Now the breed appears en route to its former heydays. I well remember at the first East of England Autumn Exhibition there was an entry of over 50 Mookees in a range of colours and markings mostly being penned by fanciers from the Newmarket area.
They were referred to by Willoughby in his Ornithology of 1676 as the 'Narrow-tailed Shaker' an old Indian breed. The Mookee is probably an ancestor of the Fantail, or at least descended from a common ancestor.
The breed had several supporters in the late 1950s and early 1960s including Alan Cooper, the late Harry Wheeler and Maurice Thompson and myself. Each year an advert appeared in Fur & Feather with birds offered for sale from the Cholmondeley Estate in Norfolk. This stud had been founded in the 1920s with direct Indian imports. Each year a Fantail breeder, Mr Bartel from King's Lynn sorted out the stud and the surplus were advertised.
Early in the 1970s I was telephoned by a noted Danish fancier, the late Rudolf Ovesen from Arhus. He had just obtained two pairs of blacks from South Africa. They had been flown to Holland, stayed a few weeks and bred a few youngsters, then were sent on to Germany where they were collected by Mr Ovesen, again not before breeding several youngsters. All the youngsters stayed in the country where they were bred. Mr Ovesen's problem was that the under-beaks were the wrong colour and could I obtain some British birds to correct this? I explained that all the British birds I had seen were browns, which did not require dark under-beaks. He then contacted the secretary of the German 'Other Land Tumbler Club', Alfons Perick was unable to trace any unrelated birds.
It was decided, with the help of Anne Rickets, to import three pairs again direct from South Africa, one pair of blacks for Rudolf and a pair each of black and blue for me. On my next visit to Denmark I would take a pair with me. In due course birds were taken to Denmark and some first importation birds returned to England. During this time three birds were obtained from the Marchioness of Cholmondeley who explained that after Mr Bartel became unable to manage selection, the stud had virtually faded away mainly by outcrossing and strays. A few years later Mr Dacer of Luton imported some from America, I only saw one importation descendant, a low-cut spread ash cock bird owned by Mr Thompson.
Over the years the following breeds have been crossed into Mookees - Modena, Holle Cropper, Fantail, West of England Tumbler and Gimpels and more recently possibly South German Blasson Priests (as they are known here). Over the last three years some birds have been imported from Germany and now this country has the full range of colours - black, brown, red, yellow, blue black barred, blue chequer, lavender, isabella, brown barred, mealy, cream barred and self white.
When the imports came from South Africa, the Standard was imported with them. It was published in 'Pigeon World' and again in the NPA Book of Standards in 1981. Whilst I have not seen our Mookee Standard as printed in the new NPA book, in the 1981 book 'Spot heads recognised on equal basis' is clearly printed. This is a recessive marking that still appears in my small stud from time to time, but only in blacks, and then only about one in 20 from the South African bloodlines.
