John Clements and I have recently been exchanging ideas about how best to identify and record what one might term 'proper' pigeons. Not hype pigeons, and not just those that appear at the top of the open and section results of their respective organisations. We are thinking of creating an Elimar Register of UK Long Distance Racing Pigeons, divided into distance bands of 500-599 miles, 600-699 miles and 700 miles plus. The qualifying criteria being simple: a channel crossing must be negotiated and the birds must be competing in national or international racing. The Irish King's Cup pigeons would all qualify given the nature of their route irrespective of the fact that many of those birds are competing at under 500 miles.

Of course, this Register would be a big undertaking and could never hope to be exhaustive but we'd aim to seek out worthy and often unheralded birds and would at the same time encourage owners of such pigeons to forget their shyness and forward details of their breeding etc on to me, Cameron, at Elimar. As a next step, we'd like your thoughts on what shape the Register might take so please e-mail your ideas to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

In the meantime, here is a short article from John to set the tone...

A NEW LOOK AT PIGEON QUALITY  

by John Clements - July 2012

Up to now assessment of pigeons is against the basic idea of winners. It is presumed all winners are all good pigeons therefore pigeons bred off winners are likely to be also good pigeons.

Anyone who has had anything to do with pigeons knows this idea is false. Not all pigeons that achieve the highest velocity in any particular race are all good pigeons capable of breeding good birds. A lot of them are just lucky pigeons or even followers.

An alternative way of looking for quality and an alternative method of finding demonstrably good pigeons is to rely on recorded distance flown instead of prizes. It is quite possible to make a case for pigeons that have flown a specified long distance into the UK to be of high quality.

My theory of liberations from the South of France states it gets increasingly more difficult the further South you go. This difficulty probably doubles with every extra 50 miles above 400 miles. This has to do with the pigeon being innately a flock or group flying bird and because it is against the nature of single birds or lone pigeons to cross the sea those that do so are therefore very special.

With ideas such as these in mind it is not just overall distance or speed that is the criteria of top UK distance pigeons, it is the fact that only a very few pigeons either are brave enough or have the mental strength to cross the sea in their stride without hesitation when they are alone. This situation does not occur to Belgian or Dutch pigeons simply because they do not face this kind of problem. This is also why so many pigeons (including those bred off winners of the big important international races) do not measure up when tested over the long course flown into the UK.

For all these reasons we should begin to take a new and different view of pigeon quality. I argue that our UK criteria is different than the continental criteria. Our criteria includes bravery and the ability to fly alone while there’s is based on speed. I would further argue that this ability is the one criteria that sets our pigeons apart as having the ability to win difficult races not only in the UK but in the rest of the world. In short our pigeons are harder than others. Thus, South Road racing from France, by the mere fact that a sea crossing is part of the course, has the effect of first testing and then weeding out pigeons of less quality.

With all this in mind it might be a good idea to identify pigeons based on these principles. Proven pigeons that have flown a certain distance in a specified time could well be the basis of a new kind of assessment. The new criteria I have just suggested may well appeal first to the more thoughtful fancier and second, if it delivers results, increasingly to the world wide fancy, including Belgium and The Netherlands.