How To Make The NPA Important Again (Part 1)

On the Michigan Pigeon Email List, we recently (well, maybe a month or so ago) had a long, drawn-out discussion of the relevance of the NPA to today's pigeon fancier. Another fancier made some excellent points and one of the better points he made was that if a fancier feels that the NPA has become somewhat irrelevant (as I do) then that fancier should come up with ways to improve the NPA and suggest those improvements. It's a good point; far easier to point out flaws than to figure out ways to fix them. So, in that spirit, I've been considering how the NPA might be changed to make it a relevant and important organization again. I'll be posting a series of articles each addressing some strategy or tactic to make the NPA relevant again.

One of the things that Willi Riechert, one of the candidates in the 2007 election for the NPA presidency, said he would do is to reach out to youth organizations to get more youth involved with pigeons. I'm paraphrasing a bit on what he said but that seemed to be the gist of his idea. Anyone who knows me knows that this is a matter of great importance to me--getting young people involved in our hobby.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been to two county fairs here in Michigan and I've heard about a third one. The Oakland County fair is moving in a good direction as regards a pigeon exhibit. They've gotten steadily more pigeons entered over the past three years and for the past two years, they've had separate pigeon judges that actually are pigeon judges (as opposed to poultry judges simply doing double duty). The Monroe County fair is in the same place that the Oakland County fair was a few years ago; that is, a few pigeons entered and no special cooping for the pigeons and no special pigeon judge. I heard from another pigeon fancier who is also a 4-H resource leader that the Ingham County fair is also pretty much in the same shape as the Monroe County fair; that is a few pigeons judged by a poultry judge.

This seems to me to be an opportunity just waiting for the NPA. We could put together a list of pigeon fanciers willing to volunteer as judges for these various county fairs. Granted not every fair will get a pigeon judge of vast experience but even a pigeon fancier with a few years of experience knows better what he or she is looking at than does a poultry judge. The point is to give the kids that are showing the birds some helpful advice about how to improve their stock. Also, just knowing that there are other pigeon fanciers around will help to improve the morale of these kids. Talking to some of them they seem to feel that keeping pigeons is some very oddball, niche hobby that very few people pursue. If they were to see that there are other people who also like pigeons, it would be a great boost and encouragement to them.

Once we have a list of pigeon fanciers willing to act as volunteer judges, the next step would be to organize judging workshops. This would get those volunteers that are willing but possibly not knowledgeable enough the training that they need. Experienced judges could work with these new volunteers to disseminate the needed knowledge.

Of course, the NPA would also have to contact the various county fair boards to make them aware that this volunteer help is available. Some county fairs might decline the help but usually when you offer volunteer help, most organizations are glad to have it.

Finally, the NPA could sponsor a best pigeon trophy for each of these county fairs. It wouldn't cost that much and it would encourage kids that might not otherwise consider pigeons to think about raising them. Again, it'd be up to the various county fair boards but again I doubt many of them will turn down the offer of a prize that's likely to encourage more entries--especially when it's offered for free.

Of course, the NPA could put a stipulation on the trophy that no unbanded pigeon could win (to keep people from simply rounding up commons and entering them in the show) and that the prize is only awarded with a minimum number of pigeons and fanciers. But the principle is still the same.

I'd suggest that this be coordinated in each state served by the NPA on a state-by-state basis. Each state representative could coordinate the judging lists and the judging workshops as well as getting the trophies for the various county fair boards and getting the needed rule changes started with each county fair.

Taken to every county fair in the country, this could start a real resurgence of young people interested in keeping pigeons. Even if it goes nowhere (which is not unlikely) it's a step. And this is certainly something that is more in the bailiwick of the NPA than any other pigeon club; showing pigeons is what we do.

Novice Corner - Can They Find Home?

One of the more common questions posed to me by novice fanciers (or people considering getting pigeons) is usually some variation of "Can these birds find their way home?" This is the pigeon's great claim to fame; the ability to return home from some place they've never seen before even if that place is hundreds of miles away.

1. Racing homers are bred to come home from a long ways away (sometimes as much as 500 miles). However, even given that, the birds need to practice finding their way home from shorter distances. Part of this magical ability to find their way home is learning where home is. The pigeons have be able to get out of the loft to see landmarks, smell the landscape and generally learn how to recognize home from the air.
2. Fancy pigeons, that is, jacobins, fantails, trumpeters etc., were selected for their appearance and not their ability to return home from long distances. They might be able to return home but I wouldn't bank on it. Having said that though, a fancier should be able to let fancy pigeons out of the loft (provided they've been trained in how to trap back into the loft) with no worry of the bird getting lost. That's not to say that letting your pigeons out won't offend your neighbors or possibly expose them to becoming a raptor's dinner. That's just to say that you should be able to let even fancy pigeons out and they should be relatively ok, all other things being equal.
3. It's not uncommon for animals to have behaviors that are partially driven by instinct and partially learned. I recall reading an article from Scientific American regarding how baby gulls were born with an instinct for getting food from their parents but that they also improved upon that basic instinct by learning how to better get the food from their parents over time. I don't believe it would be a dangerously large leap of logic to infer that the behavior of being able to return home from long distances in pigeons is at least partially learned.

So, bottom line, yes, you can fly pretty much any pigeon but I wouldn't take anything other than a racing homer any appreciable distance from a loft and even then I'd make sure that the racing homer had a good chance to learn the lay of the land.

4-H Exploration Days

4-H Exploration Days Group
Originally uploaded by MinimalistFan.

One of my great pleasures as a pigeon fancier is to get to share my birds with others. And the icing on the cake, so to speak, is to share them with young people. I had the privilege again this year of teaching a session at the Michigan 4-H Exploration Days in East Lansing. And I was lucky enough to get a great group of kids to work with and an excellent assistant, Janine. It's truly an extra special pleasure to be able to talk to smart kids that ask me good questions that keep me on my toes as a pigeon fancier trying to tell others about my hobby. Kudos to all the kids for making the session as much fun for me as I hope it was for all of them. I had a BLAST!

By the way, Janine took the pictures--all of which you can see here.

A Visit to the Loft of Ed Bachmann

Ed Showing Off White Jacobin
Originally uploaded by MinimalistFan.

I have the pleasure of working with a few kids who are involved with the 4-H club at Bowers School Farm. They've been so good about helping with the pigeons I wanted to do something extra special for them as a means of thanking them. Ed Bachmann, who's a pretty nice guy and one heck of a pigeon man, was kind enough to let the kids visit his loft, see his excellent jacobins and see his amazing trophy room. Many thanks to Ed for his time and for sharing his amazing loft with these kids.

You can see the entire set of photos I took during our visit here.

National Youth Pigeon Club

It's my understanding that these folks in Florida are working to create a national junior pigeon club--sort of an NPA for juniors. It seems they've gotten a scholarship program going. Having worked with youth quite a bit over the last couple of years and knowing a few others that have done the same I've got mixed feelings about yet another attempt to get juniors going with pigeons. I applaud their efforts but at the same time I think to myself there are already excellent youth development organizations in place (4-H comes to mind). I sometimes think that pigeon fanciers are as prone to suffer from NIH syndrome as are engineers and software developers. I mean there's never a downside to enthusiasm but what's so broken about the existing youth development organizations that we need to invent yet another youth group?