BENGALURU: As free as a bird’ goes the idiom, but these pigeons faithfully returned home, finding their way from thousands of kilometres away. Recently, the Karnataka Homing Pigeon Federation hosted a pigeon race from Delhi to Bengaluru where 26 male and female homing pigeons participated in the marathon, probably a first in India.
For the race, the pigeons were taken to Delhi in baskets by air and then released all at once. Shanker V’s ‘Red Rocket’ emerged the winner after it flew a distance of 1,750 km at a speed of 60 km per hour in nine days. Shanker, assistant general manager, Karnataka State Cricket Association (KSCA), trained Red Rocket from the time the pigeon was three months old.
“Red Rocket is now about three years old. I got him from Chennai in 2019. We tied a tiny thread to their wings before letting them loose. He would sit on the terrace and come for food and water,” he says, adding that eventually, because of their instinctive behaviour, they come back no matter how far they go. Shanker continues to keep alive his love for birds, an interest that started during his school days.
“My friend and I would cycle to the foot of Nandi Hills and release pigeons. They would fly back home in about 30-40 minutes, long before we even reached,” he says. So, when he got Red Rocket, Shanker knew exactly what to do. He is part of a federation, which comprises bird lovers, all of whom come together with their trained homing pigeons for the race.
Each trains their bird to fly back a distance of 150 km, after which the club trains them for longer distances. In the past, Bengaluru’s Red Rocket was trained to fly back a distance of 200 km from Anantapur, 300 km from Ulindakonda, 400 km from Mahbubnagar, and 500 km with a week’s rest after each flight. After two weeks of rest, they travelled around 750 km.
And after a month’s break, they flew 1,750 km from Delhi to Bengaluru, the final race and the longest distance they have covered to date. According to Shanker, homing pigeons fly best when they are two years old. Going the old-school way, the birds were not tracked using any device. Even so, their nature is such that they return home. “Tracking systems are expensive. But what we know from experience is that we have to calculate the total time as the duration of the flight and the breaks they take for water and food on their way,” Shanker says.
BACK IN TIME
Decades ago, pigeons were used as messengers to deliver letters and would return to the sender. Pigeons are selectively bred for their special homing abilities. They are taken to the second location and provided with feed. This process is repeated until the bird starts to travel between the two locations. When a message must be sent, the feed is withdrawn at the location, hence it travels to the other location. They have long played an invaluable role in wars as military gears. During the World War I and II, pigeons were used to carry messages to and from their home coop. The first network of pigeon messengers is believed to have been established in Assyria and Persia by Cyrus the Great. They carried messages to warring groups in Mesopotamia in 2000 BC.