Wednesday 19 April I am in the garden, a light breeze and sunshine for a change.
My Competition Rollers and working Racers are enjoying their freedom which means these first few lines have taken me twenty minutes, at every clap of wings or a fly past I look up and get carried away watching them. The Racers just took off and the reason was a pair of hawks hunting together, the Rollers were high above them up in the clouds and some of the early youngsters were beginning to spin - wonderful to watch - to me this is what life is all about, can't get any better than this.
Although Modenas will always be my first love and African Owls my second, I have kept, bred and shown a good many breeds in my pigeon life including Garden, Indian and Exhibition Fantails, Show and Exhibition Tipplers, Competition and Show Rollers, West of England, LF CL Self, Bald, Beard, Whiteside, Muffed and Short Faces Tumblers, Markische, Elster, Schimmel, Hamburg Sticken, Schmalkaldener Moorheads, Nuns, Norwich Croppers, Polish Lynx, Polish Krymka, Fairy Swallows, Saxon Spot, Saxon Monk, Working and Show Racers. (Forgot Oriental Frills and Jacobins.)
I was reading Alan Roscoe's very interesting article on judging Best in Show and although I am sure there is no one with a detailed knowledge of all the breeds, with the world getting smaller with travel and more movement into countries, new breeds are appearing all the time, the latest book of Standards will confirm this. A lot has happened since Fancy Pigeon Standards edited by Dennis Ison back in 1981 and you can bet the latest book will not contain all the breeds. Having said that there are quite a number of good judges capable of judging a Best in Show line-up.
I think the summer agricultural shows are good schooling for the would-be allrounders. I know I enjoy these events with the general public wanting to know, 'How can a Jacobin see?' 'Does an Exhibition Fantail stay in that position?' 'Can an African Owl eat?' If you can get one person interested enough to start keeping fancy pigeons you are doing the job right. At these events I enjoy judging a fancy section, a flying section or both.
