Spring 2026 (20-03-26)
Spring
March 2026:
What a beautiful spring day that 9th of March 2026. I had gone out to record bird sounds on my mobile phone and that became a success with no less than 29 different birds, 8 more than my previous record.
Yes, spring is coming, the world is getting color again, the rabbits multiply like never before and your otherwise tired step unconsciously gets something lively and springy. But not everyone was happy.
'No column from you this week? Belgian fellow fancier wrote.
I liked the man, but undoubtedly there are others. People who find my writings tinkering and indigestible drivel, compared to which a plague of locusts is a blessing from God. Like that chaplain once:
'They had to burn those pieces from A. S. to 'AShes', wrote the man who normally preaches about charity.
LETTERS
If ME were to be asked 'what do you think of A.S.'s columns', I would speak of 'gems of storytelling, written in the typical and inimitable style that we have been accustomed to from this exceptional writer for years'.
I used to be able to see from the post that there were indeed people who read me. Sometimes you could almost hear the mailbox groan with pleasure when the postman rammed a pack of letters through the slot.
I still have those of Marna, Martha or Marina (her handwriting was barely decipherable). It was so slimy and even perfumed that it aroused suspicion in my little family. Just read along:
'Dear A.S. How often you make me happy. Because those columns of you, my sweetie, how do you do that? How does my honey manage to make the others fall so far behind? Lots of kisses and you can always call me.
Bye. xxx. Martha' (or something like that). Let's face it, does that make a person warm or not?
ANOTHER ONE
The following email was also good: 'Dear A.S. Please keep going. Especially those pieces with humor or even some eroticism sometimes make me laugh out loud and I'm actually a pessimist. Anyone who knows me a little knows that it is easier to make a horse laugh than me. No wonder people sometimes imitate you.'
A piece of stolen text was added as proof.
I did not care. Humor is important, stolen or not. It is just one of the small oases in the sometimes painful desert full of setbacks in our fancier existence. There are also different levels:
- The first: Jokes that make your friends, children and subordinates laugh.
- On the second level, you can also make strangers laugh.
- You are at the highest level, so at the top, if you are imitated.
STARS
Soon the same as usual will stand out in the first races.
How do they manage that?
- Especially with good pigeons, although some think different about races of barely 150 km.
- They are housed in lofts where chilly spring weather has little hold.
- And they are prepared.
How you start the season doesn't matter much. I once imitated a big name who had his widowers raised two rounds before the racing season. 'Bingo', I thought because a German had asked for a round of youngsters. I bred a round for me and one for the eastern neighbour.
It became a super year. 'Eureka, I've found it', breed two rounds off the racers before the season I thought. But not for long. The following year I did the same and that became my worst ever. Especially the last two flights were disappointing, but that had a different cause.
If you don't show the partner before basketing the first races, the fire will stay burning longer, I learned. From then on I didn't even turn the bowl when basketing.
There is nothing wrong with the traditional system either (first raise a round of babies and then start the season when on eggs.
With pigeons in form you can hardly make mistakes, if there is no form then you can hardly do well.
GOOD SIGN
Speaking of shape, I still remember that spectacle result that raised many eyebrows because I had predicted it.
When the cocks were in the basket to be basketed and I released the hens from the aviary, they popped out of the aviary with a deafening noise and stormed into the widowers' loft. That was promising.
If they keep flying aimlessly in circles or worse, sit on the roof, then you have reason to worry. So I believe that the hens sitting at home betray the shape of the widowers by their behaviour. You don't have to worry about widow hens laying as long as they don't sit on the eggs.
ARRIVAL
The way they get home from the race also often says a lot about the result. If they storm into the loft so quickly that you hardly see them and hardly touch the board so that you doubt whether they are registered, then it is fine and you do not have to inquire about other people's clocking time.
I know that all too well, sometimes I was even afraid to go to the clubhouse without a bulletproof vest.
The reverse is also true. Pigeons that land hesitantly and insecurely on the ridge after the race and are not in a hurry to go inside are rarely early.
KNOWLEDGE?
By the way, never ask me to judge your pigeons because then I am capable of a lot. For example, I once kept a hen that I was sure was worth nothing. She was unsightly small with eyes that stared at you stupidly.
Why was she still there? It was lost as a youngster, I had to drive 120 km twice to get her back and when I later told my wife that the pigeon had to be removed she said 'then I too'. After some thought I decided to keep her (the pigeon) and luckily so. Believe me, except some self-proclaimed connoisseurs no one is 100% sure when it comes to judging.
I used to have very small pigeons. How often did fellow fanciers ask 'are you sure it's a hen?' When I nodded, they looked at me with a look as if they wanted to say 'one less that can beat us'. 'Junk’ I had put on the pedigree card of the aforementioned rejected bird. It explains why no one wanted young from it, something for which I am still grateful to them.
54 participants 841 birds in the race, 16 from me. 'Provincial' there were about 2,100 birds in the race and I won:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 and so on.