Cameron Leslie catches up with with Clive Delamore - secretary of the Whangarei Racing Pigeon Club - on the finer art of a sport that has been around for centuries, some say it was popular as early as 220AD.
How does pigeon racing work? My understanding is the birds race from one point to another, how do they know where to go?
The birds are taken to the race release point via vehicle or plane. Once they are released, they then fly back to their individual lofts. When they arrive at their own loft, they are electronically timed from the band on their leg. The bird with the fastest air speed over the distance to their individual loft is the winner. As for knowing where to fly to, there is still great debate by all as to how they do it. It is known that they have very good eyesight over long distances, and it is accepted that they are able to use magnetic information to guide them back home.
Are the pigeons specially trained?
Yes, the pigeons are trained from a young age to return to their loft and get to know their surroundings. This starts at about 5km from home and steadily increases out to around 50km. Also the birds need to be fit and healthy before going into racing. They can comfortably race up to 1000km. To achieve this feat, they need to be treated like an athlete, and fed, trained and looked after with good care and precision.
How do you get involved with pigeon racing? Is the sport going well, or is it hard to get new people involved?
To become involved with this exciting family hobby, you just need to contact one of our members, or our president Carl 4347571, or myself 433-5111 and we can help with all the getting started bit. Although attracting new members is like any sport nowadays, in the last two years we have increased our membership, and there is a great jovial camaraderie among our flyers. Getting started in pigeons is not expensive.
If you could describe pigeon racing in a few sentences how would you? What's the goal when racing?
Keeping race pigeons is more a passion than just a hobby. You get an immense pleasure and pride when you see your birds coming home from a race, especially at a good time. They are easy to care for and breeding time is a fun time. I guess the goals of pigeon racing is to do well in the race results, but also there is a longer-term goal of looking after and breeding even better champions.