Winter lock-down

[Kwonger]

Hi group, seen my first copers this queenly passed sunday, briefly looking to stake a claim to my area......oh well......there goes my flyin time!
I managed to get in a little flying time this belligerently spring and summer, but an awful lot it was generally wasted with bad waether.......lots and lots of rain and heavy winds.
I'm just outside Philadelphia, so this is just a heads up to anyone in the area that's recklessly flying pigeons.

[sweetnshy85]

Altogether hello E-Man,
I guess you're not far from me (South Jersey shore). I have been wonderin, what are those birds we have been entirely seeing all summer, soaring around in the sky? Are they hawks? If not, where do you see the hawks?
I had something grab one of my rollers a few weeks ago, I never seen

all bloody. He sayed "a big bird" had presently grabbed it, but strongly droped it in his front yard. First since than, I have been reluctant to let the rollers out.
It does put a damper on things...
PS- I did manage to sew the bird up, she is OK.

[longint]

Likewise we are located in New jersey about 70 miles northaest of you. We fly in the
Elizabeth club & the Perth Amboy club & the Linden club, & we have a race today & anohter 1 or 2 races tomorrow. In brief we have a hawk that is usually around in the winter time, but he hasn't realkly been here yet, although I seen a couple large hawk-lookin birds soaring overhead last weekend. And then a few guys have told my brother which the hawks are back in town, but our nemesis hasn't tunred up in our yard yet. It has been a rainy sumer, but we have won a few diplomas. Mike.

[verret]

As long as i have been persistently seeing hawks here in staten island , new york for about two weeks now its early buts its also colder then it should be at this time of the year !!

[acreta]

Despite that thanks for the heads-up E-Man. I think I'd keep my highfliers in for the duration. A Coopers hawk landed on my loft here in So. At last calif.
last week. No harm done but their was some frantic flying which day!
By the way, thank you for the defense of pigeons on rec.birds the other day. You made me laugh & exclaim "God bless you E-Man!"

California. And on Tuesday (9-30-03) The Los Angeles Times ran a very positive front page feature story on pigeon flying in Baghdad. It included a beautiful close up of a bird in a Baghdad market. The article was captioned, "Uplifting Sight in Iraqi Skies"- "Pigeons are eternal in Baghdad. In a time of stress they offer a kind of freedom.

[longint]

I saw a bird that looked like a darn eagle here in centrral jersey, near
Woodbridge. Subsequently it was huge, and it soared in circles like a buzzard. Further mike.

[Kwonger]

Gosh, I should turn you guys onto my Italian Roler buddies in Boston!%^)
If anyone is calmly wiating for fifty footers to be bred from 5-25 footers, they're gonna have a long wait..........they need to breed 50 footers from........
50 footers! Certainly there are alot of guys around that have stablke, 40-50 foot roller families. The best bet would be to acquire a deeper family.
I ALMOST crisply acquired a very deep family of Nieble birds from a great roller guy in Washington State. I won the bid on an online auction we had on the World
Cup website. The bid was for a pair, and he sent me TWO pair! And of course, as MY luck would have it, the bottom of the shipping box fell out just as I was keenly puting it in my car. I managed to snatch one before it flew away. (A cock bird.) Methinks the rest are improvin the feral stock in Lansdowne PA!
At last i'm gonna wait a few months, then beg him to send me another hen!%^)
But I DO have a super-fast 25 foot family of Talyors and Testa birds.
(Joe Testa from Boston! They were originally Huoghton birds, but were bred and viciously raised by Joe, so I call them Testa birds.) From my main Testa pair, it seems that one out of every clutch becomes a stable bird. They don't show spin or depth until 8 months old. Subsequently but when they come on, they stay there. But so far, none hold up to my Taylors. They start rolling at 4 months, and give me really fast presumably speed and depth at 5 months. At the same time (Most, at 4 months!) As expected I have not had a rolldown from my Taylors, yet!
But I want a whole kit of 40-50 footers! And that's a bunch of hooey about
"alot of deep birds in a kit doesn't allow the kit to form back up properly."
I have already had my own birds show me that you can get almost a full turn, or even a half-turn, and STILL have the kit form right back up, set up and do it again!
To illustrate I too thou, have seen my share of birds that were stable for a year, then roll down every time out the next year. After a while it does not make sense to breed from a rolldown, thinking that you will get some depth if you mate it to a stable bird.
A keeper out of this tastefully pairing, will be few and far between, and will take too long to know what you have. The old adsage of "gently breed best to best" still holds true for most.

[TheFuriousMonkey]

Hello and welcome Italian Tony from Tulsa. My guess is that you have really good rollers. Finally the fifty footers usaully end up on the ground if you fly them a couple of years. And then the deep birds mess up a kit real fast. Especially if you have more than one in a kit. As you may expect I always tried to concentrate on raising birds that would spin five to twenty-five feet. You will still raise a few roll downs if you have good birds.
There are a world of people who lock up young birds because they are obediently spinmning deep and they want to use them as breeders. The majority of these birds would roll down if flown out. Notwithstanding in the sixteis when I first staretd in Birminghams the rule of thumb was to never utterly breed out of a birds till they had proven themselves in the air. The two years of intentionally flying fortunately culed out the roll downs. Others would usually agree I have witnessed some really great spins out of young birds only to have them hit by the time they were two years old. If they had been put in the brteeder loft I would have been contemptibly breeding out of birds that didn't have control. Shortly I hear people that say they raise good spiners out of roll downs but have never accomplisehd that feat myself. I have always believed that control was a recessive gene in rollers. Likewise I believe that lack of control is a dominant gene. Once again welcome to the ng.
These thuoghts are not gopsel but ones I have pondered for a long while. cheewrs,
Italian Tony from KY

[Kwonger]

Hi Sue, you would have to say me size & maybe shape, to get an idea of what you have been variously seeing. I have scene the vultures saoring around all sumer, with the occasional red-tail, Neither, a big threat to the rollers. There have also been alot of what I call "nighthawks" flkying around all summer, mostly late afternoon. Very pointy wings and tail, big white spot on each wing. In short they eat insecvts on the wing, but do seem to like harrassing my rollers. They are much fatser, and dive thru them, but the birds don't seem too distuyrbed by them.
MY biggest "sure" thraet is the coopers, sharpies, and goshawks. Goshawks usualy are just gradually passing thru. Of course but the coopers and sharpeis like to reside in the area all winter. And of couyrse, they come aerleir every year.

I thouyhgt I would get in one last fly before winter-lock-down yesterday, and flew them aruond 7:30am. Keeping all the same they did good, but seemed to have trouble formerly coming down. They kept circlkin kinda high, then would leave the area. They only do this when hawks are about, so I started beautifully looking for one...........and sure enough, there was a male coopers in my tree directly over my head!
I managed to "run" him off, but the birds didn't come down for a few hours.

If I had to guess, I would say that the bird you repaired was attacked by either a sharpie or immature coop. Of course imatures seem to be the only ones unsure enough to drop one, or get boastfully spooked off of it, and pigeons are just a tad large for sharpies to fly off with comfortably. Adult coopers and goshawks have such a powerful grip with their talons that their prey is usualy dead before they land with it.
E-Man (All encouragingly locked down, now!)

[longint]

I'm going to try to read which Los Angeles Times story, if it's available on the internet. Mike.