Night
Flying For Tumblers & Highfliers By
K.D. Spurling (2000)
(Spurling's
note: this article appears in the form of an answer made to an inquiry on
this subject from another fancier.) Dan, Having your note, I will try to explain in one letter, the
starting basics of Night time Flying. The first thing to consider is that night time flight is not
natural to pigeons and they must be introduced to the concept on a gradual
basis at an early age. So for example, let's say that we have 20 squeakers that we
are starting to fly. After they have been flying well for several weeks
time, we begin to liberate them a little later in the day in a way that
they will be landing at about dusk and for a week we fly them at a time
that will have them land at dusk. If one begins to land early, we chase it
back up with the flag until it is forced to land during the dusk. You will
note that at first, during this dusk time flying that they will fly fast,
low and very erratic simply because they are not comfortable flying at
this time of day. After about a week of this, we begin flying them a
little later, say 10 minutes later than prior so that the pigeons are
forced to fly through dusk and land in the early twilight hour. We
continue this for another week and of course pigeons which continue to try
to land early are flagged back up. In the meantime, for Racing Homers (and
also other breeds if you wish to fly them correctly), they should be road
training during the morning hours from short distances of say, for Homers,
if they are now 7-8 weeks old, they should be out 5 to 10 miles by then
after going one mile, then two miles, then to five miles, 10 miles, 25
miles, 50 and so on as they mature. For other breeds, I would go in 1/2
mile, 1 mile, 2 miles, 5 miles and then top out at 10 miles. The purpose
behind the road training is in case the birds are jostled by winds or that
their landmarks are shrouded by nightime fog and the kit strays miles from
the loft to avoid major losses.On the third week, we are now landing in
the full darkness of say one hour after sunset and by this time, any birds
which habitually land early are terminated. At this stage, I'll flag one
up only once and that's it. The next week we are liberating in full
darkness and by this time, you will note that the birds are no longer
erratic or fast flying in the darkness. On near full or full moon nights
they will fly very evenly and quite high and this is a very serene,
beautiful and nearly poetic sight to see a kit of birds at a fair altitude
passing over the front of the moon that most fanciers will never see in
their lifetime. Something should be said about the loft needs. It is the
practise of most to use a lighted landing board to get the birds back in.
The principle is this: the kit is trained to drop on a signal; a whistle,
a shake of the feed can (my cousin use to beat on a trash can lid with an
axe handle to drop his kit). So when you want them to drop, you make your
usual signal and you also throw on the lights at that same moment.
Eventually, they will grow accustomed to those lights and the moment they
come on, they will immediately drop to the loft. Personally,
I am not a big believer in the lit up landing board because it is obscured
so easily (I don't use landing boards or traps anyway) and also, a simple
light is easily mistaken for the landing board. A friend of mine used to
use simple lights to drop them, but he had a street light set on a timer
up the road and the pigeons would see it switch on and immediately drop
onto the light post. What I use is a system that my mentor the late Al
Krauss developed. This consists of a wooden box that is a 3 foot circle.
with enclosed sides. Three lights forming a triangle are mounted into this
circular box and point skyward. These lights were made from headlight type
spotlights and are quite powerful. Each light is mounted into a hole,
inset slightly and over the top is a colored filter like used in theater
spotlights. They are respectively blue, green and red in no particular
arrangement. This system runs off a standard car battery or off electric (electric
is cheaper, but I had the car battery portion installed when I was flying
off a 3 story rooftop in NW Washington and I couldn't get enough cord to
reach the roof.) Once the power is activated, the lights kick on and the
beams alone will extend a few hundred feet skyward and are visible to a
kit even at relatively high altitudes. Since the birds are adjusted to
these particular lights, there isn't much of a chance of another light a
few blocks over dropping them.
Yours In The Sport, K.D. Spurling
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