articles

Mike Tyson takes on pigeon racing

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 18:18:18 +0100

Wed Mar 17 2010

Former world heavyweight champ Mike Tyson will take flight on Animal Planet with a new sport - pigeon racing.

The network this week announced a new reality show that will pit Tyson, a novice pigeon racer, against serious competitors.

The show is currently titled Taking on Tyson and promises to bring audiences inside this "intensely competitive and bizarrely fascinating world".

Tyson has raised pigeons all his life but will take to the rooftops as a racing rookie. The network says he'll be assisted by a colourful team of pigeon experts as he rears, trains and races them.

The show is scheduled to be taped this spring in New York City and air early next year.

The Widowhood Book

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 07:51:10 +0100

Bankers, lawyers now proud to be pigeonholed

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 23:35:17 +0100

THEY call it the "Millionaires' Club": a shed at Castle Hill Showground, pigeon charts on the walls, nothing flash.

Inside are lawyers, developers, architects. All have channelled fortunes into pigeon racing, travelling overseas to chase bloodlines and building lofts to rival houses.

"It's like a poor man's racehorse," said Gary Young, a club member and owner of a building company. "But it's not all poor men any more."

These are people once referred to as the Howard aspirationals, who have become the nouveau riche. They have taken a sport traditionally regarded as blue-collar and injected it with new-found wealth. They reflect the shifting economics of Australia, the idea anyone can succeed.

In January, two club members and a friend went to Belgium to buy from a fancier whose pigeons were performing out of turn. Each spent about $20,000 on new stock, although single birds have been bought for more.

"We bought from his best bird," said Vince Pedavoli, an architect. The idea was to bring pigeons back to Australia to improve the quality of their lofts.

Later this month, Mr Pedavoli will send six birds to the Sun City Million Dollar in South Africa - one of the richest pigeon races in the world. About 250 Australian birds were entered last year, at a cost of about $1500 each.

"There are two groups," said Jeff Howell, editor of the Australian Racing Pigeon Journal. "A lot of the guys who spend big money are younger people. It's like anything, there's always resistance to change."

He said races such as the $100,000 Australian Pigeon Punt and the $30,000 Rooty Hill Green Ring had changed the way people approach the sport. Older racers, with 20 birds in a backyard shed, struggle to compete.

John Hanson, a printer who sells pigeons, recently bought a pair from Belgium for $25,000. He has $100,000 worth of birds in quarantine, awaiting importation, and says he has spent about $500,000 on the sport in two decades. "Each year there seems to be more money around," he said. "These lofts, they've got everything that opens and shuts."

Tony Sienkiewicz, who owns a bacon company, is building a loft worth $100,000 on a block at Kenthurst. He is one of the old pigeon racers, but part of the new money.

On February 19, 1990, pigeon racing changed in Australia. The first shipment of birds arrived from Britain - 160 pigeons, selected for their bloodlines, to add to local stocks unchanged since World War II. A further 257 birds would arrive by the end of that year and the flow would continue until today.

The Lu Bros Sale in 2003 was another shake-up. Believed to be the richest pigeon auction in Australia, its takings were estimated at $250,000. "That one sale basically lifted the profile and the whole bloodline in the country," Mr Pedavoli said. "Everyone got a hold of these latest, best birds from Europe."

Some of these men own racehorses but say the satisfaction of pigeon racing is that victory is all their own - not shared with a trainer or jockey. Others, who have had pigeons all their lives, are embarrassed by the working-class tag and do not tell colleagues of their passion.

For all the money, however, the sport is not controlled by wealth. Pat Arcella, a barrister and banana merchant, spent $150,000 on pigeons in the post-importation years but that has not made him unbeatable.

"In pigeon racing, money won't guarantee success," he said. "You could get an 80-year-old chap who's a pensioner, who's got no money - he'll come and knock us off. Pigeon racing is how you communicate with your pigeons."

source: Erik Jensen, www.smh.com.au
April 21, 2008

Pigeon Compass

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 22:25:33 +0100

One of Nature's most fascinating mysteries is how pigeons find their way home over vast distances.
No matter how far away they are taken, they almost always return to their lofts.
Now German scientists believe they have discovered how the birds do it. Research has revealed that tiny iron structures in their beaks allow them to analyse the earth's magnetic field - much like a compass.
Through the signals picked up, the birds can work out where they are and set out on the best course home.
As well as pigeons, many migrating birds display a remarkable ability to fly thousands of miles to return to a specific garden or tree year after year. Scientists are suggesting they may have similar iron-containing cells in their beaks.
The amazing abilities of homing pigeons made them invaluable during both world wars, with both sides using them to send messages over enemy lines.
Thirty-two of the 250,000 pigeons used by UK forces in World War Two were even awarded medals for valour.
In 2005, the film Valiant recorded the exploits of a group of fictional wartime homing pigeons.
In the past, experts have suggested the birds use the sun and stars to navigate, although in 2004 researchers found that many follow roads rather than their internal compass to plan their route.
Italian scientists also recently found that the birds can create 'odour maps' of areas they fly over, which may help them find their way.
However scientists have long believed that they can in some way use the natural magnetism of the earth to navigate.
The recent study by German scientists has revealed how this may be possible.
The research, published in the latest edition of the journal Naturwissenschaften, used X-rays to examine the upper beaks of pigeons. They found that within the skin lining are tiny iron containing particles in nerve branches which are arranged in a 3D pattern.
The team, led by Gerta Fleissner, concluded that this allows the birds to react to the external magnetic field of the planet and work out their precise location.
She pointed out that similar iron containing cells had been found in the beaks of robins, warblers and chickens so it may well turn out to be the way that other species also navigate.
"We expect that the pigeon-type receptor might turn out to be a universal feature of all birds," she said. Scientists are still discovering more about the incredible abilities of the pigeon.

Source: www.dailymail.co.uk 16th March 2007

Migrating birds may "see" Earth's magnetic field.

Thu, 14 May 2009 00:57:20 +0100

Migrating birds may "see" Earth's magnetic field. Migrating birds, it seems, can "see" Earth's magnetic field which they use as a compass to guide them around the globe.
Specialised neurons in the eye, sensitive to magnetic direction, have been shown for the first time to connect via a specific brain pathway to an area in the forebrain of birds responsible for vision, German researchers said on Wednesday.
Scientists have known for many years, from behavioural experiments, that birds use an internal magnetic compass to navigate on their epic annual journeys. But exactly how the system works has been a mystery.
Now work by Dominik Heyers and colleagues at the University of Oldenburg in Germany has started to unravel the mechanism at a neuroanatomical level — and it shows the eye is key.
Magnetic sensing molecules in the eye, known as cryptochromes, appear to stimulate photoreceptors depending on the orientation of the magnetic field.
This strongly suggests migratory birds perceive the magnetic field as a visual pattern, the researchers said.
It's a pity we cannot ask them, but what we imagine is that it is like a shadow or a light spot on the normal vision of the bird," Heyers said in a telephone interview.
The German team, which published their findings in the online Public Library of Science journal PLoS ONE, based their research on laboratory studies of the garden warbler, a highly migratory bird.
Warblers from Germany country region Russia were held in captivity and their nerve patterns traced and analysed to establish the direct functional link between cells in the retina and the Cluster N forebrain region.
Garden warblers, which are estimated to number around 10 million worldwide, breed in northern Europe and spend the winter in Africa.