In 2012 in its premiere race of the year the National Flying Club released more than 5000
pigeons including birds from the queens own loft to get home from their release point
in Europe the birds must fly back above the English Channel.
A body of water known in racing circles as the pigeons graveyard.
On the day of the race 5560 birds were released but only 622 managed to return home.
Almost 90 percent of the birds including all of the Queens birds were presumed to have
perished.
Particularly for young birds crossing the channel for the first time is extremely daunting.
The birds face a body of water with no end in sight.
Circling until they realize there is no way around it the birds attempt the crossing.
They are known to fly close to the surface of the water to avoid winds at higher altitudes
and many may drown, swept under by the waves.
Others tirer yet there is nowhere to land.
Pigeons or properly rock doves, they are gently birds who have tested higher on intelligent
tests than dogs, and some primates.
In World War 2 Britain relied on honing pigeons to fly through enemy gunfire and across the
stormy and unpredictable channel to deliver vital coded messages.
And a pigeon was the first to receive the Dicken medal, the Victoria Cross for animals,
for conspicuous gallantry or devotion to duty.
Today however, honing pigeons are put through their paces are forced to risk or lose their
lives for simple human amusement.
For the proctors it is just having a flutter but for the pigeons it is a matter of life
and death.
Most of them more than two and a half million pigeons kept in the UK for racing will not
survive
the races.
If birds come down on land but have not reached their lofts they cannot defend themselves
from predators and they don�t know how to feed themselves having always been given commercial
feed.
One Prominent racer wrote it does not take a scholar
to know what happens to our lost birds.
[Horn] the most infamous race of all is the annual Barcelona International in which twenty-five
thousand birds are entered.
Pigeons arriving in Barcelona from the UK must fly up to nine hundred miles negotiating
many hazards they have never faced before.
The casualty rate form pigeon races is staggeringly high but the carnage does not end there.
Survivors of races who finish out of the money and those who are not kept for breeding are
referred to as rubbish and art typically killed after
the season.
[inaudible] If you believe this cruelty should stop please go to Peta.org.