By Keith Mott

This week’s article is on a very special pigeon fancier and I must say is well over due! The fancier in question is Fred Emberson, who now resides near Canterbury in Kent, but prior to that was one of the leading long distance racers in the London area for a great many years. Fred is the latest fancier to join an elite band of long distance specialists who have won the London & South East Classic Club Pau / Tarbes Merit Award, which is awarded to any pigeon that records three positions in the first fifty of the open result of the longest old bird race. This certificate is very hard to win and Fred won it with his beautiful six year old blue chequer pied hen, ‘Links Show Girl’, and she recorded: 2007: 23rd open L&SECC Pau, 2008: 22nd open L&SECC Tarbes and 2009: 28th open L&SECC Tarbes. Fred named his latest champion 550 miler; ‘Show Girl’ and I must say she really is a show girl, being a super hen in the hand with soft feather and beautiful eyes.

Fred’s loft is 100% geared to natural long distance pigeon racing and tells me he has never raced the Widowhood or Roundabout systems. The loft is 18ft long, with three compartments, two for the old birds and one for the youngsters. Fred’s self built loft has open door trapping and uses granules on the floors. Fred keeps seven pairs of racers and three pairs of stock birds, and these are all paired up the first week in March. He tells me he can’t remember the last time he sent to an inland club race and maintains he prefers to give the birds a 50 or 60 mile single up. He is not fussed which way the birds are trained and quite often takes them the opposite direction to the continental race point, as long as they get a good fly. The Emberson racing pigeons are fed on 50% Irish Mixture and 50% Diet all produced by Natural, and the stock birds are fed on Countrywide young bird mixture, which is nearly all Maple Peas. Fred maintains all pigeons are individuals, racing best to what ever suits them and recalls his good blue chequer white flight hen, ‘Links Confidence’, winner of 1st SE section, 13th open L&SECC Tarbes (550 miles) in 2009, was sitting 14 day old eggs and was slipped a small baby on marking day. The typical build up for his old birds for the main long distance events is three or may be five training tosses, one mid-distance race from some where like Tours and then into Tarbes. Fred has an open loft right through the racing season and of course has had his problems with the Sparrowhawks, with the worst time being three year ago when he lost nine pigeons in ten day period. Fred told me the Sparrowhawks always pick out and kill the best ones!

Fred is very proud of his record racing in long distance events over the years and quite rightly too, it is fantastic! At club level between 1981 and 1999 he won in the longest old bird race, nine times 1st Bergerac, twice 1st Bordeaux, once 1st Marmande and five times only birds on the day. In the L&SECC he has won long list of premier positions, the highlights being: 4th, 6th open Dax, 6th, 14th, 20th, 21st open Pau, 7th, 26th open San Sebastian, 13th, 23rd, 28th open Tarbes, 4th Narbourne Inter Open, 4th, 12th, 15th, 20th, 27th, 30th, 40th, 46th open Bordeaux and Bergerac. Fred has won the L&SECC South East section four times from La Ferte Bernard, Bordeaux, San Sebastian and Tarbes. Other great positions won are: 4th open BICC Dax, 13th open BICC Pau, 15th open BICC Tarbes (twice), 7th open BBC Palamos, 36th open BBC Palamos and 46th open BBC Palamos. A fantastic record in the very best long distance events!

The origin of his present family of racers are four birds obtained from A. H. Bennett, including a son of Champion ‘Andre’ and Fred tells me all his birds can be traced to these original stock birds. Another good introduction was two late breds, gifted to him by his nephew, Vicky Emberson of Banstead, and these were bred from pigeons obtained from Lol Green. Fred brings in the odd cross from time to time, but are disposed very quickly if they don’t work out. The stock birds are paired up the same time as the race birds in March and quite often will be mated to a race bird, so it has a safe mate through out the season. When Fred brings in a new stock bird he like small birds and also likes to see the wing tip touch the dark bar on the tail. He breeds approx. 20 young birds each season and very rarely races them in their first year, as there are far too many youngsters lost in young bird races. Many years ago he visited the NFC Pau winning loft of A. H. Bennett and Albert never raced his youngsters, so Fred tried the same system, and maintains not racing the babies make absolutely no difference to them in later life. Fred stresses that although they don’t race, the young birds get plenty of good training with lots of tosses off the south coast. On the odd occasion that he has raced a youngster or two, they go straight in to the National or Classic and are never put on the darkness system.

Fred says the best pigeons in his loft at this time are: Blue WF ‘Links President’ winner of in 2009: 15th open BICC Tarbes: Blue Chequer WF ‘Links Confidence’, a fantastic long distance racer and winner of: 2007: 43rd open L&SECC Pau, 2008: 15th open L&SECC Tarbes, 1st SE section, 13th open Tarbes: Blue Chequer ‘Links Just Reward’, winner of 2004: 65th open L&SECC Bordeaux, 2006: 28th open L&SECC Bergerac, 2008: 78th open L&SECC Bergerac, 31st open East of England Bourges, 2009: 13th open BICC Pau, 4th Narbonne Inter Open, Blue Chequer Pied ‘Links Show Girl’, the 2009 L&SECC Merit Award winning hen, 2007: 23rd open L&SECC Pau, 2008: 22nd open L&SECC Tarbes, 2009: 28th open L&SECC Tarbes.

Fred says his first recollection of pigeons was when he was in his pram and his father had some birds in a little cope hanging on the wall and he used to sit and watch them. In those days the family lived in Sutton and at ten years of age the young Fred scrounged birds from the local fanciers and set up his first loft. He joint the local Sutton club and in his first race won 3rd club Christchurch, and following week broke his novice status by winning 1st club Dorchester. Soon after that he had to do his National Service in the army, so the pigeons had to go, but restarted again when he got married in 1957. Fred maintains it is very hard to race pigeons in the National and Classic where he lives in east Kent, because he thinks the birds come in from the Continent at the Portsmouth area and ‘dog leg’ in to the east side of England. His pigeons never come in from the south when racing the National or Classic, always from the west or north. Fred says his nephew, Vicky Emberson and wife Lou, are great workers for the sport and are outstanding sprint fanciers, winning the Federation consistently every season. Fred feels very strongly about the Hawk problem which is killing our sport and says, ‘the powers that be protect the Sparrowhawk and some thing should be done to change their policy, as not only are they killing pigeon racing, they are wiping out all the song birds that live in our gardens’.

There you have it, the Fred Emberson story! I can be contacted on telephone number: 01372 463480. See yer!

TEXT & PHOTOS BY KEITH MOTT.

By Edison Thomas

In India we have active racing pigeon clubs in Tamil Nadu, mainly Chennai, Bangalore and Calcutta. Calcutta clubs were well known for their long distance achievements of over 1,500 kms where they got their birds back from Delhi in very good time. However, we haven't heard anything big from their end for over a while now.

Pigeons fanciers here are well aware of the sport in the West and follow the trends very carefully. The name Jansen, Catrysse, Sion etc are not strange in these parts and many fanciers own these birds in their lofts. However, the credit for most of the early good birds coming into the country must go to the British army and the colonisers who brought in some good birds from their home country and bred and raced them here. many old-timers in these parts call these birds - British Homers!

Then came word of calcutta as an emerging force in Racing pigeons with the likes of Mr Chen, who had some excellent birds. Calcutta has several chinese living there and it is believed that they flew a combination of Chinese birds mixed with some good imports, noteworthy here are the Newcombes, which is much talked about.

There is also this Gentleman in Coimbatore - Mr Baldrey, who is brought in some excellent Sions into the country. these were hardy birds and Baldrey being a generous man, gave his birds to many people in the south. These birds changed the complexion and look of homing pigeons in may pigeon homes. They won several races for many fanciers.

Then there was a man called Col Smith, my friend, mentor and guide in the sport, who started keeping pigeons in bangalore after his service in the Indian army. He managed to get down a catrysse egg and crossed it with a sion and managed to breed some of the best looking birds in these parts. They flew well too but not better than his crosses between his newcombe (that he's got from Calcutta) and the Dias birds.

The Dias birds are birds bred by a Gentleman in Chennai called Jimmy Dias. he got several birds from America, sent to him by a gentleman called Bill Sodoberg (the eyesign specialist). Today there may not be a single loft in the country that doesn't have the Dias blood in them.

Coming back to the bigger picture, numbers wise, Chennai is easily the undisputed racing pigeon capital of the country. It has easily over 1,000 active pigeon fanciers distributed across several clubs. Bangalore till recently had one club - The Karnataka Racing Pigeon Club (of which yours truly was a part of till recently). Bangalore also has one other active racing pigeon club, the name of which doesn't occur to me at the moment.

Tuticurin, Nagercoil, Trichy also have several active racing pigeon clubs and several fanciers from these places, including Chennai and Bangalore, in March 2009, took part in a 1000 km Race. Over 40 birds were pooled and the winner was Mr Thirumugam from Chennai. His bird redurned in less that 2 days from the distance. This is indeed a record in these parts.

By Laura Snider

Gunbarrel family's racing pigeons hang in the balance

Jim Williams and his 6-year-old daughter have a hobby they love to share together: racing pigeons.

Williams works to train the birds, which can fly hundreds of miles on a race day to return to their loft in the family's backyard on Carter Trail in Gunbarrel. Brianna works more on naming the thumb-sized baby birds and on picking out which birds should be bred together, an annual Valentine's Day ritual in the Williams house.

"It keeps me and my daughter busy," Williams said Tuesday. "She and I have been doing this for years at this property."

On Sept. 1, the Boulder County Board of Adjustment will wrestle with whether the dozens of racing pigeons Williams owns should be categorized as livestock or pets. The answer will determine whether the father-daughter pair can keep their birds or if the prized pigeons have to be ousted to meet zoning regulations.

The question of how to categorize pigeons landed in the Boulder County Land Use Department's lap in March, when some of Williams' neighbors complained that the "stench and mess associated with holding a large number of pigeons captive is untenable for nearby homeowners."

In a letter to the county, the neighbors argued that pigeons aren't pets, which are the only type of animals allowed in the area's zoning designation of suburban residential. Instead, neighbors argued the pigeons should be categorized as livestock, which is not allowed in suburban residential zones.

In May, the Land Use Department told neighbors that the pigeons do qualify as pets, according to the department's interpretation of county codes. And while some types of "pets," as defined by code, are limited in numbers depending on the zoning district, there are no limits on the numbers of "small birds" that a homeowner may keep.

Neighbors have since appealed the department's interpretation, and the Board of Adjustment will make a final decision on the categorization of pigeons on Sept. 1. In the appeal, neighbor Bruce Hanna argues that the pigeons are a health risk, since the birds are known to carry a number of diseases, and that Colorado state law is on his side.

"The county, I think, really didn't do their homework," Hanna said. "They didn't read the state law, and the state laws are very specific that pigeons are poultry and poultry are not allowed in suburban residential zones."

Hanna's appeal refers to rules created by the Colorado Department of Agriculture to outline how the state's Pet Animal Care and Facilities Act should be enforced. Those rules state that "for the purpose of PACFA, pigeons shall be considered livestock, specifically, poultry."

But Dale Case, director of the county's Land Use Department, said the rules for the Pet Animal Care and Facilities Act do not determine the county's definitions of what a pet is or is not.

"It doesn't have any direct legal bearing on us," he said. "When we interpret our code, we look at our land use code first and use the definitions that are within it. Where there are gray areas, we look outside our code for common definitions."

Case said Boulder County Public Health has also been out to see the pigeon loft and found no problems.

In September, the Land Use Department will argue to the Board of Adjustment that the interpretation of pigeons as pets should stand, Case said. The board's decision will be final, but board members could recommend that the county consider changing or refining the rules around pigeons in the future, perhaps adding a cap to the number of birds allowed.

Williams, who has lived on Carter Trail for a decade, said some of the neighbors' concerns may be based on misinformation and a tendency to equate pedigreed racing pigeons with the feral pigeons often found in city squares.

"I'm not a big fan of wild pigeons either," Williams said. "These birds are all vaccinated and medicated. These are very well cared-for animals."

In response to the upcoming Board of Adjustment meeting, Williams has sent information on racing pigeons to his neighbors and invited anyone who wants to learn more to visit his pigeon loft, which on Tuesday afternoon appeared neat and tidy and had no strong odor.

And while more than 30 neighbors signed a petition against allowing the pigeons to stay, Williams said there are plenty of others who have expressed their support for his hobby.

Nadia Repenning, who lives two doors down, is one of them.

"We are not bothered by them. I hardly ever see them," she said. "I know that the owner is really an expert in birds, so I know he's taking good care of them."

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