LEADERS & FOLLOWERS

PART 2

by John Clements

It is surprising how many fanciers think winning pigeons are always leading pigeons. Most do not stop to think how last week's winner might well be next week's late-comer; so what happened? The real solution to the whole problem is to realize that pigeons, for the most part, fly in flocks and not as individuals. It is only when they are forced to fly alone some pigeons do so but when pigeons face a challenge of a hostile channel, they either cross and fly low against the wind or stay with their mates in France – most stay with their mates. It is only strong ‘leaders’ who cross; those who ‘follow’ stay in France.

Flock Size

The sort of pigeons that are leaders in inland races are the ones that regularly get themselves into the leading flock but do not necessarily win the race. Flock size depends on conditions. On an easy day the flock size is larger than on a hard day. In a head wind the flock might be just eight pigeons. On a blow home the flock size might be fifty pigeons. The secret of detecting leaders (more reliable pigeons) from followers is how regularly each individual pigeon gets itself consistently, time after time, into the leading flock.

Of course there are other factors that further complicate the picture. There is distance of course. There is the size of the club. There is from how wide an area the convoy is to be distributed, and lastly how hard the course is.

The Course is important

In Britain the most difficult course is from France to Ireland because of the two sea crossings. In a race like this the wind has to be really helpful over the whole course for there to be even small flocks remaining intact when the pigeons hit the Irish coast. Usually a course of this of this kind relies on highly talented and highly motivated fit, confident pigeons to make the crossing into Ireland. This type of rare pigeon is the only type able to do it.  So difficult is this course the Irish have ‘Hall of Fame’ awards for those birds  that do it three times. These ‘Hall of Fame’ awards are the pigeon equivalent to gallantry medals.

The second most difficult race experience in the UK depends for the most part on where the sea crossing occurs in the race. On the South Road the distance from the liberation point to the sea crossing accounts for the degree of difficulty. If a pigeon has to fly 400 miles through France before it gets to the sea it is more likely to be in a smaller flock than one that only has to fly 100 miles before it gets to the sea, but of course the state of sea and the conditions the pigeon encounters when it gets there also has an effect.

That is why the NFC YB national of 2012 was such a difficult race; the conditions of the sea crossing were such that only motivated leader type pigeons attempted the crossing. The majority were less brave, less confident and less endowed. They stayed in France, willing to cross only when the conditions eased but even these timid types have their problems. If they fly up and down the French coast undecided whether to cross or not, they further exhaust themselves to the point where they don’t have enough energy to make the crossing even if they wanted to. An indecisive pigeon adds to an already difficult problem making it worse. Leaders are always decisive pigeons.

The Absence of Drag in the NFC

Most of these conditions plus one other came into play in this year’s NFC YB Fourgeres National. This extra condition was the National Flying Club itself. Races with the National Flying Club because it is ‘National’ with a stretch of 200 miles along the South Coast and 300 miles to the North of England make this club unique in that pigeons that fly in the NFC, fly without drag. In the National there are no inbuilt advantages to any one part of the UK through weight of numbers alone. The favourable location changes according to the wind and not according to weight in numbers to a particular location.

The wind, and the direction it takes, offers advantages on any particular day but overall, given the flock nature of pigeons and their tendency to fly as a group, weight of numbers to any one particular area is largely eliminated in NFC racing. 

Individuals come to the fore

What this means is that pigeons and breeds accustomed to flying with the NFC are more likely to be individuals than others that have been trained and raced in regional clubs. The better informed fancier is well aware of this and it is for this reason ‘National’ performances are generally more highly regarded than local or regional performances by fanciers who want to upgrade their colony with reliable pigeons.

My example using section ‘L’ illustrates this perfectly. Possibly the best performance on the day in the 2012 YB National belonged to a fancier who tests his pigeons solely in NFC racing. This fancier, John Skelton who lives in a difficult wind swept moorland location in the ‘Forest of Bowland’ high in the spine of England near Skipton on the Yorkshire/Lancashire border, timed two from his entry of eight pigeons on the day to the furthest location of any pigeons in the entire race!

The list of Section ‘L’ pigeons in the 2012 YB National

 

His quest to find individual pigeons by continually testing them in the NFC where the benefits of drag are reduced to a minimum has been rewarded in his overall breeding performance. He knows the NFC helps to breed more pigeons that will take to flying alone as a natural acceptable challenge. This challenge might not breed so many outright fast pigeons but it breeds improved reliability when conditions are difficult.

Other fanciers from Section ‘L’, those who are regular participants in NFC races and regularly test their Young Birds with them, also showed that they too benefited from having a ‘National’ background. O’Hare and Woodward of Middlewich and Wignall and Barnie of Manchester also showed that by often flying with the ‘National’ they  are more likely to produce an individual type pigeon able to fly alone when conditions demand it. Jumping from club racing to National racing rarely serves well. You have to decide it is ‘National’ or nothing. Another fancier who has the same ‘National’ intentions is Martin Hough of Macclesfield – he too has timed in too many times in difficult races for it to be passed off as a flash in the pan.

6th Section L YB National 2012

A Pigeon in the West

Perhaps one of the best individual pigeons in the section on the day, bearing in mind the prevailing wind was from a westerly direction, belonged to JB Newsom and son of Southport. Southport, the most westerly point in the section and also one of the most northerly, produced a memorable performance in a hard difficult race. Their pigeon, clocked at 12 minutes past eight, had little time to get home before darkness set in. Brian Newsom, the senior member of the partnership, told me of all the time he has kept pigeons he had never seen a pigeon in such a hurry to get home and make it into the loft. It was as if the pigeon knew darkness was about to fall and he had either to make it or spend a cold night on the tiles. Flying against the wind to this westerly location proved that his pigeon was making its mind up many miles away from home and decided to carry on alone despite the dangers. This determined leader certainly flew for at least 30 miles with no help from any other pigeons. It might not have been in the best location on the day but determination overcame its disadvantage. 

Mr Newsom

Doubling Up

The sort of thing we must look at when assessing performance and the search for leaders not followers is the lofts that timed in two pigeons on a hard day when many did not get a pigeon at all. In section ‘L’ on that day the following lofts doubled up by timing in two pigeons:- Mr John Skelton, Rob and Jo Bebbington, O’Hare and Woodward and E Taylor of Crewe. This equates to more than half of the total number of pigeons home on the day in their section. Timing in two pigeons in a hard race statistically indicates the loft as a whole is able to produce a higher quantity of ‘leaders’ as opposed to ‘followers’ by choosing to race National.  

Pecking Order

Whenever there are two pigeons flying together in the same direction, one is superior the other. It has something to do with the familiar phrase ‘pecking order’ but this time it is not in the loft pecking order but in the air. What particular signs of dominance are given from one to the other when flying are not known. Surely something works for there are many signs we have all seen. The long distance pigeons arriving late at night accompanied by a stray - stories of pigeons coming out of the air and as if nothing untoward is unusual – and then go through the open doors of a completely strange loft in a strange area. 

A similar thing to this happened in the YB National of 2012. The pigeon belonging to Mr and Mrs Mathews of Congleton (second secion ‘L’) arrived and entered the loft of the outright winner of the race - RJ Lowe of Reading. Mr Lowe had time to inspect the pigeon and take its ring number and identification before he released the pigeon to continue its onward flight to Congleton so we know this is true.    

It might have been that because Mr Lowe had two arrivals of his own almost at the same time the weight of numbers influenced the Congleton pigeon or it might have been an example of ‘Pecking Order’ in flight that influenced the Congleton pigeon. Either way it does not mean that Mr Mathews' pigeon was a bad pigeon or indeed a follower by instinct for it did continue to ‘dog leg’ up to Congleton when released. What it means on this occasion was that the Congleton pigeon was behaving like many pigeons and responding to the pecking order of its species. When obliged to fly alone it did so but prior to then it flew with others of a higher pecking rank rather than seek out a route of its own. 

This sort of thing probably happens and goes unrecorded more than we can imagine – the real criteria that will test a pigeon's true leading credentials is if it can repeat its good performance two or three times in equally hard and difficult races and learn from its mistake.

Velocity Calculation and Reliability

Repetition of good performances, even if they are not winning performance, is a better indication of real worth than winning by velocity. One of the shortcomings of the velocity method is that it does not discover reliability. Many lofts can regularly come up with nine or ten local firsts a year but this does not mean they have nine or ten reliable pigeons ready for National racing. They may have none but it is disconcerting how many fanciers either do not understand velocity calculation or if they do, they choose to ignore its shortcomings. The velocity method, to be meaningful, must be combined with other statistical evaluation to go someway in rectifying velocity shortcomings. Nevertheless if you don’t understand how velocity is calculated in the first place and are forced to accept velocity as the only means of finding good pigeons you are in fact snookered by an inadequate system which leads itself open to exploitation by clever fanciers determined to get as much publicity out of the system as possible by shifting the odds in their direction by one means or another.  

Section ‘L’ and the North West

I have chosen to analyse a particular section in a particular difficult race for a number of reasons. Undoubtedly section ‘L’ from Fougeres in 2012 was a difficult race that discovered examples of reliable young birds in each of the lofts I have mentioned. I think there is a lesson to be learned by this analysis. We could, for a start, have writers from each section analyse the difficult races into their own section. We could, if we so chose, promote pigeons to a kind of pigeon star status by informing us all about their whole racing life and thus follow individual pigeons in subsequent years.

If we did this it would surely not only elevate the individual pigeons but also the sport itself but if I am honest my reasons for highlighting Section ‘L’ is the undoubted fact that the North West - the counties of  Lancashire and Cheshire  that comprise Section ’L’  - has for a long time and in ages past been a main driving force behind NFC long distance pigeon racing in the UK.

These counties do not have a choice of the direction from which they race. This is the one area of the country that has always been solid South Road territory. Here they do not race from the North and never have. Their history has endowed them with a South Road intellectual history of the sport. Manchester Flying Club – the National Flying Club – the Great Northern – The Lancashire Social Circle are all a part of this history. A high proportion of the great names of the past have come from this part of the England. If the sport is ever to recover its high reputation it will be found to come from Lancashire and the North West. There is still a deep longing within these two countries to race pigeons from long distances not for money, not for the chance to sell birds, but for the principle of achieving something worthwhile in the pages of history and leaving something behind for future generations.

As the sport unfolds and rids itself of superficial thinking I fully expect the North West to once again lead the country just as they once did. No other part of the UK has a similar historic pigeon background and has contributed so much. Other areas have been fragmented away from the cause with breakaway organisations offering gold that turns eventually out to be not a substantial as they first thought.

In terms of the title of this piece – ‘’leaders and followers” – the North West and section ‘L’ by its history alone is a leader and not a follower. You cannot buy good performances in section ‘L’. They are not for the faint hearted and certainly not cheaply come by. Top performances in section ‘L’ are the real stuff pigeon racing is made of.