So you're thinking about getting into racing pigeons?

Good on you. I'm the only person I know that has any interest in the hobby. At 38 years old, I can honestly say not since my childhood have I met anyone that races them let alone knows anything about them.

I was brought up in a mining town in the 80's and 90's, and whilst those decades were 20 years past the glory days of the hobby, we still had dozens of lofts local to us. The allotments near to my school were populated with decrepit looking structures, huge sheds behind metal trellis perimeters, and fences crudely made from old conveyor belts scavenged from the local colliery. From here flocks of hundreds of birds flew circles above our estate. I must have asked my mum about them because I've always known what they were, and it always interested me how they found home.

Fast forward 25 years and I've moved back up to Nottinghamshire after studying zoology in Cornwall for the last 5 years. I'm married and have a young son with another on the way. As I drive home from work I spot a man with a wicker basket in a lay-by next to a field a few minutes from where I live. I must have been thinking about racing pigeons recently because I remember thinking 'Yes, I can pick his brains!'.

The chap I spoke to was an elderly flyer from Retford. He was on a training toss*. I can't remember his name but he was friendly enough and didn't seem to mind my enthusiastic intrusion. From that 15 minute conversation I came away with instructions to visit the Ollerton House pub later that week as members from local clubs would be basketing* there.

A few days later and I roll up to the car park round the back of the pub. I'm immediately transported back to the early 90's. A cacophony of activity akin to the first few minutes of a car boot sale. Old men with roll ups in one hand and a basket of hope and their hard work in the other. Younger lads in tracksuit bottoms helping some of the older gents transport birds from basket to basket. There are constant outbursts of laughter and a fair bit of banter exchanged between competitors as they form a human chain to 'process' birds for the race. I receive the following advice; 

"Don't bother mate, you need deep pockets. Fifty pence a bird now! Fifty pence!" He said, whilst holding his £4 pint of ale. 

As it happened it was the middle of the season and the Young Bird* races were just starting. I was too late or too early to join in this year. So I left with a plan to get started in the winter, and promptly abandoned the idea when my second son was born that November.

Then, towards the end of the covid pandemic, some 4 years later, I happened to drive past another guy liberating some birds in early September. I do the same thing as before, stop, turn the van around and drive back to where he was stood, a few feet into a field. As I approach him he says 

"You a pigeon man?". 

"Not yet, but I hope to be" I replied. 

This was Don Footit. A highly regarded flyer from the same Retford club the gentleman I'd seen a few years earlier. He told me to consider contacting a local club if I was serious about starting up. 

So I went home, mulled it over. My kids were old enough to not need constant supervision now, I was working too much and needed something to enjoy, some escapism, so I thought now was as good a time as any.

I joined a couple of Facebook groups, Novices/New to Racing Pigeons is a great group and I found that highly encouraging. There were new starters, people who had been racing a few years, and people like me that were only just dipping their toes into the game. 

This is where the difficulty of starting out becomes apparent. Because many people already in the hobby are long since retired. Most of them don't have Facebook accounts, that's for sure. Club digital footprints are almost non-existent. So finding someone to contact isn't as straight forward as you might think. Luckily, a picture-less facebook profile pointed me in the direction of the Ollerton House Flying Club. No they didn't have a website. No they didn't have a facebook page. But they did have a name. And with that they tagged the (I presume) wife of the federation secretary, Tony Knight.

I spoke to Tony who was only too accommodating. He invited me to the White Heart pub, 3 miles from my home to meet some of the other flyers that Friday. It was late in the year and all the flying had finished, but Tony seemed keen to show there was a social side to the club outside of the flying. 

The guys I've met so far are all very enthusiastic and quite entertaining. They've been racing pigeons longer than my Dad has been alive, so they know their stuff. But they're also two generations above me. When everything and everyone around you, in person, on TV and on social media appears to be WOKE, a few pints in the pub with people 40-50 years your senior is a refreshing and welcome change.

I've been going along to the club for the last few months now and one thing I hear again and again is the hobby needs more members. At one time there were 60 lofts in Ollerton, now there are less than 10. The picture is mostly the same across the country. To me, I can't understand why more people don't take it up. Yes it takes commitment, but from what I can gather the introduction of ETS Systems and a little mandatory help from your kids (pocket money needs to be earned) could prove to be an attractive proposition to more people like me, who want the challenge and excitement of training and racing animals, hundreds of miles back to your garden, and the comradeship that the hobby offers.

So this blog is my contribution to the hobby. I'm a complete novice. I've never trained or raced pigeons before. I work full time, I'm renovating my house and I have a wife, a couple of young boys, and a mischievous family dog. If I can make it work, enjoy it and hopefully have some success, it may encourage others who have thought about racing pigeons to give it a go. I'll keep this as up to date as possible. I'll give an honest account of my progress, warts 'n' all. I'll try and be as informative as I can though I won't be proofreading everything so expect some grammatical errors. By the end of the year we should have a complete up to date 'beginner's guide' in the form of this blog. I'm also a bit of a hobbyist videographer so I'll be recording my progress throughout the year too. But for now, I've got two birds in a box and a loft to finish building.

*Lofts - Pigeon shed, basically where the pigeons live.

** Training toss - Young birds and some old birds need to learn where their loft is. They'll be put in baskets and driven at ever increasing distances and liberated (let out the basket) to find their way home.

*** Basketing - Where the pigeons entered into a race are recorded and put in baskets and onto the lorry. Usually done at a basketing station.

**** Young bird - a young pigeon less than 1 year old.

***** WOKE - Those annoying lefty middle class student-types.

******ETS System - programmable identity rings (a bit like ASBO tags) that automatically record a pigeon's race time when it passes over the sensor pad in the loft. 

Other projects on the go.

Attempt at the sliding door for the loft. 

Site at the end of the garden for the loft. Unfortunately it's north facing.

Base made up of brick pillars and railway sleepers.

Partially finished loft. The price of cladding after covid is really expensive so the loft build slows down.