LEADERS & FOLLOWERS

Part 1

by John Clements

The sport of pigeon racing tends to avoid academic study as much as it shuns its own history. These two ideas may be connected because it is the way we are, the way we earn our money, the way we have all been brought up. We know an awful lot about the home end, we know a lot about last week's race, we know a lot about each other… but almost nothing about the sport in its wider context. We tend to rely on the word of fellow fanciers. We hardly ever do joined up thinking that tells us about what happens in the middle of each race. We tend to be driven by the names of fashionable strains and popular devices all based on winning. I hope to show winning is not all of the story, it is largely a myth. Yet there are glimpses of a better truth out there waiting for us to respond to them.

Those fanciers who have been in the sport for a long time have grown to be suspicious of official information because official information tends to fib a bit and sometimes fib a lot depending on what they want to get out of it. Nevertheless, while experienced fanciers realise all this if they are honest to themselves they realise there are still only a very few reliable ‘National’ pigeons in every loft.  These few represent the sport's real future. These few pigeons are those that lead. This is because pigeons are flock-birds and the flock nature of the pigeon has a huge influence on the way pigeons fly and the decisions they take while flying home.

Flock leaders influence the rest into being better and faster at finding direction. Somehow flock leaders manage to signal direction to the rest. How this is done is not known but there must be invisible signals in flight only known to other pigeons because many times leading long distance pigeons come home with a stray that tags along for the ride.. These stray pigeons must have received a positive signal from the bird they have chosen to follow. Often, after they have rested, they fly on and get back on course but initially they followed another bird and as a consequence they were lower down the result than they should be.

To investigate this I have chosen to examine a section of the National Flying Club Young Bird race from Fougeres in 2012. This race was a hard race where only a small proportion of the whole liberation crossed the sea in their stride. I hope to confirm the possibility of those that crossed were mostly leaders but some may have been in between. Not exactly a leader but fit enough to follow and only lead only when they are forced to do so. I have chosen the National Flying Club because no one can accuse the NFC of ‘tramline racing’ and because of this the ‘National’ is generally accepted as having the best pigeons. It may be good to have a loft of very quick club pigeons but the National Flying Club, because it has pigeons flying to all parts of the country, also requires a high proportion of leaders. So, with all this in mind I have chosen to concentrate on a National race.

A satellite image of the cloud cover on the morning of the 1st of September when the NFC Fougeres race was flown. It can be seen that cloud covered the whole of the Cherbourg Peninsular and much of Northern France. This cloud has been interpreted as being dense enough to cause fine rain or drizzle. The wind at the time was coming from the North West. I have presumed it was this weather that caused many birds not to attempt a crossing of the English Channel on that day.

The percentage of day returns in the NFC Fougeres Young Bird race in 2012  was low, certainly less than 30 percent. In the longer flying sections for various reasons it was an even a lower percentage. It is for this reason I have chosen to examine in detail one of the longer flying sections namely Section L. I have chosen this section because it was not particularly favoured by the wind, because I am familiar with the territory, and because the pigeons that homed on the day to his section were more likely to have crossed the sea in their stride without hesitation. All pigeons in Section L had only a limited time to make it home on the day. Those that did were among the best pigeons in the entire race.

The following is a list of Section L pigeons timed on the day of release showing from left to right, the open position, section position, name and town of the fancier, distance, sex, flying time, velocity and the number of pigeons sent by each fancier.

As we see from the above there were 15 pigeons recorded on the day in Section L.  In the race as a whole there were 325 pigeon on the day from an entry of 4350 young pigeons. Of the ones on the day by far the largest total was from section ‘E’ who recorded 152 day pigeons, at least three times more than any other section. Six sections recorded only single figure returns. Section returns were as follows:- Section ‘A’ 43 – Sect ‘B’ 45 – Sect ‘C’ 9 – Sect ‘D’ 2 – Sect ‘E’ 152 – Sect ‘F’ 36 – Sect ‘G’ 6 – Sect ‘H’  3 – Section ‘I’ 1 – Sect ‘J’ 6 – Section ‘K’ 7 – Sect ‘L’  15.

Section ‘E’ sent a little more than twice the number of pigeons than any other section but recorded three times as many pigeons as the next largest sections, namely ‘L’, ‘B’ and ‘A’ but when it came to  the number of members sending section ‘E’ still had the highest followed by section ‘L’ , but this time only a quarter more - 105/E to 75/L .

From the above figures in terms of day pigeons section ‘E’ massively out-performed other sections. It would be incredible to believe some pigeons homing further up country to other sections did not make their way home via this dominant section.

1st Section L 32nd Open flying 355 miles raced by George Appleton of Manchester.

2nd Section 38th Open flying 337 miles, raced by Mr & Mrs Mathews of Congleton.

3rd Section 50th Open flying 390 miles (the furthest flying bird on the day in the whole race), bred and raced by John Skelton of West Marton near Skipton.

4th Section 65th Open Flying 356 miles, raced by Wignall & Barnie of Manchester.

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