Project Pigeon

The majority of the pigeons are 95% back to normal now (some of them are pairing up now and there is lots of kissing going on- so they must be feeling better!).  For the first time in weeks is was great to watch them and a happy experience to be at the loft.  Today was the last day of their antibiotic treatment so we'll see how they do over the next few days.  One of the two dodgy ones at the loft escaped yesterday and flew around a bit so I think that is a sign that she is also feeling a lot better - she can at least control herself to fly, and she wants to fly.  The other one is still looking bad although his movements are more controlled than they were so we'll have to see.  The one at home has picked up a lot too, but she is super skinny so we are feeding her lots of beans, we let her out of the basket for an hour every morning now and she has a good walk around the living room, i think she was getting really sick of being in the basket, i can't wait until we can reunite her with her friends (which i think we will be ale to do).  

We've been getting on with making the new loft this week.  Now we have experience of keeping pigeons we can really design it well.  See a photo attached. We have even made a little loft so in case we ever have sick pigeons again we can put the bad one/s in there right away (and at least now we know what we are looking for).  The last bit of your syndicate money has paid for some of the materials so thank you very much and we will be engraving all your names on the outside.  The workmen at Boots Brindleyplace have been very helpful too!  And someone dropped some amazing windows to us so thank you to whoever that was (possibly Swedish with dreadlocks?).  And thanks to Boxxed who are being amazing and letting us use their spare outdoor space.

We'll be getting some new breeds of pigeons soon.  Birmingham rollers are stunt pigeons (the breed was developed in Brum) which you fly in a kit of about 20, they tumble and roll in the sky.  And some tipplers, pigeon which fly for up to 36 hours at a time, they fly upwards until they are dots in the sky and are attracted to light so it looks like they are flying to the moon, and you get them down by shining a big light from the roof of your pen up into the sky.  Ian has also been getting obsessed about this guy we've found in Bavaria who has trained pigeons to come back down in to a basket - so what he does is take his pigeons off somewhere in a basket, lets them out, they fly around and then he calls them down and they go back into the basket.  How cool is that!  We've seen the potential in that particularly for doing pigeon whistle and flute performances, still reckon its pretty hard to train them.  We've had to cancel the performance we were going to do at Supersonic :(  because of everything but will be working on it for next year now, better that it is amazing & that the pigeons recover properly.

We'll invite syndicate members for a loft warming when it is all built and everyone has settled in (probably mid November),

Yours in Sport

Project Pigeon