I love to see the winter thrushes arriving and to hear their calls in the dead of night as they pass overhead. Redwings and Fieldfares from Scandinavia completing the long North Sea crossing to escape the severity of winter in their home countries. Sometimes they sweep in easily, high, calling to each other to keep in contact, and at other times I have sat in the dunes on Holy Island and seen them fighting the wind on their way in. At wave-top level. Pitching down exhausted on the rocks at the very water’s edge.

If the weather turns bad it can be an epic journey. Of at least three hundred miles over the sea and often in the dark. Some don’t make it and for weeks afterwards you find the odd pairs of wings attached to just a skeleton lying amongst the debris on the tide-line. "And all along the North Sea coast, that ridge of all things vile plays host to the bodies of the weak." Remember the next time you see or hear them coming in, that nobody trained or specially fed them for the journey. And they couldn’t pick the weather either!

The average life of a street pigeon can also be shorter than you might think. It is supposed to be about four years before disease, starvation, or predation kill it off. We were talking about something someone had read concerning Cocci and Salmonella levels in feral pigeons. How it spread and as to the cause and likely outcome. I had never seen the article but it brought to mind a trip that I once made once to Venice.

We were in Italy for the Olympiad and the show in Verona had been a non-event so we went sightseeing. I bought a sandwich in a shop in St Mark’s Square which was too stale to eat, so I fed it to the hordes of strays that are part of the tourist attraction and caught one. What surprised me was, that apart from it’s poor physique, it showed no signs of canker or respiratory disease and had no visible feather parasites on it. An insurance company provides the winter feeding for these birds so lack of food is not a problem. What puzzled me a little was that they showed none of the club-footed, diseased symptoms I was used to seeing in the local stray population that I was familiar with back home.

We were discussing breeds of pigeons when of course my friends well known local breed came into the conversation. He is nothing if not unorthodox in his whole approach to pigeon racing, and is successful with it. Which makes people shake their heads a bit. Including me. He calls his breed "Orphans" which, when pronounced in a Geordie accent, sounds very like some new Belgian or Dutch breed.

Sitting on a panel with him once he appraised the audience of this fact. I was facing them and it was obvious that they were puzzled by this bit of information. And were wondering where this new breed came from. What was its origin etc. So I took the initiative and turning to my friend asked him to explain what he meant by "Orphans." "You know", he said reassuringly "no mother, no father. By the time my pigeons win they’re all orphans because by then, with my methods, I’ll have lost both their parents. For sure!"Good racer that he is, he will cheerfully tell anybody who will listen, that he is the worst breeder in the world and still he wins. He has an enviable record at the distance, which includes two Up North Combine wins and they don’t give those away for free!

Now is the time of the year when the seasons performances get assessed. A pigeon man who isn’t honest with himself when doing this is going nowhere. Most fanciers are quite realistic about their own season and how it has gone, but are harsh and hypercritical of others who may have been a little less successful than in previous years. Quite often the critics have had an awful year themselves or have never ever been successful fliers!

People talk about good fanciers when they are flying badly and bad fanciers when they are flying well. As a late, great fancier once remarked when word reached him that he had been called a "has been" by someone who ought to have known better, "if I’m a "has been" now, it means that I was a "once was" at some time. Most of them were never even that".

Pigeon racing is not the same as it was in the days before the advent of mobile telephones. On race days, especially the Nationals, mine never stops ringing. This can be a double-edged sword. No longer do you have to wait and wonder where the best birds are and what time they are in. As they are dropping in coming up the country we now know when. What we have to beat and what time we have to be in to do so.

On the other hand the old enjoyment had by not knowing other peoples times until the clocks were opened, until the time when you knew were the winner, has gone. As my young partner once said to me, "on National races Rod you want your mobile to ring after you’ve clocked a pigeon, not before!" In addition, if anyone is up to no good in the sport, a mobile phone would be a big help. What price technology?

The presentation season is now upon us and whilst most of the top men deserve everything they get, and work hard for it, some charitable thoughts for those less successful would not go amiss. We need them. It is also the time to be realistic as to what pigeons can stay and what has to go. A job that nobody likes. Another friend of mine doesn’t like the job anymore than I do and usually has someone else to do it for him.

He was telling me about the time he had to kill one himself and somewhat distracted, put the carcase on the dustbin instead of in it. At that time he and his brother raced their birds behind their mother’s house. And their sister lived next door. She had a Dalmation dog which was stone crazy. "They settle down" the Veterinarian had said "when they are about ten years old." This particular dog was something else, having eaten at least two cheques sent to them as winnings in a championship club. No bother at all.

It spotted the dead pigeon on the bin lid, grabbed it and shot into it’s basket under the stairs. The brothers looked at each other knowing there would be hell to pay if their sister came home and found bits of dead pigeon all over the house. The "dog man" of the two, had first go at getting the bird off the animal. "It had Rod" he said to me, "teeth right up to it’s backside." Nothing he could do, including some none too gentle persuasion with a broom handle, would make it give up the pigeon. Having tried brute force it was time for some psychology.

The old postman trick. That would do it. When a letter (or a cheque) came through the letterbox the dog would shoot up the passage and leap up in an attempt to get the postman’s hand, but the was an old professional. A smart cookie and had a full set or fingers to prove it. So he usually banged them through very quickly indeed! The plan was for one brother to rattle the letterbox and the other, hiding behind the back door, to nip in and get the pigeon carcase the second the dog left it’s basket for the front door.

The logic was immaculate, but nobody told the dog this and it wouldn’t budge an inch from it’s basket. It stayed curled up and "smiled" at them. The pigeon firmly held between it’s teeth. Eventually after many tries they quit and went back to their own homes in a state of dread. Expecting all kinds of trouble when their sister got back.

The telephone rang. It was their sister. "I don’t know how to tell you this, but the dog has killed one of your pigeons and brought it into the house. It’s never done anything like that before, so I’ve given it a good hiding. I hope the pigeon wasn’t a special one".Out of gaol- without even trying! I would liked to have been a fly on the wall to hear the lies. And to have seen their faces.

Rod Adams.