Script: Share the Blue Sky, Disk 1

In our moments of sorrow, in our moments of joy, there is a flying creature we call upon to lift our spirits.

Throughout human history, the release of pigeons has been a symbolic act for mankind. For the ancients, these birds represented a holy spirit. They were God�s messenger from the heavens. In all the world�s major religions, the dove is the symbol of peace on earth.

The bird�s flashing wings have highlighted milestones in history. Their release has opened the Olympic Games. They have marked great ceremonies on every continent. Pigeons fly from the hands of smiling newly married couples. They are released to bring joy to the graduation ceremonies of students. Their freedom and flight bring cheers and applause.

The same bird is with us in tragedy as well. Many religions set them free at funerals to signify the human soul on its journey from earth to heaven. To commemorate America�s September 11^thhorror, nine hundred and eleven white pigeons were set free to honor the thousands of lives lost. In Colorado, to recognize the young people killed in the senseless Columbine shooting, white doves were set free as each lost child was remembered.

Where did these creatures come from and why have they risen to symbolize so much to mankind?

All domestic pigeons are descendants of the wild Rock Dove. These large, gray birds, considered by scientists to have evolved from dinosaurs, made their home on rocky cliffs and caves throughout the Middle East, the Mediterranean and Asia. Early humans, cave dwellers, probably first saw the birds there.

There probably is not another animal that played as big of a role in human history as the pigeon did. You can find the pigeon in the very earliest forms of literature.

Historically, the bond was cemented forever between the rock dove and mankind, when man began to domesticate cereal grains. Like our first domesticated grain here is originally emir wheat; this is a domestic form of emir wheat. And, when man began to grow grain in fields and store grain in his dwelling places, the rock dove was very quick to catch onto. These aren�t such a bad place to hang out.

As they lived near man, the Rock Doves� behavior was recognized as unusual in the animal kingdom. The bird�s gentle nature, its mating habits and its ability to successfully raise numerous babies, were observed by ancient people. The benign and fertile behavior of rock doves led the creatures to become symbols of love long before the birth of Christ.

For me, it�s no surprise that the pigeon became that symbol of the goddess of love because, if you observe the pigeon, you can find several parallels. One of these is what they do with their beaks, which appears like kissing. And, even in early days, humans realized that this was like kissing. Pigeons have a very tender love life. They kiss like humans, they clean themselves, and they are basically very tender with one another.

The birds were also an object of sacrifice and a food source. Large buildings, called dovecotes, were built to house the birds near the farmers� fields. By the middles ages, millions of birds lived in these structures. Its image as the bird of peace comes from another moment in ancient history; the story of Noah and the flood is common to most of the world�s religions.

The story of the Great Flood was supposed to have happened say, 3,000 years ago. And, when the Great Flood came, Noah took his family and two of each animal on board ship and they set sail. Noah eventually grounded, in legend, on Mt. Ararat and he sent out a dove to see if she could find any trace of land. And she came back empty handed. He sent her out another time and it came, happened again. But on the third occasion, she came back bearing an olive leaf in her beak, and he knew that the flood really was going down.

They have lived among us for thousands of years. And, unlike almost all other birds, the pigeon truly seems to enjoy being near us. It is easily tamed, and, when held, exhibits its gentle nature.

Pigeons are very, very harmless to humans. You could take a pigeon in your hand, and it wouldn�t bite or peck at you. The only thing it might do is try to flee from you.

Humans became fascinated with breeding Rock Doves in an attempt to create pigeons with new physical characteristics, behaviors and colors. It is a fascination that has changed the gray Rock Dove into thousands of domestic varieties of the bird of peace. Today, they are bred for show all over the world.

There are many different breeds that have come from the Rock Dove. You can ask yourself: how is it possible that the pigeon was used to do this? And a possible answer would be that pigeons are easy to keep, and, per year, you�ll have two generations. It goes very quickly with the pigeon, and that�s why it is possible for different breeds to start within a short amount of time.

Today, millions of people on every continent keep pigeons. For most there is comforting simplicity in the sound the birds make and the enjoyment of watching them flying in the blue sky.

Perhaps, most important is the connection the creature seem to have with children, where the calm animal exerts a mysterious fascination for young people who may have never held a bird before.

One famous pigeon fancier was the great Spanish artist Pablo Picasso whose father was an avid pigeon keeper. Picasso�s first drawings as a child were of pigeons seen in the square near his home. He had pigeons near him most of his life, named his daughter Paloma, which is Spanish for dove, and it was Picasso�s paintings of pigeons that have become today�s most recognized symbols of the bird as the icon of peace.

The pigeon�s history as an early source of food and its religious significance don�t fully explain what humans find so magical in this creature. Another aspect of the bird�s nature also captures our imagination. It is in where these birds are going, their destination�home.

The Chinese character for pigeons and doves has two elements, bird and home. No other bird on earth is identified with this symbolic reference to home. This symbol represents more than a bird that lives where humans live. It also explains one of the Rock Doves most mysterious abilities. Early civilizations discovered the bird was somehow able to find its way home from distant locations. In ancient times, this navigational ability of pigeons became vital.

Very early on, humans realized that pigeons always come back home. The reason is biological; a strong relation to their breeding ground. That was the main reason why pigeons were used as messengers.

Ancient armies adopted the homing pigeon as a reliable means of battlefield communication, a method that continued into the 20^th century during World War I and II.

The birds flew home across all types of terrain and weather conditions. Pigeons were use to send messages from the battlefield or to send secret messages from spies behind enemy lines. The bird�s ability to return with messages, in spite of grave wounds, earned them the respect of every nation that used them.

This large statue in Lille, France is an example. Erected by the French Government, it honors the thousands of birds that carried messages during the war.

It is ironic that the bird of peace, the Pigeon, was, in fact, used as a weapon of war and became an important part of all military countries, all military armies of the world. But if you really look at what this pigeon did, even in a wartime situation, �What did it do?� It came home. Home is a peaceful aspect of its species and it brought home information which saved lives. Almost every pigeon hero saved lives and the lives number in the thousands. So, the �Bird of War� was really a �Saving Bird�, a �Bird of Peace.�

With the beginning of the Industrial revolution, people began to leave their farms to move to the city. Pigeons from abandoned dovecotes moved into the growing metropolitan areas, nesting on buildings like their ancestors did on the rocky cliffs of the Mediterranean. City dwellers often fed the birds in parks. Over time, the flocks of city birds became quite large. In places like London�s Trafalgar Square or the ancient squares of Venice, the numbers grew into the thousands.

What happened next to this ancient friend in the last century, particularly in the industrial world is both tragic and ironic.

The pest control industry in the United States found feral birds � or birds in high populations � to be a gold mine, because they could scare the population with a whole lot of things like disease and then turn around and provide the answer to it, poisoning and other kinds of things.

But, despite the problems in some major cities, the deep relationship between pigeons and humans will live on, and so will these birds.

Like these wild Rock Doves who still live on the stony coast of Sardinia, nature has blessed these creatures with unique traits. They are caring, fruitful parents, and when they need to search for food, the flock can range for many miles, rocketing over the terrain to distant feeding grounds, then magically rising and finding their way home.

Today, pigeon keepers include people of all races in all parts of the world. Some of the world�s better known pigeon fanciers include Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, who, like her father and grandfather, takes part in the sport of racing homing pigeons.

The most famous woman in Chinese history, the late Song Ching Ling, who was honored internationally in the last century for her humanitarian work on behalf of children, loved pigeons, and a flock of birds is maintained in her memory at her former residence in Beijing.

And China�s most famous actor of all time, Mei Lang Fang, was a lifelong pigeon lover. The star of the Beijing Opera credited the birds with his magical ability to move his eyes, gained from watching his birds fly above his home.

Young or old, rich or poor, the Rock Dove and its many descendants still live with humans and bring joy to their lives.

As we watch them take flight, something in human beings sees more than a flock of birds. We see not just wings, but angels ascending to heaven. We see not just a wandering bird, but a unique being that is on its way home.

We share one earth, and, as one, the people of this planet have a connection with this ancient flyer. In troubled times, when all humans share a wish for a better world, one creature soars into our hearts. One creature symbolizes that wish. It is the flying bird of peace, the ancient friend who shares our blue sky.

The Pyramid

The Rock Dove became an ancient symbol of peace, love and fertility for a very simple reason. These traits are part of how the bird lives its life.

The creature�s behavior and physical attributes are rare in the world of birds, and, whether it is wild Rock Doves or modern domestic pigeons, the behaviors are the same.

Pigeons are gregarious. They nest together and usually travel as a flock. They take comfort in being with their group. These traits connote a sense of community to human observers.

Pigeons normally mate for life and their courtship is marked by a variety of gentle calls by the male, and, not unlike humans in love, the birds join their beaks in what looks like kissing.

Their sexual union is satisfying to both partners, and they mate often in the week before the hen retires to the nest to lay her first egg. It is the first of two. Now comes a quiet two week period when both male and female take turns incubating the pure white eggs. Its nest and young are the most important place on earth to the birds, and they will fight vigorously to repel intruders, including the hand of their human keeper.

As the seventeenth day approaches, the baby stirs within the egg. Once weakened, the top of the shell yields to the final, great pushes of the tiny pigeon as it enters the world. This birthing drama takes place beneath the parent�s warming breast, and, after a period of rest, a tiny head wobbles upward for its first meal. Something unusual now occurs, both the female and this male have developed a form of milk, which is gently fed to the helpless youngster. This pigeon milk is a super food and stimulates rapid growth in the young.

At a week, feathers begin to appear. They now weigh five times more than at birth. For domestic birds, it is now time to slip a seamless metal registration ring on the baby bird�s foot before it grows too large.

Between the second and third week, the youngsters undergo another growth spurt. They are now ready for the transition from parental care to a life on their own. The next step is to learn to fly. As their wings grow rapidly, the young birds experiment with lift off. And their uncoordinated early efforts soon give way to the single most beautiful sight in a pigeon fancier�s eyes, the tight maneuvers of a team of birds wheeling over the countryside.

Ancient humans came to know these pigeon behaviors well. The bird�s devotion to their young results in a high rate of success, and the young birds themselves become sexually mature in only six months.

The bird�s relationship with mankind changed dramatically when humans realized they could choose which male would mate which female, a selective breeding process that created variations of the original Rock Dove that can only be called profound. One of the best examples of this can be found in Southern Germany.

For over two thousand years, Bavaria has been a crossroads of cultures. The Romans conquered these lands before Christ. Trade routes leading through the ancient city of Nuremberg brought many outside influences, and among these were pigeons.

Like thousands of Germans, Karlheinz Solfrank is a pigeon fancier. He has loved breeding and exhibiting pigeons since he was a boy. Solfrank�s passion is a breed called Frankonians, an exotic German pigeon raised for its unique coloration.

From his home, Solfrank and his son sell supplies to other pigeon fanciers, but it is a side business. For most of his working life he was a stockbroker, a career that financed a dream he had since he was a boy. From a stairway in his living room, Karlheinz descends into another world; here is his passion, his lifework, the greatest pigeon museum on earth.

Much of the long human history of pigeon keeping is largely unknown. Solfrank�s private collection represents hundreds, even thousands of years of human fascination with a family of birds.

I don�t know how many pieces we have. I would guess about 50,000. Pigeon fanciers from all over the world come to the museum. We�ve had people from Australia, China, Europe and elsewhere.

The museum is a window into the past, when pigeons were one of the most common household pets.

My favorite painting is �Dove Land.� It fascinates me. I also love it because it came from America and we�re able to have it here in Germany. Because of it, the museum came to be. That�s just one of the reasons why I love it.

For as much as he loves his �Dove Land,� another exhibit in the museum illustrates an even more fascinating story of the bird of peace.

Protected under glass is what could be called the pyramid of pigeons. At the top of the exhibit is a likeness of the ancient Rock Dove. From this gray and black, wild species flow all of the variations that humans today find so fascinating, but the variety here is nothing compared to what we know today about true size of this pyramid.

The rock dove is the original pigeon. This documents how these beauties sprang form this gray bird through the hands of breeders. We have 270 figures in the pyramid, and this represents all the pigeon varieties recognized in Germany at the time. I can only guess at the number of pigeon varieties that truly exist. I would think that it would be about 4,500 around the world.

Something startling has happened in human knowledge of pigeon breeds. The pyramid only shows less than 10% of the actual varieties. How could the numbers change so dramatically? The answer is not so much story of the mixing of pigeons, as it is in the mixing of human beings, and the answer is not in Germany. It is in America.

Saturday morning in Phoenix, Arizona, a city that springs from a dry desert in the American Southwest. Where ancient trade routes once blended cultures in Nuremberg, Phoenix is a prime example of the 21st century cultural mixing that�s changing the face of the United States.

Dave McKelvey calls himself the mayor of a small town of pigeons. His pigeon loft is a United Nations of pigeon breeds.

We can do it using only our eyes and our feelings and our abilities to handle these birds. We can change a wild species into real objects of art, and that�s what they are.

McKelvey�s life has been shaped by his love of birds. Pigeons led him to study biology and ornithology and to a career spent observing pigeons in remote parts of the world. He spends his free time drawing the varieties of birds that descend from the Rock Dove. But, it�s at his day job, managing a large pet shop in Phoenix, where McKelvey�s role in the expanding pyramid of pigeons can best be understood.

The number of known breeds has gone from hundreds to thousands in a few short years because in places like Phoenix, the ethnic mix of humans moving from once remote cultures to a melting pot like the United States is revealing strains that were unknown outside their home countries. Dave knows this Saturday will be like every other. The customers here will represent dozens of cultures. They all have one thing in common, their love of pigeons.

Phoenix is a 21^st century crossroads. In many ways, the people are more fascinating than the birds. Salva is but one example. Every Saturday, he comes to trade pigeons. During the week, this recent immigrant from Iraq runs a handyman business from a mobile workshop. Salva and his family live in an apartment, but he could not live without pigeons, so he keeps them in his rolling office.

What goes on in Phoenix can be seen in many parts of the world. Where there are people there are pigeons, and, like this bird market in Beijing, there is always a buyer for someone�s birds. Most of the customers aren�t particular about pedigrees or fancy breeds. They simply love pigeons.

But human nature leads some people to strive for perfection. For them, it is their life�s goal to keep only the finest examples of the pigeon pyramid.

He is one of world�s greatest pigeon breeders. Born in snowy Canada, John Heppner now runs a virtual pigeon world in the permanent sun of southern California. Heppner is a champion many times over, not just with one piece of the pyramid, but with dozens of its variations.

Where Karlheinz Solfrank�s passion is the past and the history of pigeons, Heppner�s passion is the future. He is a master breeder. His mission is to constantly strive to breed new birds, pigeons so physically perfect that they win prizes at the greatest pigeon shows.

You have to have an immense love for the bird. You have to work hard at it. You have to be somewhat competitive, or very competitive, if you will, and you have to have a little luck. And, you know what else you have to have; you have to have a feathered thumb.

Heppner�s fascination with pigeons has broadened his horizons. He�s traveled the world to meet other fanciers, and the world has come to him. Today�s guest is from a continent away; Stewart Patterson is from South Africa, traveling more than 10,000 miles to buy breeding stock from Heppner�s famous loft.

Like the show dog, pigeons are bred for their beauty and perfection of form. Hitting this standard is an art and may take years of work. To show a breeder what he is shooting for, an official show standard is developed. Creating a picture of this perfect pigeon falls to artists like Diane Jacky, who makes a living painting the exact pictures of pigeon varieties that are used by breeders and judges to award prizes.

Breeders follow these exacting standards and bring their best examples to a showplace. Some shows are tiny, for a single breed, others are huge, with dozens of breeds and thousands of pigeons. None are larger than the shows in Germany; where upwards of 70,000 pigeons are on display. Each breed has judges who physically examine each entrant. The judge chooses which bird is closest to the show standard.

The breeding and exhibition of birds is a global hobby, and the LA Pigeon Club, of which Heppner is president, is a typical melting pot of people.

The club convenes each month. Before the meeting, the parking lot outside becomes a pigeon market like Beijing, or the pet shop in Phoenix. Young and old, rich and poor, all of these people share the same passion for the descendants of the Rock Dove.

It�s been true for centuries, wherever there is a crossroads of cultures, you will find man�s oldest feathered friend, and in our modern world, barriers falling between countries have done more than bring human beings together. From behind those barriers, have come hundreds of variations of the bird of peace. This has created a river of new breeds, and today, the opening of China is poised to make that river a flood.

Once the wall between Eastern Europe and Germany fell, then birds started to come across the border too, and so there was just an outbreak of breeds that had been developed in Eastern Germany and Russia that we had never seen before.

We thought we knew Europe, and we found varieties there that we didn�t even dream about. But we don�t even pretend to think we know China; guess what they might have hidden away in a remote mountain valley?

China has always had a kind of almost a mystical attraction for us. But I know that there is many, many more pigeons there than what we see. We probably haven�t even seen the tip of the iceberg.

I would be shocked if there wasn�t a small town in China, some place in the mountains, where there is a group of people who have been selecting for maybe a thousand years what they thought was beautiful, and when we get a chance to see that, we�ll think it�s beautiful.

A few short years ago, when Karlheinz Solfrank commissioned the pyramid, the number of official breeds was less than three hundred, but an explosion of new varieties has flowed from remote parts of the world. To make an accurate pyramid today, the display in Solfrank�s museum would be a little bigger�about twenty times the size it is now. Such is the variety human breeders have created from the wild Rock Dove, the original bird of peace.

Marathon in the Sky

It is the sport with a single starting gate and a thousand finish lines. It is the race of one of nature�s most amazing creatures and man�s oldest feathered friend. This is the story of marathons in the sky; the story of pigeon racing.

The words dove and pigeon describe the same family of birds. Their gentle ways and soft cooing made them a symbol of peace and love. But pigeons grew to fill another role. Man learned they could carry messages home. This instinct made the bird essential to civilizations as early as 5,000 years before the birth of Christ. Noah�s dove flew over the horizon to find land. Ancient Egyptians developed special paper to permit birds to carry more information.

As fast messengers, pigeons were important to ancient military and business leaders, and for thousands of years, they were the world�s fastest way to send messages. By the 1800�s, in the business centers of London and Antwerp, it was common for bankers and traders to maintain their own homing pigeons, used to deliver secret messages from distant cities.

One of these was the great financier, Nathan Rothschild, whose intelligence network included well-trained homing pigeons. In 1815, a Rothschild pigeon flew home to London carrying the startling news that Napoleon�s grand French army had been crushed at Waterloo.

By the late 1800�s, pigeons were frequently used for fast communications. Birds delivered stock prices from one city to another. A key part of the early Reuters news agency used them to carry news. Government run pigeon posts became common in many parts of the world.

In both World Wars I and II, homing pigeons provided a reliable means of delivering messages, and in the five years of World War II, military birds successfully delivered an incredible 98% of all the hundreds of thousands of messages.

Today, the Spanish and French armies are among the last to use the reliable couriers. Modern radio communications have made the homing pigeon, like the horse, an obsolete military tool, but more than a century ago, the pigeons originally used to carry messages in Belgium were being turned into more than a messenger; they were becoming marathon athletes in a new sport called pigeon racing.

As a product of nature�s superb aeronautical engineering, the pigeon comes close to perfection. The airframe is made up of hollow bones, whose interior is permeated by tiny air bubbles, making them half the weight of the same amount of our human bones. Most important of all, anchoring the skeleton is the great keel bone. The keel anchors the pectoral muscles, the pigeons amazing power supply that drives the wings, and rockets the bird through the air. This huge muscle accounts for almost a third of the bird�s weight.

This is nature�s version of the perfect marathon machine, designed to reach peak velocity in seconds, and then, incredibly, hour after non-stop hour, to sustain a tremendous pace. At rest, the birds� heart beats 200 times per minute. When it takes flight, this shoots to 600 beats and remains there as long as it flies, even as long as 15 or 16 hours, covering over 500 non-stop miles.

Despite extensive scientific research, the mystery of how pigeons navigate home has yet to be solved. In 1967, Cornell University, in New York State, began conducting experiments with racing pigeons in an effort to understand their homing ability. Data gathered here revealed that nature has blessed these birds with senses far more sophisticated than human beings.

The experiments pointed to the possibility the birds use a combination of senses for clues to find the route home. Each bird has a very accurate internal clock. It seems likely that pigeons are able to sense the earth�s magnetic field. They have visual senses that allow them to see ultra-violet and polarized light.

Pigeons can also smell so well that some bird researchers believe they might use odors to help them find their way.

Backing all this up is a sense of hearing so sensitive to low frequencies they can perceive infrasound, inaudible to humans. Scientists believe they can actually hear certain noises, such as the wind blowing over the mountains from several thousand miles away.

Throughout the world, as many as two million people keep homing pigeons. The sports appeal is much the same as horse or greyhound racing, but in this more affordable hobby. The pigeon fancier is both breeder and trainer, and the race course is the open sky. Most exciting of all is that the finish line is in the fancier�s back yard.

The housing built for racing pigeons reflects both the local climate and the quality of life that fanciers want for their birds. Throughout the world, palatial pigeon lofts, such as these in Belgium are designed to provide the birds with much more than shelter. Remember, what lives here are athletes. Their health and happiness are paramount to their owners. Ventilation is designed to keep the birds in top condition. Feeding and exercise are part of an exact regimen. Hygiene is also vital and many lofts include automatic systems to remove droppings at the touch of a button.

A race begins when the birds are released from a distant point. This is the starting gate. These releases are from standard locations and named for the nearest town. The birds race home.

When the Belgians first began competing with their homing pigeons, the first bird home was placed in a bag and a runner raced to the local club. The first bird there was the winner, but to expand competition beyond a single village, a new method was designed.

As in any race there are two factors that determine the speed of the contestant. The distance from the starting point to the finish line divided by the time it takes the racer to complete the journey. Pigeon racing officials developed methods to measure from the race release points to each pigeon loft. These official distances are accurate to a thousandth of a mile or kilometer. Knowing the time it took a bird to fly home was a bigger challenge. The clock not only had to be very accurate, but there also had to be a way to prove the bird had flown the race.

More than a century ago, watchmakers in Europe and the United States devised timing clocks that included special chambers where the bird�s entry tag, called a countermark, could be placed when the pigeon came home. Turning a handle printed the time the bird arrived one a roll of paper inside the clock and moved the tag into a sealed chamber.

This system is still used in England. Rubber countermarks are placed on each bird�s foot prior to the race. They contain a secret number inside the tag and are matched to the bird�s permanent registration number. When the birds come home, the owner catches the bird, removes the tag, and clocks the pigeon�s arrival time. Competitors then return to their club, where all of the clocks are opened. Arrival times are fed into a computer that divides the distance to each loft by each bird�s flying time to determine which pigeon flew home with the fastest speed.

This system of countermarks and clocks was little changed for a century until clock makers in Germany devised a new system using electronic technology. This German pigeon racing club uses the new system. To enter birds in a race, the chips are scanned prior to the release. The birds are placed in shipping crates and sent to the release point.

When they return, the pigeon passes over a scanner that picks up a signal from the chip and records it in a small portable computer. Competitors return to the club with these units and the data are fed into a computer and the winning birds are determined. This new system is a significant change in what happens at the finish line of a pigeon race.

With electronic clocking, the owner no longer has to catch the tired race bird. In fact, a bird can be timed without the owner even being at home, a tremendous benefit to a pigeon fancier who may have to work on the day of a race.

Perhaps the most clever method of timing is used in China, which has more racing pigeon enthusiasts than all other countries combined. Pigeon clocks are expensive; most fanciers here are of modest means. What many Chinese pigeon clubs do though is enter a bird in a race by applying a small label onto the pigeon�s permanent leg ring.

A duplicate is then placed on a fancier�s entry sheet. Each bird is also stamped on the underside of its wing with the code for the race. Like a lottery ticket, a secret number is hidden on the label. When the pigeon arrives home, the owner catches the bird, scratches off the material hiding the secret number, and then phones the number into a central computer that records the arrival of the pigeon.

Race officials then immediately visit the lofts with the top speeds to check the entry tag, the wing stamp and even examine the pigeon�s droppings to make sure it actually flew the race. The benefit of the Chinese system is that competitors don�t have to buy a clock, making the sport much more affordable to the average person.

There are two race seasons each year. Birds one year or older are raced in the spring. These veteran fliers can fly as much as 600 miles in a single day. Young pigeons, born in January or February, are raced in late summer and compete in races of a few hundred miles. Young or old, the process is the same. The races themselves are typically weekend events with weekdays spent carefully analyzing each bird, of exercise and judicious feeding. On the day before the race, the birds in the best condition are selected to compete and are taken to the club to be entered in the race.

The shipping baskets, containing about 25 birds, are loaded on to transports for the journey to the release points. In the larger pigeon races areas, the transport trucks are huge, professional affairs. Weeks, months, years and even generations of work have gone into what is about to begin.

Ahead, out over the horizon, is home. As they fly over the summer countryside, the flocks begin to stretch out.

First comes homing instinct, then comes a hundred thousand pulls of air, and on each stroke, the blend of better breeding and conditioning pulls some birds a little farther forward.

They are bred to race, and born to fly, these marathoners of the sky. They are of all colors, and they fly over the contours of the globe from the fields of France to the open water of the Sea of Japan. These birds of peace are loved, and cared for by men and women and children who speak all of the earth�s languages.

In their freedom are born the sinews of greatness. The wisdom of the air and the stamina only nature can create. And in this joining of two creatures are the legends of thousands of years of friendship. Man and bird. One earthbound and looking skyward at the product of his and nature�s partnership; the other, airborne, taking wing from distant points to complete its instinctive purpose for being, to magically come home, and to fly farther and faster than those before.

Pigeons Go To School

American schools are full of animals. Not real animals, symbolic animals. By long tradition, each school chooses a mascot, a representative of the life force of the student body, an icon.

Carnivores are the most popular. Lions, tigers, bears and wolves represent thousands of schools, and birds are popular too. The tough guys--Eagles, Hawks and Falcons are the most common.

In America, athletic events between schools sound like a bad day at the zoo; the falcons fighting the hawks, the lions fighting the tigers.

Nowhere in America is the pigeon the school mascot, maybe because the image of the gentle bird of peace doesn�t seem aggressive enough to represent a school�s image when it is fighting on the battlefield of sports. But while there are no pigeon mascots, there is one tiny corner in the country where pigeons are playing a new role in American education.

The place is called Toppenish, Washington, in the Northwest corner of the country. The state borders Canada and the Pacific Ocean, and its eastern section is a broad agricultural plain between the coastal mountains and the towering Rockies. This is the country of small towns and wide open spaces and land so flat the towns put their water in huge tanks in the air to create pressure in the system.

This is farming country; apples are grown here, grapes for wine, and the area is the world�s leading producer of hops for beer.

The town has a slogan for itself, �Where the west still lives,� and if that means �Cowboys and Indians,� the advertising is true. The town is surrounded by a large Indian reservation and cowboys still make a living herding cattle in the huge stockyards in town.

Toppenish also prides itself on its art. Years ago, the elders decided to paint murals on the walls of buildings. Today, more than 60 huge paintings attract visitors from around the world to the tiny town. The pictures on the walls depict times gone by, a quiet, rural time. Today, like so many other small cities in America, Toppenish faces the challenges of drugs, gang violence and the changes in an economy brought by the immigration of thousands of migrant workers from Mexico who now make up the majority of the population here.

Jessie Garza, Jr. is part of that population. A proud second generation Mexican-American, Garza grew up in the valley, working his way through school in the fields outside of town. Garza is an important official in Toppenish. For thirty years, he has managed social service programs for the huge local farm worker�s clinic. Garza�s job is the front line in the war on drugs, of broken families, wayward youths and hard core unemployment. He lives in two worlds. At work he cares about people. At home he cares for his pigeons.

Garza will tell you, he and his wife are in a new phase of their lives. Their children are grown, and they are living two dreams. She is building her dream home; he is building his dream pigeon loft.

Garza knows about the power of pigeons. His youngest son, Jesse the Third, has helped care for the family birds since he could walk. Young Jesse�s love of birds lead him to college, a degree in science and a job teaching at a local high school. There are thousands of father and son partnerships in the world of pigeons, but the Garzas aren�t out to win races, they are out to change lives.

Toppenish has two high schools. The larger, traditional one is named for the Wildcats, a fierce animal of the mountains. The other small, alternative school is called Eagle High School. The eagle is a powerful icon of Native American culture, but there are no eagles here, there are pigeons.

Eagle is an alternative school, meaning it�s a last stop for young people who aren�t doing well in the regular school. The reasons kids come here vary, poor attendance, poor grades, discipline problems or the demands of being an unwed mother.

In 1998, when young Jesse got the job at Eagle, he and his father put in place an idea they had had for many years. The Garzas guessed that a working racing pigeon loft, or pigeon lab as they call it would provide a wide array of learning opportunities for young people.

Working with his father to write a grant to build the loft and earning the approval of school leaders, the Pigeon Project, as it�s called, was begun. Four years later, the birds at Eagle are winning races and winning the hearts of kids that haven�t had a lot of breaks in their lives.

The curriculum is divided into two parts. Garza begins the year teaching the basics of the birds themselves. For the first time for many, they get a chance to touch a living bird. Students learn about the birds� physiology, muscles, organs, eyesight, hearing and feathers�all with living subjects in front of them. The students study behavior as well, seeing first hand all the aspects of parenting, from courtship to mating to egg laying to protecting their young. The classes are �hands on� in the best sense. Egg laying is carefully documented, and teams of students chart the development of the young, from weighing eggs daily to banding the baby birds and charting their rapid growth.

There�s even an art component. Besides drawing pictures of the birds, the best artists in the class win the right to decorate the pigeon crates. The class has become the most popular at the school and kids with attendance problems now show up at school every day. The results in learning and attendance have not been lost on the school leaders.

It�s amazing to me to watch the transformation in so many of our students who have a lot of struggles in life. As a result of the pigeon project, they�re able to work with their pigeon, while still talking with their classmates, while having an air of compassion about them that we have not been able to see in the past.

There�s some sort of bond between them and the bird that causes them to come back. The students in the pigeon program are here everyday.

This instruction could be done with any breed of pigeon, but the racing component adds another dimension to the Pigeon Project. Students observe the young birds learning to fly and take part in training the birds to find their way home. Those with driver�s licenses are part of the team that takes the young homing pigeons down the road.

For most students, school ends on Friday afternoon, but not for the kids in the Pigeon Project. During the racing season, they return to school Friday evening to box their birds and travel to the local pigeon club to enter them in Saturday�s race.

At this stage, the class enters another phase. This phase is about trust. The young people have to learn to carefully handle valuable pigeons belonging to the adults in the club, and they have to earn the right to take part in registering race birds and sealing up the crates full of pigeons. Over the years, the Eagle High kids have earned the respect of the veteran pigeon men.

What happens when they get the birds, you can see them get a little more compassionate; they�re showing a lot of pride in the birds that they�re raising and handling and taking care of everyday, and I think it gives them a little sense of responsibility that maybe they didn�t have before, and I think that�s a nice thing to see.

They all have an interest. They all help us book the birds. They all seem to know their pigeons. They�re all highly encouraged by what their pigeons; they think they�re going to do week after week so they�re really getting into it. I think they�re down there watching them come in, and they�re showing up for knock off both when we ship the birds and also when we knock off, following the race. So they�re doing their part as club members to participate.

This extra work pays off for the students in many ways, not the least of which is getting to hang out with their teacher and spend the time after shipping the birds at the local burger stand. On a Saturday morning, not many teachers are working. But for more than a dozen Saturday�s each year, Jesse Garza is still on the job, meeting with the kids that want to watch the race birds come home.

For all the regular handling these pigeons get, from before they are born to every day of their young lives, the racing pigeons of Eagle High have had a fantastic record, winning races at distances from 100 to 500 miles. The ingredients include the good stock young Jesse�s father donated to the school, combined with the son�s innate ability with the birds.

But for the Garzas, the program was never about winning. It was about changing lives, and it is here that the pigeon project truly shines. A natural born teacher, Jesse Garza is quick to put his trust in these young people. The hardest workers earn the title of loft manager, with full responsibility to feed and care for the birds.

The pigeons are that thing that really sparks, you know, just lights their fire, I guess, kind of thing, and just, and they go for it. That�s what I am looking for.

For many of these young people, it is their first chance to prove their skills, to be part of a team and take pride in a job well done, but self esteem from manager duties are nothing compared to the effect the birds themselves seem to have on those once troubled teens.

Ernesto Aguirre is an example of the impact the bird of peace exerts on human beings. His massive fists once clenched, as he fought his way through the day at the regular high school. Now, they tenderly shelter a helpless baby pigeon and his face lights up with the recognition of hearing a baby bird pecks its way into the world.

I have this feeling for them. I don�t know what it is. It�s this deep feeling about birds. I wish I was one of them. I wish I was up in the air flying.

The bird�s magic has worked for Leo Ibarra as well. Not only has he risen to loft manager, but he has learned to lead the flock of kids in the project.

I�ve never told anybody, but I used to want to drop out, and it just kept me from dropping out. It wanted me to come back to school, keep coming and coming and I just didn�t think about dropping out. So it really has helped me out a lot.

There�s many different facets, many different things that they could learn from this. They could learn empathy, like I said they relate, they learn how to relate to another being. It helps them increase their confidence and respect for other people. The idea is that as they relate to animals, they could transfer this knowledge onto human beings. So ideally, it helps them then in the relationships with other people too.

But the most dramatic story comes from the first year of the program, when Laticia Avalos landed in Pigeon Project. A hard case when she arrived at Eagle, Laticia volunteered to care for a baby pigeon whose parents were killed. They called him �Scotty,� and this bird of peace melted a young girl�s once hard heart.

I was a real troublemaker. I was into gangs and stuff and even doing drugs and, I don�t know, my life was just, I don�t know, where I didn�t care anymore, didn�t care what I did or anything. Until I pretty much got introduced to the pigeon program at Eagle�s. Then I just started, I don�t know, getting into something, then I just got motivated to start doing my school work and I was, I wanted to come to school every day.

And that has turned her whole life around. She�s thankful over and over again about the project, as being the thing that got her out of that, pulled away from those bad things, those negative things and put her into something that was more positive.

I actually at one time was thinking of committing suicide, and now, I think of life as a great thing and I am cherishing it every moment.

What started as a dream of two pigeon men has lead to results that have captured the attention of school officials at the highest level of the system.

This project has been one of the very best projects that we could have had, to basically turn students around.

American schools are in a period of great change, called by some the reform movement. Simply put, this movement calls for students to learn by direct contact with their study subject and seeks to engage young minds with more than boring textbook work�for the senior Garza, it all part of his dream.

I see within the next five, ten years that every school in the lower Yakima valley that will be eight school districts that will have a racing pigeons project, and I see that every school district will be competing against each other.

With the results this program has had with a tiny loft and an experimental curriculum, it may be that Garza, for once, is dreaming too small. The day may come when pigeons fly above more than a few schools in the Yakima Valley, perhaps over the inner cities of America where hundreds of thousands of young people like those at Eagle are primed to learn from the bird of peace.

My father thought about the pigeon sport and I thought about electronics. We had the idea that to develop an electronic tracking system for pigeon sport which is using transponders for animal identification.

The Performers

The bird of peace is many things to human beings�a source of food, a messenger in peace and war, a competitive athlete, but often is it simply an entertainer, and some of the bird�s most amazing feats take place right where it lives, in the sky above its home.

The magic of flight is something earth-bound humans never tire of watching, but human nature is seldom satisfied with the status quo. Take flight itself, if a bird flies an hour, why not two? Why not more? In the Middle East, where many pigeon breeds were developed, the game became one of sending up the flock that would fly the highest, or fly the longest.

Today, strains called High Fliers, Tipplers and Flights are now capable of flying all day long, often landing after dark. The world record is now more than 20 hours of uninterrupted flight. Another competitive pigeon sport is called Trigoneri. This game involves sending up a huge flock of pigeons in an attempt to get birds from another loft to join the foreign flock in the air and then land with them and become captive.

In New York, this sport has been played for more than a hundred years. They call it mumbling, and the hub of this pigeon game is the local pet shops where captive birds are taken to be sold or exchanged. In this lively game, the pride comes from the number of new birds an owner can win in the air.

From Spain comes another pigeon sport that also involves capturing another person�s pigeons, but this sport involves not a flock, but male pigeons bred to capture a lady�s heart. Called the Casanova of the pigeon world, these pouter pigeons, with their huge swelling chests and incredible sex drive, were set free to seek out females from other flocks and lure them home.

These Spanish breeds became so adept at stealing other birds they came to be known as thief pouters. Today, thief pouters are popular world wide. Orlando Moya keeps his flock in his backyard in Los Angeles. Today, the game is not about bringing home strange pigeons, but in scoring how well each male follows a hen and tries to win her heart.

A white feather is tied to the female and the males are trained to concentrate on nothing but this marked lady. The males become so excited in their pursuit that it�s hard to call these advances romantic.

During the summer in Europe, special competitions take place when pigeon fanciers meet in a farmer�s field, like this one in Southern Germany. This is the sport called Flugrolling, and the game here is for a fancier to show how tame his pigeons are and how well they obey commands.

This sport originated with a fancier teaching his birds at home to return to a cage to be fed. The birds become so focused on the cage that they can be taken from home, to a strange location and they will fly above the cage and return on command.

Most of the fanciers use a tame, white bird, called a dropper, as a flying magnet to draw the flock back to the table quickly. They are given points for how they behave in the air and how well they behave the call to return to the tiny table on the top of the cage.

Some pigeon people seem to have a magical ability to tame these birds of peace. An example is 79 year old Gottlob Schweizer. With his long white beard and flowing white hair, this pigeon lover looks like a magician in a fairy tale, but what his tiny flock of birds can do is indeed a magical sight.

With more than 70 years experience training pigeons, Gottlob has created a flock so tame; he doesn�t even use a dropper. It takes very tame birds to get them to land fast in strange surroundings and with a crowd of spectators nearby.

Gottlob�s magical ability can be seen not just in how the birds obey him, for even when they land the birds show how comfortable they are with humans. Normally, a pigeon will take flight if a stranger gets too close, but this little team is unfazed by the people around them, or even a television camera coming within inches of them.

First, I spend a lot of time with them every day, and they know that they perform every Sunday. All athletes need exercise and movement, and my birds need it as well. People are always amazed at how obedient they are. When I call them, they come right away.

Gottlob�s love of these birds and his knowledge will live on in future generations of pigeons. His young assistant Timo, a neighbor boy who became fascinated with the gentle birds, is learning the secrets of this German pigeon master.

Perhaps the most amazing sight ever seen by pigeon lovers occurred many centuries ago. As a group of birds soared above their home, one bird, for some inexplicable reason, stopped in mid-air and did a backward somersault. The observant human used this oddity for breeding to create more birds capable of these aerial gymnastics. Today, these breeds are known as Rollers and Tumblers. Why the birds do these flips is still unknown. It some ways it seems like a nervous tick. Today breeds exist that don�t even need to leave the ground to perform. These birds, called parlor rollers, literally jump from the earth and flip in the air

Parlor rollers roll on the ground. What you do is you set the bird on the ground, usually with a clap or some sort of a shaking motion, and the bird starts to roll on the ground and then we measure how far it rolls. I think the California record right now is 180 feet.

But rolling on the ground is a small facet of the pigeon sport compared to what takes place with birds that roll in flight. Birmingham Roller pigeons perform their acrobatics while flying high above their lofts, somersaulting eight to fourteen revolutions per second. With each performance, they descend 10-40 feet. While thought to have originated in the Middle East, it was in England over the last two centuries, where this acrobatic pigeon behavior was refined into what is now a global pigeon sport.

The legions of pigeon men who love these birds include several who can truly be called geniuses for their deep understanding of the bird of peace. One such genius was William H. Pensom. Growing up in England at the beginning of the last century, he became fascinated with the small eight-ounce pigeons that performed somersaults while flying high in the sky above their homes.

Pensom married, started a family, and pursued an ordinary life as a driver of Birmingham�s double-decker buses�that is, until his reputation as an expert breeder and trainer of roller pigeons began to spread throughout England and then to North America.

Now Pensom flew a kit of white Rollers, which is the best kit this country has ever seen.

Don Andrews, who was a very well-known American fancier of some wealth, he owned the largest hardware store in Los Angeles. He was so impressed with Bill that he offered him a job taking care of his birds. Now Don Andrews, you must understand, had over 4,000 pigeons; he had one acre of lofts alone. So this was a full time job.

Pensom accepted and moved his family, and his pigeons, to the sunny skies of Southern California.

One of the nicest people you could ever meet. He would never really get into an argument with you, or he would walk away if you got out of line, you know and he would do anything for you too. He went back to England and brought back some Birmingham Rollers to Los Angeles, and I believe that he was the one that introduced them to him, the real Birmingham Roller.

He brought out extreme emotions in people. There were those that idolized him and those that disliked him. He would not be characterized as a man with a lot of tact, I guess you could say.

For many years, Pensom traveled throughout North America helping fanciers improve their flocks. His job as Andrews� loft manager ended and he became a salesman for the hardware store. He also tried to make extra money building pigeon crates and lofts and selling his best birds.

Of all the birds that he bred, and all of the things that he had done for people, he didn�t make any money at all. No money and he died penniless too.

What Pensom and others refined was the original system of judging the performance of a flock of rollers in competition, laid down more than 100 years ago in England. Their modern system is the basis for today�s World Cup competition.

To the untrained eye, this is just another flock of pigeons, but to this Dutch pigeon fancier, Heine Bijker, they are one of almost sixty flocks of pigeons locked in a worldwide competition that spans four continents. As the judge of the 2002 World Cup roller competition, Heine knows what he is looking for. He won the right to be the world judge by winning the competition the previous year.

He�s looking for the ultimate kit in the end, and we are all striving for that, which is flying 20 birds, a kit, tight as a drum that work together, and when they break, they break like a snapping cord, all together, 20 at once and when you see that, you know you�ve made it.

It�s a fair system�the same judge views 60 flocks and scores them all. The scoring involves three ingredients. First, the number of birds that roll simultaneously, or �break,� is recorded during a twenty minute flight. The judge also is observing the quality of the rolls, and finally, how the entire flock performers as a kit or team. The number of birds rolling at a time is key. If ten or more roll, the number is doubled. If 15 or more roll, the number is tripled for scoring. If all 20 roll, the score is multiplied by five, but this has yet to occur in World Cup competition.

As he scores the flock belonging to Ken Weaver in England, Heine comes up with a final number. This year, Weaver scored a 290, a relatively good score, but not enough to put him anywhere near the lead. On any given day somewhere else in the world, another fancier�s rollers are likely to be better.

Breeding great rollers is difficult. Training and conditioning them to perform at their best on the one day the judge stands in your backyard is an equal challenge. In the twelve years the World Cup has been running, many countries have won, but no story matches that of another pigeon man who may have been Bill Pensom�s equal in a critical aspect of the sport.

In June of 2000, Heine Bijker was again the World Cup judge, having won the previous year. His travels took him to the Southwest corner of Canada where he observed the flock flown by legendary roller trainer, Monty Neibel. That day would prove to be Monty�s finest hour as his flock of birds scored a record shattering 1894 points to win the world cup.

So that man just had them ready that day. Everything was okay. The weather was perfect and the birds were perfect, so everything fell together.

No one had ever scored anything close to this number in previous competition, but Monty�s finest hour would tragically prove to be his last.

He had a bad accident in the car taking Heine back to catch the ferry and then he died.

Heine was seriously injured. Monty Neibel, probably the world�s greatest roller competition flyer in history, was killed.

Ultimately, Heine recovered and returned to his family and his pigeons in Holland. The following year, he again won the World Cup, and despite the tragedy in his past, he volunteered to travel the world and judge the finals again.

In a small suburb of Vancouver, a contingent of birds from Monty�s original family live in the backyard loft of John Wiens, an immigrant from Kazakhstan. In 2002, he carried on Monty�s legend by putting up a flock of birds that scored 775 points and again won the World Cup for Canada.

As World Champion, John Wiens will not compete in the next World Cup. It will now be his job to visit four continents over a two-month summer of competition.

I look at it as a great privilege, a great honor, and of course, it will be lots of fun. Even if they don�t speak my language, we always find some way of communicating.

As a performing animal, the pigeon is both athlete and acrobat. Whether it is flying from dawn to dark, capturing a lady�s heart, doing back flips on the ground, or falling like raindrops from the sky, these winged performers delight their keepers on every continent and fly in the blue sky above homes of China, Europe, Africa, Australia and the Americas.

House of Champions

The tiny country of Belgium is where the modern sport of pigeon racing was born. For more than a hundred years, the cities of Antwerp and Brussels, and small villages in the flat Belgian countryside have been home to millions of racing pigeons and thousands of pigeon fanciers.

Although the number of fanciers has declined in recent years, the number of pigeons in competition has continued to increase. Here, the sport is administered by a national organization, the KDBD, which regulates national race schedules and competition from its offices in Brussels.

During the summer, huge transport trucks carry birds collected from small clubs to major release points such as this one in Queverain near the French border.

Three or four weeks ago, I had 2,400 baskets, and also I think we released here, I think, 200,000 pigeons at one time. That�s a beautiful sight. Then, the release of the pigeons and the clouds turn black and it�s beautiful.

On a signal, the huge transports release their cargo of flying competitors, and the race is on.

In Belgium, pigeon racing could be called the sport of the common man, as on any given day, the winning trainer could be a millionaire or a man of modest means. Noel Lippins learned his lifelong hobby from his father and grandfather, but while the size and quality of his pigeon lofts reflect his success in business, this Belgian champion is quick to acknowledge that money is no guarantee of victory.

The rich man and the poor man in pigeon sport are all friends. There are no classifications in pigeon sport.

David Lippins:Even if it the poorest man in the club, with the good pigeon or a bad pigeon, he is just a member of it, and everyone is very good friends with each other.

Sometimes the sport can have a profound effect on a person�s fortunes, and not just because he wins races. Andre Laeter is another Belgian champion whose huge pigeon loft is a testament to his life long love of homing pigeons, but he owes much of personal success to pigeons as well, as it was on a trip to Taiwan to visit other pigeon fanciers, that he met a pigeon man who represented a new type of yarn manufacturing. The eventual business partnership between the Chinese and the Belgian proved to be a huge financial success.

Money may make the pigeon hobby more comfortable; leading to a bigger loft, or the ability to buy better birds, but often the champions in this game come from small locations, and span generations of experience. Andre Doublearer is an example. His modest lofts in his back yard are much smaller than many men he competes with, but his profound knowledge of pigeons has made this jeweler one of Belgium�s greatest racers.

A young boy can win, an old man can win. You need not be handsome; you need not be an athlete. Everybody can be a winner.

From his tiny workbench, shoemaker Willie Tass can gaze out on his simple lofts. They are not as fancy as those of wealthier men, but Willie and his partner have won more than their share of national races from these simple buildings.

As any Belgian will tell you, it�s not the building that matters, it�s the blood. Pigeons thrive in all manners of surroundings, but the key to victory against thousands of competitors is the genetic material of the birds themselves, and in the stories of great racing men and of those who know how to breed champions, there is none more well-known than the family named Janssen.

The village is called Arendonk, a small agricultural town that looks like any other Belgian village. But from this village and a small attic pigeon loft on a quiet street has flowed a river of champion blood that has touched the race reports of virtually every pigeon club on earth. The founder of this loft was Henri Janssen, a man who loved breeding birds and who passed this love on to his sons.

He was a canary breeder, in fact, but because his neighbor was a pigeon fancier and he start over to the pigeon sport.

For the Janssen family, the pigeons were more than a past time; they were a passion. By the 1930�s, the name of Janssen was at the top of the race result sheet week after week in the pigeons clubs of Arendonk.

In those days after the war, they were outstanding. Kind of man got one egg from the Janssens, in two years he was champion.

In the 1950�s, the Janssen brothers began to trade on their racing success and sell many of their pigeons. What the Janssen birds had was speed. Developed after hundreds and hundreds of short races, the blood of the Janssen birds seemed to rev up any other families of birds they were mixed with.

The greatest strain there ever was, you know, there�s no pigeon fancier in the world today that hasn�t come in contact with a Janssen pigeon.

Louie is the last surviving Janssen Brother. At 87, he spends most of his days sitting in a living room chair in the same house where he and his brothers built a dynasty, and for all the genius of his brothers at breeding, perhaps the most amazing thing about Louis is his understanding, not of pigeons, but of human beings.

Schoolstrate today is little changed from when the first visitors began to arrive to buy the Janssen blood. Over the last fifty years, the small Janssen home has been host to pigeon fanciers from almost every country on earth. Many, such as this group from China, traveled thousands of miles to sit with this man, but Louie knew that these were not just social calls; the ultimate goal of every visitor was to buy pigeons, to try to exchange money for greatness.

20 years ago, the pigeons are for sale for a reasonable price. That�s a question of demand and offer, and I always said that it�s not Louie Jenssen who made the price of the pigeons, you know, the buyers make the price.

But, unlike most famous breeders, the Janssens did one thing quite differently. Despite the huge demand, they would often not sell their birds.

Let me tell you this, Americans came down. We want to buy birds, well I�m sorry then, I�m afraid we have no birds for you. Oh, we have come all the way. Oh, I don�t think we have birds for you. Americans are disappointed. Louis we wait, maybe there is this one pigeon, could we sell this bird? No, not that bird. But these people came from so far, well if you want one bird maybe. The Americans were so happy for a high price they bought birds, I�ve experienced this so many times, no birds, but there are always birds. It�s clever.

Decades later, this small Belgian only sees certain visitors. Pigeons have made him famous, made him a millionaire, and any buyer he doesn�t like finds out his pride now means more to him than profit.

They ask Louie, sell me a couple of bird, and Louie says I am very sorry but I cannot sell anything to you. The man said to, well, open his belt, take out a bunch of dollars, I don�t know how much it was 5, 10,000 US dollars, I don�t know, he said, �Sell me a bird!� Louie looked to the, and he, he said I have no birds for sale, man. I cannot sell you any bird if I don�t want to sell you any bird. He opened the other side of his belt and pushed another bunch on Louie�s knee and said okay, I have money enough. �Me too,� Louie said, and he don�t sell a bird to him.

It�s hard to say that the Janssens ever had world-wide fame in mind when they began their work. They were simple people, holding a variety of day jobs in the area, but devoting themselves almost entirely to winning pigeon races.

They don�t see anything else like pigeons. They are not married. They are not interested in women. They are nothing. There�s only one goal, pigeons, pigeons, pigeons, nothing else like that.

What worked to the Janssen�s advantage was how pigeon racing was rapidly becoming an international sport, with prize money rising rapidly and international air travel, bringing many buyers to Belgium in a matter of hours. Whether the brothers saw it coming or not, they certainly capitalized on it and visitors from foreign countries, who were willing to pay hundreds, and later, thousands of dollars for a few birds, learned that the international reputation of the Janssen birds could translate into a new type of business.

In 1975, we went to the Jansen brothers in Belgium. We came back. We bought $10,000 worth of breeding stock and I put one ad in the American Pigeon News, and I sold $20,000 worth of pigeons off of that one ad.

It�s called a �breeding station,� and it�s a simple idea. Imported pigeons, from Janssen and other famous breeders, are kept in a large facility and left to do what many creatures do best, mate and produce offspring.

Everybody who got the best from Janssens mated them with their own very best birds and that�s why many people were successful with them. When a bird had 20% Janssen blood, the fanciers forgot the rest, they are Janssens. It sells; it�s a kind of circus.

These young pigeons carrying famous names on their pedigree can then be sold to local fanciers who don�t have the resources to go directly to the original breeders. Called Pigeon World, breeding stations like this one in England were created in the 80�s and 90�s and are often a far cry from the humble Janssen loft in Arendonk.

Like the beautiful horse racing farms of Kentucky, the homes of champion racing pigeons are often a palatial final stop for a winning bird to spend its final days. For a life-long pigeon fancier like Chic Brooks, his beautiful pigeon houses in central California are part business and part pleasure.

The birds in this loft live a pretty good life; they get their little lofts clean everyday of the week, seven days a week. They get their vitamins, and they get their minerals, and they get their droppings taken to the vet if they even look like they got a sick bone in their body.

Both Chic and his wife Judy are avid pigeon fanciers. Judy Brooks is considered one of the top women pigeon racers in America, and she likes nothing better than beating her champion husband at his own game.

We�re very competitive, and he�ll tell you that we really, really, really are very competitive, and I think that�s exciting in a marriage when you have a common bond such as pigeons that are just great. You also have that competitiveness in your marriage, I think that�s good.

The operation here includes the large breeding loft where champion male racing pigeons from the U.S. and Europe are mated with the best of the Brooks� females. Other pens house young birds that will be sold and sent to fanciers throughout North America and Asia. Near the large ranch house is Chic�s pride and joy�his racing loft�the finish line in dozens of races won by this American legend in the pigeon game.

While Hapyco looks much like a Kentucky horse farm, Chic Brooks emphasizes that there is one key difference.

You don�t have to have a loft this elaborate. Birds don�t care where they fly to. They�ll fly to anything. I think these are for the fanciers rather than for the pigeons.

Today, the names of famous breeders, particularly the Belgians, are known to fanciers world-wide. Thanks to modern communications, these Chinese pigeon fanciers know about the bloodlines of great racing families, but for all the modern victories of others, no fancier has ever come to be as recognized or revered as the last surviving Janssen brother. The opening of this new pigeon club in Taijen, China is marked with the hanging of his smiling face on the wall of a building, in a country he has never seen.

In fact, the most famous man in pigeon racing has barely left Belgium. He hasn�t had to; the world has come to him, and for the thousands of dollars in birds that he and his brothers have sold from their lofts, there is scant evidence that fame and fortune had changed the Janssen�s simple lives.

Even their little dog came from an asylum, and then the dog died, another dog from the asylum, another one dollar for a dog. When they spread butter on the bread, it was so little butter that you could hardly see it.

A visitor doesn�t see much; maybe the kitchen and the front room. There is certainly no evidence of wealth, and the other private rooms appear mostly unused, looking much as they must have for decades, but, on a table in another room is the tiny box that holds the breeding records. On simple cards are the records of the bloodstock that now live very far from home.

The greatest irony is that, for all the fame of the Janssen pigeon blood Louie and his brothers created, the blood of the Janssen brothers themselves ends here. Of the brothers that stayed home, none ever married. But, perhaps that is unimportant as the Janssen Brothers� legacy will undoubtedly live on, not in human progeny, but in the blood of thousands of pigeons the world over, whose speed and magical properties have become a legend on every continent and who will carry on the Janssen name from this house of champions.

to buy this film on dvd,

Bird of Peace

The Pyramid

Marathon in the Sky

Pigeons Go To School

The Performers

House of Champions