Loft Log 08/09/2008

The birds have been out to 10 miles. They went ¾ mile, 1.5 miles, 3 miles, 5 miles, 9 mile and 10 miles so far. I had a bad toss from the 9 mile station on 8/9, with 17 birds not making it home on the day. I had 5 more back early the next AM (today), and I hope they will continue to filter back in yet. They all headed home in the right direction, but probably went too far north. I saw several come back late from the north. Today’s toss from about 10+ miles, the birds were home all together shortly after I got home. It was a nice feeling.

The other combine had a race on Saturday, 8/9, the same day as my bad toss. They race to the Northwest, and I made the toss to the southeast. If the birds flew straight home, they would not have run into any other birds. All of the birds left the area to the right direction. I could see them all the way till they disappeared as dots in the sky, maybe 2 miles? I don’t think the other race impacted me. Maybe it was the K-factor? Maybe it was the slight (8 MPH) headwind? Maybe a health issue? I have put them on a Doxy-T cycle just in case.

I will put a new loft inventory on the site in a week or so. I am down about another 20 birds from the last inventory. I apologize if any of the missing birds are yours, but I am doing my best. I especially apologize if I have lost all of your birds in my loft that were in the race. I have made a few mistakes, but they are very much unintentional. I have seen some flyers have even much worse luck, but that doesn’t make me feel any better. I will be putting electronic bands on the birds in a week or so. I have the bands; I just need to get them on and scanned into the system. That will make the inventory much easier.

My loft inventory can be found at my site.

http://home.comcast.net/~edrenckh/Pigeons/index.html

Be sure to look at the AU Convention Race inventory if you have birds in the race that you are not sure where they are at. http://2008arpuconvention.info/

The birds are now on 16 hours of light each day. The normal light is about the same, but I like to set the timer when the birds are ready and not have to worry about it the rest of the season. The male birds are really starting to spin. It’s easy to tell I have made a few mistakes in the color of bands I put on. As I see the mistakes, I change the colored bands.

The race season starts on 8/22, almost two weeks away. This way, they birds will be finishing up the season right in time for the convention race. We will have 100, 100, 100, 150, 150, 200, 100, and 300-mile races. The final 300 is the Convention race, and it is two weeks after the last 100. So if a bird goes to the 200 mile race and comes back a bit tired, it can rest for a few weeks before the Big race. It appears that we will be shipping birds out of my place this year, so it will be convenient for me to get them on the truck.

The hawks have been relentless. They are making up for leaving me alone for a long time. I had a problem with several one year-old cooper hawks. The ones that have molted several feathers, but are not quite the full black color a mature one is. Deadly hunters, and caused quite a bit of pain with the birds. I saw one get grabbed, but since I was there right away, it got away. I don’t know the band number, but it was a blue bar. I even locked the birds down for a couple of days, and as soon as I let the birds out again, the hawk was there within two minutes. I suspect that a few of the race birds got caught, and a few more went to live somewhere else where they felt safe from hawks.

The birds roost in one loft or another after loft flying. There doesn’t seem to be any strictly one-loft birds. I have seen some of the easier to recognize birds in a different loft almost every day. When I am trying to re-settle them to a new loft, like I do when I fly old birds, it seems they can’t get the program down. Loft A was the loft with the most birds earlier, but one day when I let the birds out, I noticed that they did not want to leave Loft A. At dark, some birds were still out, and now Loft B has many more birds than it used to. Something must have scared the birds from loft A and now they feel better in Loft B. Once again, I believe aerial predators are the cause.

I added another loading chute to Loft A. I used to release the birds from the trap window and load from the loading chute, and it worked OK. The birds do have a bit of trouble knowing when to go to the window, or go to the loading chute. My ‘GO-GO-GO’ call to loft fly takes a bit to learn I guess. With the new chute, I release them from the chute as well as load them. The birds do not have to wonder which way to go. They just walk to the door near the floor. No flying, no wild birds. I think it will save feathers as the birds sometimes hit the bobs on the way out, or don’t judge the window opening exactly right. There are fewer mid-air collisions getting to the window, and it is easier to train the birds. I should have thought of that idea a while ago. As a bonus, both lofts loading chutes are facing each other. I can stack all my crates in one spot, and not have to move them as much.

As a side note, I did some target shooting with my pellet gun the other day. This is unrelated to any other topic in this letter. I was able to put almost all of my shots in a 1.25” circle from 30 yards. Most were within a 1” circle. Not bad for a .177 pellet traveling at 1100 FPS. If I have an apple in a tree that looks good enough to eat, I can shoot the stem and drop the apple!