Nov/December 2025

Breed of the Issue - CHINESE OWLS CHINESE OWLS – Page 25 – Purebred PIGEON Back to the Future By Tom Monahan - Whittier, California I t’s was the summer of 1970 something in Downey California and I was twelve years old. We were playing around at the church up the street and found a young white pigeon who had fallen out of its nest. I took the pigeon home, made a little cage out of some chicken wire my dad had laying around and named him Pigeon. Our dog’s name was Dog so this seemed fitting to me. We went back to the church the next day with a box, a stick, some seed and a string with hopes of catching another pigeon. Strike One. The next day we tried a kernel of corn with fishing line threaded through it – figured the pigeon would eat the corn and we would just real it in like a trout on a hook. Strike Two. Baseball was my game and we knew the pigeons were in the palm trees. A lucky shot and down came a young black and white splash. You guessed it, I named him Splash. On my thirteenth birthday my brother gave me a pair of Chinese Owls, and so it began. Dad built a much nicer coop and I raised Chinese Owls and Rollers for the next six years. I was a junior member of the Western Chinese Owl club and showed at the Pageant of Pigeons in Pomona and the guys from the club took some of my birds to the Great Western. After high school I dropped the hobby and dad took over the coop raising Racing Homers. Fast forward to 2022, I’ve been retired for four years and was looking for something to occupy my time. A guy can only golf so much – so pigeons seemed like a logical choice. I pulled out some of my old American Pigeon Journals that i had saved from the early 1970’s. I read articles from the likes of Bill Griebel, Bob Nolan, Frank Barrachina, Fred Maenpa and Drew Lobenstein. Later I de- cided to attend a meeting of the Los Angeles Pigeon Club, much to my amazement there stood Bill, Bob, Frank, Fred and Drew. Attending these LAPC monthly meetings and the wealth of pigeon knowledge in the room has been very beneficial for me. I didn’t have any birds just yet so doing some research and planning my attack on the pigeon world. Chinese Owls seemed like a logical choice so I bought a pair from a fan-