VIDEO: Pigeon racing is flying high in Ireland
FROM David Murphy’s kitchen you can see a compact collection of dark-brown wooden sheds in his back garden. Behind a series of protruding platforms protected by thick, spaced wire mesh are the unmistakable, jutting struts of pigeons. “There’s about 60 of them out there at the moment,” says David. “I sent five of them down to a race in Skibbereen last night, but I haven’t heard anything from the fellas down in Cork, so there must be bad weather delaying the race today.” The previous evening, David had put the five pigeons into a pannier to be loaded onto a ‘transporter’ with hundreds of others and sent down to Cork.
David has been a pigeon-fancier since his youth. “They were always there,” says the 54-year-old secretary of the Rathfarnham and District Racing Pigeon Club. “My father had them and my brothers had them, before me. When you start racing them, you get that bug. It’s funny, my wife will probably tell you later, but we hadn’t a stick of furniture when we moved in here, in 1985, but I had the wood for my loft.”
There are 120 racing-pigeon clubs in Ireland, including 34 clubs in the Dublin Federation and five in the Cork Federation. Their members are passionate, and organised. The pigeon-racing season is split into two. From May to mid-July, owners race ‘old birds’, birds that were born in, or before, the previous year. The rest of the season, up to September, is for ‘young bird’ races, involving birds born this year.
“I prefer the ‘old birds’, to be honest with you,” says David. “The ‘young birds’ are messy; thing with them is they can fly great as a youngster, but they mightn’t be great as an old bird. In general, they’re like racehorses. Some of them are good and some of them aren’t great. They might look great, but they mightn’t be able to fly.
“You go by the condition of them. It’s all about the feeding of them,” he says, picking up a small, silvery bucket of feed and putting his hand through it. “There’s corn, peas, linseed, flax, you name it, it’s there, soybeans. I get a couple of mixes and put it together myself.” David’s wife, Jean, walks into the kitchen and is concerned about David’s t-shirt and its suitability for a photograph in a national paper.
David takes the jovial criticism as an excuse to tell me more. “That’s an interesting thing about them,” he says, pulling at the offending t-shirt. “They’re used to seeing me in this, so changing it puts them off. You can’t change things too much. And, during a race, you have to leave everything exactly the way it was when you sent them off. It’s no use having the pigeon coming back, flying around the place not knowing where he is, because he has to hit that thing you see outside there.” What David is referring to is the ETS, or the electronic timing system, which is perched over one of the shed doors outside. This, along with the electronic tags that each bird wears, is the most important equipment a pigeon fancier has, and, at €1,000, the most expensive.
As David is explaining the clocking system to me — imagine the pigeon walking over a supermarket check-out — I note that there are two pigeons engaged in an amorous flutter.
“That’s where I keep my stock pigeons,” says David. “And he’s actually the best pigeon I’ve ever had, both as a breeder and a racer. He won me seven races.” David’s current season has been patchy; he has had only one club win so far. His best year was 2007, when he won 16 club races and finished well in federation and national races. Pigeon-racing can be lucrative. While the winner of a club race takes a small, collected pot, there are cash prizes of €1,000 for winners of federation races. National races are worth even more. In Ireland, the rewards are relatively small when compared to other countries, such as Belgium and Taiwan, where the sport is very popular. And transfer prices, as with top footballers or prized racehorses, are high. In 2013, a Belgian pigeon, Bolt — yes, named after Usain — was purchased at auction for €250,000.
David takes me out into the garden, where he introduces me to 18-year-old Hef, named after Hugh Hefner. He is David’s oldest bird and indicative of the affection that fanciers have for their pigeons.
“He’s on his last legs,” says David, as he picks him up gently. “Though I’ve been saying that for five years, I’d say. I wouldn’t do him in. I couldn’t.” Just then, a text arrives.
“That’s probably them. I have to check that, sorry,” says David. “4,000 birds liberated. They’re on their way.” David says it will take them three hours to get from Skibbereen to Dublin, flying at about 60mph. But they have a tail wind, so he wouldn’t be surprised if they get home earlier, if they do get home. Last Thursday, David lost a bird that had been sent to race from Truro, in France. Races vary from between 80 and up to 450 miles. Birds often get lost. Later that afternoon and a few hours after our chat, I receive a text from him: “5 birds are home safe and well, first of them flew it in 2hrs 31mins.” I’m later informed that he didn’t make the top ten. It’s unlikely to stop him trying next week.
Childhood hobby
Henry Byrne, the chairman of the Irish South Road Pigeon Federation, was 12 years old when he used to go down to the local dump, in nearby Ringsend, and “snare” pigeons who had either lost their way or had been blown of course. He and his friends would find them and take them back to a makeshift coup that he had made on top of the Markiewicz Flats, in Dublin City centre. When he moved out to Ringsend, years later, the coup was the first thing that went up. He has 1,000 birds that he keeps in various places, including the back of his pet shop, in Dublin. “There’s a common misconception amongst the public that racing pigeons attract rats and are dirty,” says Henry. “But pigeon-fanciers look after their pigeons better than their kids, sometimes, and there are wives who will testify to that. “The lofts I have out on my pet shop all have a fully automatic conveyor belt that collects droppings and gets rid off it. Clean as a whistle. You could eat your dinner out of the lofts.”
A family sport
Anthony Wall, 41, from Fairhill, in Cork City, has been involved with pigeons since he was introduced to them at the age of six by his brother, who has recently died.
“At the moment, now, there’s no work around and it gets you out of bed in the morning,” he says. “I’m up around six in the morning and I go down to them to clean them out and get them all their water. Then, myself and my brother, Denis, who is in it with me, we’d go for a spin out to Youghal and release them for a bit of training and then back home. “I’ve an eight-year-old and he loves the pigeons. It’s a great family sport and even the neighbours there now, when there’s a big race on in France, they’d sit out with their stools and wait for them to come in. I’m after winning about 20 fed’ races over the last few years, so I’m doing alright.”
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