes they come in high and sometimes they're low. They can come in from any direction and we usually sit in the gazebo and watch them come."

The best science can come up with to explain the phenomenon is that the birds are somehow able to tap into the earth's magnetic poles to help locate the correct direction to their home nests. Or maybe it's the location of the sun in the sky. Or the moon. Or the way the earth tilts on its axis.

The only thing scientists know for sure is they don't know for sure.

The Ausmas are certain of one thing though - the homing instincts of the pigeons are incredibly fragile and can be thrown off by a number of factors which result in the birds veering 100 kilometres off course.

Thunderstorms, fog, earthquakes, high power electrical lines, cellular phones and solar activity all affect how a pigeon flies. The appearance of a hawk or other predator will also result in a change to the pigeons' flight path.

Pigeon racers try to send the birds out when conditions are ideal but some things cannot be accounted for in advance.

"With earthquakes, birds and animals know it's coming before it happens," Dick says. "It's the same with birds - they know it's coming and they're out of the neighbourhood before it strikes. There was an earthquake around Olympia (Wash.) six weeks ago and we had a bad race come in.

"That was before the earthquake struck. The birds had a tough time coming home. I guess they were trying to get around it."

The pigeon racing bug first bit Dick Ausma when he was growing up in Holland.

Homing pigeons were illegal in Holland when the Germans occupied that country during World War II but afterwards, the popularity of the sport soared. Ausma, now 69, first became involved in pigeons when he was 14 and as he grew older, his interest grew.

He met Rockly through pigeon racing and after coming to Canada in 1952, he continued to raise and race the birds.

The hobby has changed over the years. Where once the pigeon racer would wait and catch each bird and manually remove its band to record its arrival in a special clock, things are much easier today. Now computer chips in the bands and scanners at the entry to the loft allow the bird fanciers to record electronically the exact moment each pigeon arrives home.

While technology has helped pinpoint the race times, breeding and training a champion bird remains a somewhat inexact science.

"Handling has a lot to do with it, training has a lot to do with it and so does how much of a fanatic you are with it," Dick says. "I'm not as much of a fanatic anymore as I used to be. I would go out training every morning. I know one guy who spent $600 in gas in one month just taking his birds out for training."

The Ausmas are members of the Surrey Racing Pigeon Club, a group of 24 local enthusiasts.

The club began as the New Westminster Racing Pigeon Club, but the sport began to wane in that city during the 1960s. Soon most of its members were living in Surrey prompting the name change.

The Ausmas say the number of pigeon racers in B.C. has been on a steady decline in recent years but there remains a solid core of enthusiasts in the Fraser Valley.

"There used to be a Vancouver racing pigeon club and there used to be a Westminster racing pigeon club but they're gone now," Dick says. "There's nothing left in the city, there's none left in Vancouver due to the building codes and whatever. It's the same in New West.

"Surrey is pretty good because the bylaws are quite favourable to us. We've had to do some fighting for it over the years to get it."

Racing pigeons are divided into three classes - short distance, middle distance and long distance - with annual races split into a season for older birds in the spring and early summer followed by a season for younger birds winding up in late August.

The pigeon racing clubs in the Fraser Valley send their birds as far afield as Fort St. John or Edmonton to the north, Medicine Hat to the east or Weed, California in the south. The Surrey club races almost exclusively from southern locales which means the birds have to be regularly inspected by U.S. agriculture officials.

Regardless of the start point, the distance has to suit the birds for a breeder to be successful.

"A long distance pigeon in a short race will usually finish 10 minutes behind," Dick says. "He's got a slower wing beat than the short distance pigeon that works really hard. He doesn't use as much energy on a short flight but he's slower.

"The fastest speeds we usually get is around 1,900 metres per minute. Last week we had pigeons fly from Everett (Wash.) and their average speed was 1,370 metres per minute. The average working speed is just over 1,200 metres per minute."

While the Ausmas insist their commitment to the sport is not as intense as it once was, they remain dedicated to raising and racing their birds.

The Ausma home now features three separate pigeon lofts as well as facilities to house a wide range of other exotic bird species. Currently there are more than 200 racing pigeons in the lofts.

"It's our hobby and we run the pigeons, the pigeons don't run us," Rockly says with a laugh. "With some people though, the pigeons run them."

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