Pigeons find their way home after being released in the Falls
Saturday morning, hundreds of birds are set to pepper the Borderland sky as they head southward toward their homes near the Twin Cities.
But if their owners have anything to say about it, they won’t be in the Falls long.
The Twin City Concourse homing pigeon group is slated to release their “young birds” in the early morning from Kerry Park. The birds will then quickly start making their 250-300 mile flight toward their homes near the Twin Cities metro area.
This is the second weekend in a row that the group has used International Falls as its starting point for the race.
The group hires a driver, who will release the gold-band pigeons all at the same time. At that point, bird owners wait for their flock to return home.
According to Paul Rudolph, race secretary for Twin City Concourse, if the birds are released around 9 a.m. in International Falls they should start arriving in homes near the metro area around 3 p.m. That means the average speed of the pigeons is about 50 miles per hour, depending on the wind and weather.
This is a shorter race only for the youngsters, he said, adding that older pigeons can travel up to 600 miles in one day.
Rudolph, and the driver of the birds, did not have an exact release time for Saturday, but expect it to happen between 7:30 and 9 a.m.
Rudolph said that around 300 people own racing pigeons in the Twin Cities metro area, many of whom are involved in the six-club Twin City Concourse.
Rudolph, who has owned racing pigeons for more than 40 years, said that the birds are both resilient and more intelligent than their reputation lends.
“You’d be surprised what the birds can fly through,” he said.
Their biggest threats, he noted, are hawks and power lines. But even with an injury, he said that the birds have a sharp instinct to return home. He recalled one pigeon returning to his coop with broken legs and injuries to its chest area.
“They’re way smarter than we ever thought of,” Rudolph explained. “The term ‘bird brain’ is actually a compliment. There’s a lot more to them little creatures than we give them credit for.”
The birds have an innate instinct to return to their home coop, which is guided by a natural global positioning system, he said.
“There’s a magnetic force that helps them,” he said.
He also added that, “their eyesight is way better than humans’.”
The pigeon owner’s job, then, comes with training the birds to come back to their coop as quickly as possible. When they are very young, after they start taking short trips on their own, a pigeon owner will take the bird 25-30 miles from the coop and allow them to find their way back, he said. That leads to trips of 100 miles, 200 miles, and up until around 600 miles as a veteran racer.
“As much as the boys don’t want to believe it, the athlete is the bird — not us,” he joked.
Rudolph also noted that there is now technology that can be banded on the bird that will track the exact time when it lands on the home coop, making record keeping easier than in years past.
“It’s a different sport,” he remarked.
The diverse group of bird owners in his area maintain anywhere from a few dozen to a few hundred birds, many in their own backyards. He said that even though he has around 100 pigeons, many of his neighbors don’t even know he raises them.
And when Rudolph finally catches sight of one of his pigeons flying into the coop after a long trip, he said, “I still find that as big of a thrill as I ever did.”
