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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: October 2007

The image of pigeon flying takes a tumble

 

PORTLAND, Oregon--Portland U.S. District Judge Ancer Haggerty on October 11, 2007 sentenced pigeon flyers Peter Kaufman and Ivan Hanchett to each pay a $2,000 fine plus $2,000 more to the Endangered Species Justice Fund at the Oregon Zoo, for illegally killing an unknown number of birds of prey.

Kaufman and Hanchett were also barred from any involvement with the roller pigeon fancy, hunting, and fishing during a year on probation, during which they must each do 120 hours of community service.

The sentences were far lighter than the fines of $10,000 apiece sought by the prosecution, and less even than the $7,500 fine proposed by one of the defense attornies, objected Audubon Society of Portland conservation director Bob Salinger. Salinger, Portland mayor Tom Potter, and Portland Metro Council president David Bragdon had all called for the stiffest possible penalties.

"Sallinger is talking with Oregon's congressional delegation about amending the Migratory Bird Treaty Act so that intentional, wanton killing of protected birds could be treated as felonies," wrote Michael Milstein of The Oregonian

A third defendant, Mitchell Reed of Mount Angel, Oregon, also pleaded guilty, but has yet to be sentenced. Two other Oregon men face related charges.

"Kaufman and Hanchett were leaders of the Northwest Roller Jockeys," reported Milstein. "Roller pigeons carry a genetic trait that causes them to suddenly stop flying and tumble through the air before righting themselves. That attracts hawks and other raptors to prey on the pigeons.

"Undercover agents investigating the men and visiting their homes saw traps designed to catch and kill hawks and other migratory birds," Milstein continued. "When Hanchett introduced Kaufman to the agents, he said Kaufman had killed 30 hawks within 45 days, according to court documents."

The 14-month investigation that led to the arrest of the five men began after an anonymous web poster claiming to be a pigeon flyer said he "laughed and laughed" after someone shot several peregrine falcons who had been rehabilitated and returned to the wild by the Audubon Society of Portland.

"Seven Californians and a Texan have also been charged in the case," Milstein reported earlier. The Californians are believed to have killed 1,000 to 2,000 hawks and falcons per year, Milstein said.

The Oregon men, Milstein added, "held positions in a national group called the National Birmingham Roller Club, according to court documents."

A lengthy statement posted at the National Birmingham Roller Club web site on May 28, 2007 asserted that the club "in no way endorses or supports any activity that would cause stress, injury, or death to any bird of prey. If it should eventually be proven that any members of the NBRC have been found to have engaged in such activity," the site continued, "we state emphatically that such behavior was not with the consent, knowledge, or approval of the NBRC."

The statement went on to attack comments about the case by U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service spokespersons; denied that roller pigeons have a genetic defect, without mentioning what purpose their rolling behavior might have evolved to serve; and complained that the Fish & Wildlife Service has not helped roller pigeon fanciers to respond to predation by Cooper's hawks and red-tailed hawks.

"Our government regularly assists ranchers when their livestock are predated by wolves, coyotes, cougars and bears," the NBRC said. "HoweverS¹our pleas for assistance are met with silence."

The Oregon case is only one of many incidents which threaten to transform the once benign image of pigeon flying.

"In Northern Ireland last year," Independent Ireland correspondent David McKittrick recalled in August 2007, "a 'hit man' with a sniper's rifle shot dozens of peregrine falcons in the Mourne Mountains of County Down. His motivation was said to be to kill falcons preying on valuable racing pigeons as they flew through the Mournes."

"Pigeon trainers say that an increasing number of altercations over captured birds, incidents of coop robbing-- and even a rumored murder over a pigeon--have given their hobby a bad name," wrote New York Times correspondent Hassan M. Fattah from Amman, Jordan, in May 2007.

"There is a growing number of troublemakers getting involved in this sport," pigeon store owner Wahib Abdelaziz Mahdi told Fattah, after more than 50 years of involvement in pigeon flying. "It used to be that the rules were clean and that people of all economic abilities were involved," Mahdi insisted, "but a few have begun to spoil it."

Recreational pigeon flying appears to have started centuries before homing pigeons were used to deliver messages, at a time when pigeons were kept mainly for meat--but flyers spared their best and most colorful pigeons, at times attracting ridicule for their interest in the birds.

The rules and customs of modern competitive pigeon flying developed parallel to the rise of pigeons as a communication medium so reliable that pigeon couriers enabled the rise of the Reuters news syndicate.

Telegraphy, telephones, radio, and eventually online communications gradually replaced working pigeons, though the armies of Switzerland, India, and several other nations kept signal corps pigeons until well into the online era.

As "geeks" in the computer-using sense of the term moved from pigeon-flying into electronic communication, "geeks" in the earlier sense of the word, meaning someone who shows off by killing animals, appear to have become more aggressively involved.

Unclear, however, is whether pigeon flying has actually become more violent and less ethical in recent years, or whether societal attitudes have simply changed. Gambling on pigeon races and trying to lure away other flyers' birds have always been ubiquitous, with potential for starting disputes.

Killing birds of prey, until recent decades, when rare species gained legal protection, was often praised for helping to protect barnyard poultry. But since birds of prey were routinely killed by farmers and gamekeepers, and were depleted by food chain build-ups of the insecticide DDT, pigeon flyers may not have felt as threatened by predators.

U.S. pigeon flying literature from the mid-20th century indicates that bird-shooting hunters rather than birds of prey were seen as the chief menace to racing flocks, before limited shooting seasons enabled flyers to schedule events at times when there was no legal bird shooting.