Relatively new to pigeon racing, Abbotsford resident Ben Johnston is in a flap about the sport, writes Adrian Seconi.
Imagine this. You get packed into a hamper, popped in the boot, transported somewhere you have never been before and are then released and expected to find your own way home.
My first thought: I wonder if my wife will miss the kids. And the mention of a hamper just makes me hungry.
As it turns out, when Ben Johnston heads out of town with a hamper in his boot, he has not hatched some nefarious plan for a bit of peace and quiet.
Nor has he stashed a fine selection of cold meats, cheeses and a good bottle of red in the back of the car.
Nope. It is just pigeons back there. And they are not overly meaty either.
These birds are thoroughbreds. Little balls of muscle that can traverse incredibly long distances at surprising speeds.
The sport of pigeon racing might date back to around 100AD and have its origins some 1000 years earlier,
but it is still relatively new to Johnston, who took it up about three and a-half years ago.
An animal lover, the 35-year-old has a home in Abbotsford that is part farmyard, part residential dwelling.
Chooks and ducks dominate the backyard and, at the bottom of the section, is the pigeon loft.
Wife Elise, son Seth (8) and daughter Efa (5) share Johnston's passion for what is a niche sport.
The local club has just 10 members but it is a tightly knit community and they all share resources.
The president of the Mosgiel Homing Pigeon Club, Dennis Bain, lives just down the street from Johnston. It was his birds flying overhead which stirred Johnston's curiosity.
The club helped him get established and now he has 35 to 40 pigeons.
‘‘They are quite amazing birds. I didn't think I would get into it like I have and now I'm a little bit pigeon crazy, you know,'' Johnston says.
‘‘But the more I learned about them, the more I realised they are certainly not the dirty old street rats that are around the city.''
The birds have their own distinct character, too, which makes them more lovable, Johnston continues.
‘‘Some of them will be quite stand-offish no matter how long you've had them, whereas others will stand on your head when you're cleaning out the hutch.''
Speaking of lovable, pigeons mate for life and that has led to a controversial practice called widowing.
Basically, the racing pigeons are separated from their mate, apart from a short period after they have returned from a race.
Those stolen moments keep the pigeons motivated to get home as fast as they can.
‘‘That is not my cup of tea. There is one of mine that performs much better when its mate is incubating eggs. It certainly does help with their motivation for some of them.''
How the birds are able to navigate their way home from somewhere they have never been before remains a mystery.
‘‘No-one really knows how they find their way home, but I think they have a long-term compass which points them in the general direction,'' Johnston says.
‘‘They are certainly very visual and, when they get close, they follow roads.‘‘If they are somewhere they've been a lot, when you open the hamper they are off. But if it is somewhere they have not been before, they'll go up and fly around to get their bearings and then away they go.
‘‘The first couple of times I took them to Milton, they'd do a couple of circles and head south because that is the way they had always headed off.''
‘‘I don't know how long it took them to figure it out, ‘hey, we're going the wrong way here' before they headed back the other way but there are certainly people trying to figure it out.''
Pigeons compete over distances of up to 1000km and can reach speeds of up to 140kmh. The farthest Johnston's club takes the birds to race is to New Plymouth, which is about ‘‘700km as the pigeon flies'' - hah!
‘‘The winning birds, if the weather is right that day, will be home well before sundown.''
‘‘Mine have done Christchurch to here in just under three and a-half hours. That would have been with a tailwind. But when they are flying their heartbeats get up to 600 beats a minute and they absolutely go for it.''
While homing pigeons seem to possess a kind of hard-wired compass, they still seem to learn through trial and error and training begins when the birds are about 6 or 7 weeks old.
They start by learning how to get through the trap and back into the loft.
After they have mastered that, Johnston takes them down to Miller Park in a hamper, opens the lid and lets them go.
After the birds have returned from the home of Green Island rugby a couple of times, Johnston takes them up to Wakari Hospital. The birds make half-a-dozen flights from there to gain confidence and, basically, it is just a matter of them going a little further each time.
Ever so occasionally, the birds do not make it home .
‘‘It is very rare that they don't come back. Usually, if the weather closes in, and they get stuck somewhere, they will find somewhere to wait it out and return in the next couple of days.''
But last year Johnston lost five birds when the weather was fine and still has no idea what went wrong.‘‘That day was not a good day to be honest. I don't like it when they are not home.''
Pigeon racing became hugely popular in Belgium in the mid-19th century.
It was aided by the railway, which meant pigeons could be dispatched great distances inexpensively, and mass-produced timing devices, which helped turned a hobby into a serious sport.
Not much has changed over the years. The birds are mostly transported in private motor vehicles these days and the sport has been dragged into the digital age.
The rubber rings and those fabulous mechanical clocks have been replaced by electronic chips and digital pads.
The pigeon fancier used to have to be home to grab the bird so they could remove its rubber ring and pop it in the clock. These days you can be anywhere.
But, essentially, the sport is the same. It is a race with one starting point and a lot of different finish lines.
The winning pigeon is determined by the average speed and there are time allowances for the birds which have to fly further to get back to their lofts.
Its popularity has declined, although it is still relatively big in Belgium and is a growing sport in China.
‘‘It has become really popular in China. People's grandparents are dying and they are making a million dollars off granddad's pigeon loft by selling it to China.
‘‘For some reason it is growing over there, whereas here it is shrinking. There is just obscene amounts of money being paid for these birds out of Europe.''
Johnston is not exactly cashing in, unless you count the $100 he won when one of his birds finished second in a race last year.
Pigeons are cheap to run, though. He spends about $10 a week keeping them in seed, he says. And that is nothing compared with the joy the birds bring him.
Bits and bobs
■ According to the Royal Pigeon Racing Association, the earliest recorded reference to the use of messenger pigeons comes from Ramses III (c1200BC), when they were used to convey news between cities regarding the flood state of the Nile.
■ The Romans used pigeons to convey messages throughout the empire, while carrier pigeons were held in high esteem in the Arab world and were called ‘‘The King's Angels''. It is generally believed that the sport of pigeon racing began as early as the 1st century AD.
■ In New Zealand, newspaper reports from the mid to late 19th century provide a glimpse of a fledgling sport that developed alongside the commercial use of pigeons as a means of communication.
■ The prosperity that flowed from the gold rushes of the 1860s sifted through to a demand for reliable homing pigeons. Used by newspapers, businesses and government departments, birds boasting strong bloodlines were imported from Europe.
■ The first reported pigeon race in New Zealand was held in conjunction with the 1875 Christchurch Poultry Show. Five birds were entered: these were described as a ‘‘homer, two Antwerps, a baldhead and a beard''. The homer, Fleetwing, won the race for Mr W. Walker, who was clerk of the Christchurch court.
