Bad news to start this month came with a letter informing me of the sad and untimely passing of fellow scribe Jack Prescott. Jack, dedicated to the flying aspects of our hobby, and myself crossed pens on several occasions and on several subjects. We were at completely different ends of the fancy pigeon spectrum except in having one common, never faltering love, that of pigeons. I only ever met Jack on a couple of occasions, the last time being at Doncaster a couple of years back where, after an hour or so of friendly, though sometimes heated discussion, we parted with a warm hand shake as colleagues on the best of terms, a situation that I hope lasted until his sad demise. We quite often disagreed with the content of each other's writings but both respected the rights of freedom to discuss items openly. Jack's copious contributions to the magazine will be sorely missed by his many readers both here in the UK and from abroad.
Before I get too deeply into these notes, please let me make two apologies in advance. One to those fanciers who do not like or cannot take in statistics and another to those fanciers who find references to European affairs a pain. Personally I am a european (but with a little 'e') who is still English. In fact, talking to the other 'Europeans' it is quickly obvious they too, almost without exception, are Germans or Belgians or Frenchmen or Dutch first and Europeans a 'distance' behind - which I believe is as it should be and hopefully always will be, unless our wannabe president in waiting (AB) gets his way. We are all nationals of our respective countries, not a politically manufactured concoction of a bland european nationality as the politicians would seemingly have us. Each country must endeavour to hang on to its own identity and customs. That's enough of the politics.
As for statistics, I love them, even though you can easily make the same set of figures prove or disprove almost anything you like, again, just ask our Government. Nonetheless here for your enjoyment or otherwise are a few that have recently come my way.
In the UK our branch of the pigeon hobby has an annual number of registered breeders usually hovering around the 850/900 mark, plus or minus a few. Using pure guess work I would hazard a guess that our <900 breeders each over-winter an average of 20 pairs (some considerably more, others less) giving a very rough upper calculation of around 18000 breeding pairs, where on earth do all the youngsters go?
These breeders are spread the length and breadth of the four countries and cater for all of the many breeds known to be in this country. It all sounds quite impressive, until put in to perspective. I have just been reading through some facts and figures recently published in the magazine 'Die Rassetaube' by the German VDT (their NPA) and to my amazement read that they have at least nine individual breeds each of which has more followers than does our entire NPA. These nine breeds are not your everyday common or garden 'fantails' either. Heading their list is the neat and natty Deutsche Modena with over 4000 breeders, even the English Modena has 1150 ardent followers. The Kings with 3770 dedicated followers, the German Beauty Homers on 2962 and the Strasser with an amazing 3058 are all extremely popular, as is the Altenburg Trumpeter with over 1250 recognised breeders. Following close on their tails are the Exhibition Fantails with over 1110 followers and the Koln Tumbler currently on 975, whilst the multi-coloured Gimpel family can muster 950 enthusiasts, even the Oriental Rollers are well over 850. The English Show Tippler, which numerically is not exactly setting the world on fire here in its homeland, has 217 listed breeders whilst there are well over 500 breeders of Ice pigeons, 400 Chinese Owl breeders, 580 taking on the Old Dutch Capuchines and 317 with the Felegyhazers. A further 400-plus have taken to the Voorburgs, nearly 800 with the Brunners and an unbelievable 1600 keeping the Coburg Lark. There are even 13 West of England breeders, though sadly no references are made to our Exhibition or Flying Rollers. Collectively the largest group of breeders are those having studs of the various types of 'Form' pigeons which currently has 17748 registered breeders, next in line comes the Colour pigeon group with 9759 followers. The Structure breeds account for 3275, whilst the various 'Croppers' are on 7491 and the mixed bunch of Trumpeters 2946. Various Owls account for over 1400 whilst even the less popular 'Wattle' pigeons can muster 830 breeders and the Swiss Colour Pigeons are on 490. The two types of Modena (German and English) together with the Kings are, in terms of the number of varieties, in one of the smaller groups but impressively still come up with over 9600 active breeders.