Comments (17)

1. I’m struck by the press release on the Birmingham Rollers website which, after denying any support for the killings, goes on the say why things like, “The fact that they may not be suited to living in the wild does not render them defective or unworthy of protection, any more so than most dog breeds should be considered defective or worthy of elimination because they are not suited to survival in the wild.” When I look at videos like [no links allowed, so search for "Re: Wholly Rollers are Birmingham Rollers" on youtube], that looks pretty defective to me.

   They also say: “… when thousands of our valuable pet pigeons are killed by Cooper’s Hawks whose current numbers far exceed any previous hawk population estimates, our pleas for assistance to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are met with silence.” I know I’d be heart broken if my (mut) dog got eaten by a cougar or something, but I’d like to think that I wouldn’t stoop to unlawful killing in response.

   posted by Mary on 6-18-2007 at 10:03 am

2. These people are whacks.
   1. A genetic disposition to seizures mid-flight is quite fairly called a DEFECT. ReSpeaking into a “genetic trait” is weasel wording.
   2. Sure, many dogs would not do well in the wild. That is why their owners keep them inside, or in a protected area if they live amidst wolves, cougars, etc. If your pets are low on the food chain (like pigeons), it is wise to keep them out of the range of those that prey upon them. Are you too stupid to see this? EIther keep them inside or move someplace that doesn’t have Cooper’s Hawks.
   3. Raising defective birds prone to being preyed upon and then placing them at risk seems pretty twisted to me! Where is the Humane Society?
   4. They’d have more of a case with Fish & Wildlife if the predators were non-indigineous. They are however, native, so tough noogies.

   Straight talk from Sid.

   posted by Sid Morrison on 6-18-2007 at 11:39 am

3. Give ‘em hell, Sid & Mary.

   Blowing reefer smoke into your dog’s face as an adolescent is one thing, but it’s only temporary silliness. This is a little beyond the pale. Should we genetically encourage Tourettes Syndrom for entertainment purposes? I mean, what real purpose is there in breeding these pigeons? At least other domesticated animal breeds have had a function, if only to be nice to look at. This is the first I’ve heard of selective breeding for a cheap laugh. At least the quirks of other animal breeds were unintended!
   Jaysus!

   posted by Bassman on 6-18-2007 at 1:57 pm

4. Are these the same people that selectively breed for cross-eyed banjo players?

   posted by n2y2 on 6-18-2007 at 4:26 pm

5. Am I the only one who immediately heard Hannibal Lecter talking about “Deep Rollers” and how if both of Clarice’s parents were deep rollers she was going to hit the ground and die?

   Just Curious.

   posted by Sara on 6-19-2007 at 7:33 pm

6. The true idiots on this site are the ones that took everything the Feds. had to say as gospel, instead of doing some research on their own.
   Sid, you say keep them inside or move somewhere without Coopers’ hawks. This statement is truly ignorant and could have been avoided with a little research. These birds are bred to perform in the air not in a cage. Hawks migrate so no matter where you live, you do not get away from hawks. Coopers’ are only one of the hawks that attack our pigeons.
   To condemn something that you don’t take the time to try to understand is a sign of total ignorance.

   posted by Tracey on 9-22-2007 at 10:57 pm

7. this whole article is crap people who raise rollers vary from physicians engineers law enforcement military personnel and scientist and i can back that up but for people to say these bird have a gentic defect and have siezures to my knowledge there is no scientific proof to back that up and how could you sincronize a siezure these birds can control when they roll cause when one rolls it causes a reaction and they all start to roll and pigeon breeders breed for depth velocity and consistancy not for siezures and hawks do attack and kill our birds its not right to kill or trap hawks but people should get facts straight before passing on a bunch of crap and making pigeon breeders look like a bunch of hawk killers were not all alike

   posted by dennis on 9-26-2007 at 12:52 am

8. Dennis – take another look at the article above. I believe you’ll see that I am not painting all roller pigeon breeders as hawk killers. I’m sorry if you got that impression, but it’s not supported by the text. The article is focused on Operation High Roller, which targeted a specific subset of roller clubs, and this is clearly explained above.

   As for whether the tumbling is caused for seizures or because the birds want to do it, I’m not an expert — however, the popular consensus on the issue (at least on the web) appears to be that this behavior is indeed caused by seizures. Do you have any data on this issue, either way?

   posted by Higgins on 9-26-2007 at 8:38 am

9. Trait is the proper description. It is genetically locked into the bird as a recessive gene.

   I can also understand the desire to protect thier property. I believe that is a natural reaction; they just need to find a legal way of doing it. They also need to change thier habits and learn the habits of bitds of prey and do what they can to avoid attacks and radicate the bird of prey’s habitate and concealment. They also can seek permits to capture birds of prey.

   posted by Nick Siders on 11-25-2007 at 12:16 am

10. You can use herbs to stop birds of prey attacking you kit.

    posted by Barry on 1-31-2008 at 9:13 am

11. Ive been in pigeons 60 yrs,racing and roller pigeons,most of the answers i see, are from lack of knowledge,pigeons are the oldest sport known to man,they are the only animal that can see ultra violet lights, the only animal that can hear ultra sonic sounds,can return home from half way around the world,have saved thousands of our soldiers lives,these birds are in every war. they are now being used to spot people lost at sea,because of their keen eye sight,they are used in England to fly blood samples from hospital to the lab, in minutes,it takes over on hour the old way,by car.Man has bred them to fly longer,and faster,some have even arrived home after dark,think about that, flying in the dark,wow…As for the rollers, man has developed and bred these birds to spin with controlled activity and patterns,and for you guys who want more info,look up other acrobats such as Donak,pigeons,Parlor Rollers,Tipplers,Galentez rollers, Moriscar rollers Whittingham rollers,I can name many more birds that perform,if need be,So if a member of YOUR family was ever in the ARMY ask him or her about the Signal Corps, they may have a little info for you,these are the guys that handled the birds.These birds are very intelligent they are doing great things,so DONT be too quick to judge,WHAT HAS A HAWK DONE FOR YOU TODAY?

    posted by Harry Ashcraft on 2-7-2008 at 5:29 pm

12. It amazes me how IGNORANT some people are.If you don’t know anything about a subject,please don’t be so fast as to show us HOW ignorant you really are. I know that the hawks are a protected bird.Their needs to be checks and balances.The hawks have no preditors to control their population.Too many BLEEDING hearts out here.We need to get back to a means of control.What ever happend to the natural way of doing things??

    posted by PAUL DERSCH on 2-11-2008 at 11:55 am

13. What are the herbs used to avoid attacks of BOP on my birds? That would be very interesting and there are a lot of people who would be interested.

    Again, I want to reinterate that the rolling is not a defect. It is a trait. Birmingham Rollers will shut the roll off when being pursued by BOP and if they go ferrel living and flying with common pigeons will cease rolling. It is a trait that is born from a ressesive gene. That is why not all Birmingham Rollers roll and if you breed them to a non-rolling breed the roll is sometimes lost.

    It is not a defect! It is not a siesure. It is like the hunting dog points or sets….a trait.

    Thanks,

    Nick Siders

    posted by Nick Siders on 2-11-2008 at 1:42 pm

14. @Sara: Yeah, he did say that in the book didn’t he?

    posted by GuesssWho on 6-22-2008 at 6:09 pm

15. I once had small flock of Birmingham Rollers and lived in a rural area full of hawks and falcons. I knew the risks of letting my birds fly, but I flew them anyway. They are truly amazing birds to watch (it’s not a cheap laugh). My impression was that their behaviour was voluntary and controlled, not simply a seizure or some reflexive act. Maybe I was projecting my own delight at their aerobatics, but I believed they actually enjoyed it, that it was a kind of play. I even watched a sparrow, a hen that had attached itself to my flock, do a roll along with my birds. It was awesome.

    At the time, my own theory for the rolling was that it was a genetically-induced and overdeveloped hawk evasion behaviour (dropping out of the sky at the approach of a stooping falcon with some tumbling mixed in). This seemed to explain why the birds would perform this trick together, usually with one starting, and the rest following as if taking their cues from the one “who saw the hawk first.” Maybe this is why the sparrow tumbled that day—she was reacting to what she thought was an evasive maneuver by her flock mates. Flocking birds take their cues from each other, so this explanation seemed reasonable. Nothing that I observed or understood at the time suggested that their rolling was anything but completely voluntary.

    Since then, my opinion has been somewhat modified. I’m not convinced that it’s a seizure disorder, but neither am I set that it’s completely voluntary. I believe there is an element of instinct and reflex involved. I’m more inclined to think as Mr. Siders does—that it’s a recessive behavioural trait like those found in specialist dog breeds. A strong example of that can be found in any purebred Border Collie which will go into a stalk-and-herd series of behaviours whenever an opportunity to herd something presents itself. The dogs do not have to be taught to do this—it’s an instinctive, though modified and tightly controlled, hunting behaviour for which we have selectively bred in these dogs. It’s possible that the origin of rolling pigeons has a similar start—an unusual twist in an otherwise normal, genetically determined, instinctive action (like evading a hawk), catches the fancy of some human pigeon keeper. I won’t know for certain if rolling can be deemed a pathological seizure disorder until some genome work and actual brain studies on pigeons can be done. Until then, I would agree that it is more like the specialized behaviours of working dogs and is thus simply an augmentation of normal instinctive behaviour, or even of normal play behaviour (birds will tumble about in flight as a form of play—watch ravens playing in the wind sometime).

    To get back to the hawk issue. I loved my birds. They were pets, not a commercial or competitive enterprise. However, no way would I ever have put them ahead of a wild bird, especially a raptor. I look at the issue of raptor vs domestic pigeon the same way that I look at any wildlife vs any domesticated animal—I side with the wildlife…always, whether it be beef cattle or borzois, hamsters or house cats, no domestic will ever overtop a natural wild animal in my list of moral priorities.

    There are millions of domesticated non-feral pigeons, with hundreds of thousands of them aerial performers of one kind or another, and like any very numerous domesticated animal, they are not in danger of extinction (unless and until their human breeders lose interest in them). Wildlife, on the other hand, particularly those at or near the top of food chains, are under constant threat of extinction at the hands of human beings. Our pigeons can withstand the pressure of raptor predation—the raptors cannot withstand the pressures of hunting and habitat loss that we put on them.

    I’m one of those people who sees feral cats as an ongoing threat to songbirds and rare reptiles and amphibians. As such, I don’t agree with the trap, neuter, and release programs which “bleeding hearts” promote as the humane way of dealing with the feral cat problem. I say eradicate them, like they do in Australia where feral cats are shot on sight in an effort to protect what’s left of the country’s rare and unique marsupials. I say this as an ardent cat lover who nevertheless cannot put the survival of a house cat above that of a Giant Pacific Salamander. I keep my cats indoors, not just to protect them from the traffic outside my window, but to protect the birds outside that same window from them.

    I loved my pigeons, but when one of my hens did not return from a flight, I did not go gunning for the hawk that I was sure must have got her. That would have been wrong, if for no other reason than that she could have been replaced easily, but not so the hawk. Given the time of year, the hawk probably had young—killing that hawk would have meant the death of its chicks as well. Was that manmade pet worth more than the nature-made hawk? Not to me.

    Those pigeon hobbyists who killed hawks to protect their flocks acted selfishly and with no regard for the future. I class them in with fashion hounds who still think it’s okay to wear the skin of leopards, and with those who consume shark fin soup because they worry about their virility. No excuse nor argument they could offer in their defense will suffice to lessen the heinousness of what they’ve done.

    posted by cindy olen on 5-29-2010 at 3:46 am

16. the only good pigeon is a dead one. one of my neighbors had a bunch of these flying rats in a coop. he tried to kill my cat because it got “too close” to the coop/roost/whatever. one night it mysteriously burnt down….with all the birds inside….

    posted by johnny on 11-30-2010 at 1:01 am

17. first thing is that rollers do not have a genetic defect and what they do has nothing to do with seizures . my son is epaleptic and you cannot make siezuers hapen simaltaniuslyit is a highly developed part of brain that no scientist can tell exactly how it functions and to the haulk statements. haulks are exstreemly overpopulated and as far as im conserned there should be an anual cull of them but there are allways peaple who dont know the facts and the fact is that i dont personaly kill rapters but they have devastated the livestock for most of us and i have never seen a haulk controll any rodent population thay kill almost exclusively birds and that means the other protected birds that is why they migreat with them. so peaple should stop calling us killers before they start telling us we cant have our birds cuz if you really understood rollers you wuold understand that they are bred athleats and an wonder of mans creation compleetly worth mans protection, but like most ther is always ignorence among the unknowlegded

    posted by steve on 9-18-2011 at 10:24 pm

Comment