Pigeon-holes

Remember when they used to call horse racing the sport of kings?

Well, move over, Sea Biscuit. Hold your horses, Man o’ War.

Pigeon racing is no longer the province – if ever it were - of some eccentric guy in the Bronx whose most significant relationships are with the fine feathered denizens of a decrepit coop on the top of his tenement building.

It seems that the Chinese are getting into in a big way. And they’re driving up what it takes to purchase a racing pigeon capable of competing in China’s Iron Eagle triple crown race, which has a prize pot worth $500K.

First off, I find it interesting that a pigeon race would be called the Iron Eagle. For a couple of reasons.

Most obviously, shouldn’t a pigeon race be named after The Pigeon, not The Eagle. I know, I know, pigeons aren’t as noble and glamorous as eagles. But rather than pretty much insult pigeons by using the name of another bird, wouldn’t it have ruffled fewer feathers if they’d chosen a more neutral name: The Iron Speedster race. The Iron Mercury. The Iron Courier.

Or, if they wanted to keep it in the animal family, why not The Iron Cheetah?

Which brings up another point: does one normally associate the word "iron” with ‘flight”?

Maybe something’s lost in translation.

Anyway, the fact that China even has a triple crown pigeon race is something else.

Most of the pigeons being raced there are from Belgium, which is to the pigeon world what Switzerland is the watches and Ireland is to Aran sweaters.

Up to half the birds in the race were Belgian-bred, reflecting both Chinese owners’ love of high-flying foreign birds and the stakes on offer. Thomas Gyselbrecht of Pigeon Paradise (PiPa), a Belgium-based auction house, says that of the 11 pigeons worth over €100,000 it has sold, nine went to Chinese buyers, five in the past year. In all, Belgium sold 8,000 pigeons to China last year: three-quarters of the country’s pigeon exports by value. (Source: The Economist.)

And that value is going up.

Even a pedestrian pigeon, which would have run you a mere $500 just five years back will now run you $3K.

Which, needless to say, is annoying to the pigeon fancier with the chicken wire coop on the roof:

“Whoever bought them are just idiots,” says Zheng Yijie, a racing-pigeon enthusiast in Beijing. “They don’t understand.”

If Zhen Yijie thinks that only an idiot would pay $3K for a pigeon, what must he make of his fellow countryman who last January forked over €250,000 for one of these little critters. Thomas Gyselbrecht (of the auction house Pigeon Paradise) believes that the point’s in sight when someone will pay €500,000. (I have to say, even though I find urban pigeons rather nasty, the ones you pay for are rather handsome, maybe even as noble as an eagle.)

Why Belgium, one might ask? No word on why they started pigeoning to begin with, but in the here and now:

Centuries of breeding and expertise make Belgian pigeons the best in the world. They comprise three-quarters of the European Union’s pigeon exports.

As in everything else in life, the pigeons in the 1% live large, while the less costly fellows, well, not so much:

The rich have marble and gold lofts…while the poor keep pigeons in their kitchens and bathrooms.

Marble and gold lofts? Vs. living in a toilet?

I’m pretty sure that the pigeons don’t mind either way. Still, it really does underscore just how stark the divisions are between the world’s us-es and the worlds thems.

Anyway, the Chinese Racing Pigeon Association has over 300,000 members. And lots of pigeon-related sites, including one that bills (bills and coos? beaks?) itself as “the fairyland of pigeon amateurs.”

Fairyland of pigeon amateurs…

I’ll keep that in mind next time I’m walking through Boston Common and a flock of pigeons takes off just over my head.

I’ll forget everything I ever heard about pigeons as the Air Force that rats would have, if rats were to have an Air Force.

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Pigeons seem to be all over the news these days. How about this story from Huffington Post:

A retired probation officer in England cleaning out his chimney recently was startled to sweep up a 70-year-old secret amid the soot: the skeleton of a World War II carrier pigeon with a coded message still attached to its leg.

The man’s home was near the wartime HQ of General Montgomery, so that “coded message” may turn out to be something of interest.

I can’t wait to hear what’s in the message once the code-breakers at Bletchley Park get a look at it.