Katy Bauer
PIGEON racing: boring “hobby” or mystical love story? Belgium’s national sport may fuel the first argument, but it is the second that has real substance.
Johan van Deventer, a building contractor from Elandsfontein, enters one of the avaries at the smallholding of friend and fellow pigeon fancier Norman Gruar. “Kom nou. Kom nou my klein slet [Come now. Come now my small slut],” goes his high-pitched warble. All the birds in the enclosure shut up and listen, but only one “goes down” (a position the birds take up when sexually aroused). Van Deventer keeps cooing and his “klein slet” keeps stretching her wings down towards the floor and moving from side to side. She’s in love – with Van Deventer.
The racing pigeon is a homing bird. Its natural instinct is to return to its nest/eggs/offspring/lover from wherever it finds itself. At first glance the birds appear not a little like the mangy scavengers that frequent Jeppe station. On closer inspection though, it is clear these are thoroughbreds.
Van Deventer holds a prize racer and explains: “The eye is very important. The white skin around the edge, the brightness, the markings in the iris itself. Because she’s in good condition, her wing feathers lay neatly underneath each other.”
But recognising the physical attributes of a good bird over a bad one is the easy part. Ensuring the incentive for the buggers to fly home as quickly as possible from a race’s starting point is more complicated. Each racing pigeon yearns for something different, but love is certainly a major key to success.
At this week’s award ceremony for the Cradock Two Million – the longest and most lucrative race ever flown in South Africa (700kms and a total of R600 000 prize money) – ex-policeman and devoted pigeon fancier Willie Botes, chairman for the East Rand association and Brakpan Pigeon Club, talked tirelessly of amour. “It doesn’t work with all pigeons, but for many, love is the thing that makes them fly home the quickest,” says Botes.
Unlike Homo sapiens, pigeons are largely monogamous. They fall in love with one or at the most two other birds and, if it weren’t for interference from breeders, would remain true for a lifetime – about 17 years.
“We see which bird they fancy and then let them fall in love, so to speak,” explains Botes. “Then what I do is I take the bird I want to race away from its mate but let it see another bird making up to him/her. I’m telling you, when I liberate that bird in a race, it flies home as quickly as it can.” A dummy egg is another way of stimulating a yearning for home.
But no matter how fit, pedigreed or passionate the birds are, a lot can go wrong during a race. Hawks can ensnare them. Meercats nab them when they come down for water. Storms and powerlines can ensnare them. And occasionally, a couple of birds fall in love en route and elope. Roughly 20% of the birds entered in each race never make it home.
There’s a lot to the expertise which has been gleaned over hundreds of years of the bird’s domestication.
In South Africa, at the moment, only a handful of fanciers make any money out of the sport. This season’s top earner won over R200 000.
“You have to do this for the love of it,” says Gruar. A brief rundown of the tri- weekly training schedule Gruar has for his birds is clear testament to his devotion: Up at 4.30am; catching the right birds; drive one hour before releasing the pigeon; hurtle back to get home not too long after his racers; shower; breakfast; work.
Ironically, the sport is one which does not discriminate or segregate in terms of sex. “In fact,” declares Van Deventer, “the females usually beat the males.” The only reason he and Gruar can come up with to explain the phenomenon is that the females have more brains.