July/August 2026

45 – Purebred PIGEON at all? Does it land on a desired spot? Does it remain until cued to do some- thing else or for a set period of time? Can you touch it, or hold it? Can you walk it back to the starting spot? Can you cue it back to the starting spot? You have options for the type of cue: verbal, physical motion, whistle, or flag. Does it only come when called, or is the bird “dirty” and cheats and tries to come when not called? There is definitely a game to be created here. Will the bird come to other people? I have played round-robin recalls with people in the park, and they love it. Not many people have touched a bird or seen one so close. Finding a location could be an issue, or there may be a requirement to film the bird trapping at home before attempting to recall outside the home environment. It would also probably not be difficult to create a recall chute, like a baseball batting lane, made of netting. P ower ups Power-ups: Stealing from falconry, an exercise to condition the bird, is to powerup from the floor to the hand. Ba- sically, this is a vertical recall. The kids could easily learn to use “300-peck,” and they could compete to see who could make the most repetitions. 300-pecks is a training technique that is very powerful and has a wonderful pigeon history. It re- fers to wartime research where they were working on reinforcement schedules to strengthen behaviors. They trained a pigeon to peck 300 times for one rein- forcement. So, the room setup could also be a PVC-and-netting setup, but it would be considerably smaller than the recall chute because the flight is vertical. B ox to B ox Box to Box is another game they could play. Maybe some birds or breeds don’t handle well. Box-to-box could have the same rules as recalls, were it cued, etc., but the bird is simply flying from one box/cage/trap to another. Of course, recalls, power-ups, and box-to-box all have the potential to be moved outside, and with moving outside, the opportunity to increase distance as well. M y initial learning curve I think another thing people need to learn about is: Weight, Condition, and Hunger (W/C/H). These are independent fac- tors, and I won’t go into them in depth here, but the timing and amount of food are important for both the flight and trapping. Personally, I would not worry about the type of feed in my first season or two and would just pick a decent feed and concentrate on W/C/H. The reason is that in the first two seasons, you are most concerned about getting your birds back. The qual- ity of the food and the ratios of protein, carbs, and fiber certainly will play into performance later on. Still, in those first two seasons, you are concentrating on developing your own system to create fidelity to the trap and recall response. One thing that I did that really helped me at first was to choose a few birds and to weigh them. It forced me to put my hands on my birds. I have the amount of food I am feeding, the birds’ weights, condition, and their behav- ior, which tells me about their hunger. I typically don’t weigh all my birds, and when I do (I don’t do it often), it certainly added data points and helped me fly better. I do weigh them when I first get them and every few days while they are in quarantine. I will also weigh partic- ularly nice birds. I want to understand them better, taking them to their best / highest possible weight. P racticalities – where to start It isn’t about flying initially; it is about getting them back in the trap. I would start with the idea that hunger is a tool to use acutely to train and for safety on flight days but should never lead to deterioration of condition. I have successfully fed and flown birds daily on a basic feed and their daily rations, but I discovered that this affected the quality of the flights and the birds’ condition when I was training new birds. Old birds, I can fly at heavier weights and daily flights, and rations work fine. Young birds, I do like heavy feeding on flight day when they trap, and a taper to an acute-hunger situation when I cut them loose. I have had success with new birds on a 3-day cycle and on a two-weeks-on, two-weeks-off cycle. I expect breeding and selection over time to reduce the amount of hunger I need to use to trap train. Sounds like a lot. It is. And it isn’t. You’ll never know unless you give it try!•