okay so we're up to 20 miles today my dad's just dropped them just released them from doncaster
which is 20 miles north of us so we should be seeing them in the next 10 minutes i think um
he released them about 10 minutes ago so if they were doing a mile a minute then they'd be here in
20 minutes uh this is the first time at 20 miles they were at 15 miles previously they did two
tossers at 15 miles the first time the cops came back straight away the second time both of them
i watched them clash into somebody else's birds that were lost flying and they
disappeared for two hours um and i could see them just flying around uh in the distance
uh i drove all the way back and waited an hour and then they started coming back in
ones and twos that was yesterday and we did get them all back eventually which is good
here we are yeah
so
that was pretty uh pretty good to see i just saw the just saw them in the distance flying
quite low but all the wings took back uh dropping height dropping altitude and uh and then they kept
speeding over i don't know if i got that on camera but it came flying over did a loop one or two
loops and then trapped really quite well i think that was a that was pretty good that was 20 miles
and it looks like they've all come together there so i'll do a quick check and count how many we've
got um now they know as soon as the [ __ ] come they land and they're straight in because there's
no foods there um so i'd like to take them so that took them 25 minutes to do um 20 miles and there's
a bit of a northwesterly wind so they had the wind behind them which is why they came in with
a fair bit of speed but it's an airplane of course oh well happy with that it's probably the best
best returning trap i've had so far so let's see how the hens do they should be 15 minutes behind
see them coming i'll try and get another angle for the hens 19 so all of them back together
which is great so the hens are got they've got their grit and got their feed ready
and their water and they'll scrape down and everything so
let's see if the hens do as good a job but that's uh i'm well happy with that
foreign
main batch
what's that 24 minutes past call it 23 when the time they got here so
you're gonna have a big drink there aren't you
so
uh
okay
this is the cricket ground
okay
okay so just got back uh pretty quickly right so the [ __ ] are here
i think i beat the hens i think i beat the hens because uh it's very windy actually and um
where i live them where i let them go it's right next to the a1 so it's literally
straight onto the a1 and then you're up to full speed all the way back so uh cocta here it's good
i think it's just the [ __ ] in there
yeah scuffed all that hens aren't here yet so keep an eye out for that
let's lock them up i generally expect the [ __ ] to get back um without too much trouble
well that's been like in my experience so far so what i try and do is let the hens let the [ __ ]
go give them plenty of time to get here circle if they want to and get themselves in and then
i let the hens go just so um if the [ __ ] are put away then there's more chance that the hens
will land and then go into their own section all right let's take a look and see how many
so this is the um
hen that was uh hawked or hit wires or whatever did the repair job on i didn't send it today
because it's had quite a few flights lately and i just wanted to make sure it was getting a bit of
a rest because i saw a big chunk of feathers and skin fall off the other day obviously gone dry so
um i thought i'd leave that one here i've got one of the fancy birds this white one's not looking
too healthy it's been in isolation it wasn't eating very well it had weird droppings but
they've improved so i brought it back in we got here got these guys got one two three four
nineteen so we've got all the all of them back i'm not sure if this is normal there's water in the
feeder so i don't know if they're just gorging on the food and they're going to the drinker and then
spit it back up or whatnot but i found that that seems to happen quite a lot now we'll just uh keep
our ears peeled for the hands on ears and eyes here they are how about that let's get them in
this is a bit of a nuisance really having to land on that landing board and then into there but
i don't mind so much it's only there they're only young birds only going in young bird races
there we go i think that's all of them obviously we've got one in
sickbay at the moment another one that we left behind so that should be 13.
so we're in the middle of a uh heat wave at the moment so we've got the pool out for us to uh
cool down this is the second day it's actually um in england it's the hottest recorded day ever and
it was the hottest recorded day uh night as well so at the moment it's 39 degrees
inside the pigeon loft or just over 39 degrees celsius that's like over 100 degrees fahrenheit um
so the birds are i've shut the darkness boards up there just to try and stop the direct sunlight
they seem to be coping okay some of them are pent in a fair bit i haven't scraped
them because they've been i haven't flown them for the last few days uh just because we don't
want to make them do any sort of effort that they don't really or shouldn't be doing i've put this
little bath out and this cage that i knocked up when i was first teaching them how to um
when i i built this quickly just so they i could put them on top of the
landing board there when they were young birds or when they first got them uh so i'll just put that
up there for now put a bit of water in there and then these guys have got this big bath
and we just top that up just to try and keep them cool yeah i'm gonna uh i'm gonna jump in that soon
because uh yeah 39 degrees is a bit bit toasty
you see not a cloud in the sky that's not true there's a cloud but it's certainly very very hot