Comments by Film Director Jim Jenner at the House of Commons
Dinner, November 12, 2005
Lord Banks, honored guests, ladies and gentlemen, it is a great
honor to be here tonight to speak to you about a subject dear to my heart.
I believe I was invited tonight to bring a little outside
perspective to your wonderful efforts here. My film-making has indeed
taken me all over the world and I stand before you as someone who may be able
to shed a little light on the issues of the pigeon sport globally and where it
fits in to modern society.
First of all it is important to note that the tremendous effort
made here, by my English racing colleagues, ably assisted by Lord Banks, to
elevate the legacy of homing pigeons as a vital part of our wartime history, is
unprecedented. Thanks to you, there is now a beautiful, and permanent,
monument to these brave birds here in
I use the term "Underdog" to refer to pigeons because it
is the saddest irony of my lifetime to see such a phenomenal creature,
our oldest domestic bird, our oldest feathered friend, become so misunderstood
and vilified in the last half century.
But why should we care about how pigeons are perceived by the
public today? Well, first of all, let's remember what has changed and how
these birds once enjoyed a much more vaunted position in society.
As Jean Hansell has so beautifully documented in her books, it is
the Rock Dove, Columba Livia, that symbolizes the holy spirit in all the
world's major religions. This species' gentleness and loyalty, and their
success as caring parents, made them an icon of Venus, goddess of love.
The bird is also the international symbol of peace, and it is almost
certain that the bird that brought the olive branch to Noah was a rock dove,
because this is the family that has been a companion to man since ancient
humans lived with these birds in the rocky caves around the
Pigeon racing, in one form or another, is easily as old as horse
racing, the sport of Kings. I guess it is more accurate to call our hobby
the sport of
When the Olympic Games open in
And speaking of Olympic athletes, I have to share some comments I
recently got about pigeons as part of the latest film we are releasing next
week. In the United States Professor Ken Dial is one of the world's
foremost experts on how birds fly. For over 20 years this Harvard trained
scientist has conducted experiments on bird locomotion. He has been
recognized universally for many breakthrough findings, particularly on how
dinosaurs likely learned to fly. Professor Dial has studied the greatest
fliers in the avian kingdom and he calls our pigeons the ultimate Olympic
athlete. According to Professor Dial no bird, in fact no creature on
earth, can match the speed and endurance of modern racing pigeons.
But given all this rich history, from the Royal family to respect
from eminent scientists, how is it that we are fighting so hard to earn
recognition for the racing birds we care for? How did Columba Livia
become an "underdog" if you will.
We are victims of several factors, a perfect storm of
negative components that have made for reduced status for our birds.
First, during the 1960's and 1970's there was a concerted effort by the pest
control industry to convince public officials that pigeons carried dozens of
diseases, including tuberculosis. This false campaign was intended to
elevate the pigeon as a public health threat that could then be exterminated,
for a profit mind you, by the industry. And, even though the pigeon
sport eventually got them to cease and desist with their medical falsehoods,
the stigma has remained.
Secondly the American comedian, Woody Allen, coined a phrase in one
of his movies for the feral pigeons in
For us this stigma is very serious, because no matter how different
our pedigreed and pampered race birds are, to a city council they are just
pigeons and they now regulate us as if our birds were a health threat and a
nuisance. Now we have the joys of bird flu to deal with as well.
So, in our lifetime, one of the world's most revered creatures, and
one of nature's most phenomenal athletes, has been reduced to the status of
vermin in the minds of the media and much of the general public.
Why is this important? Why should we care about this if we
can still quietly practice our hobby? And what has this got to do with
what may be next for the effort that was born here in the Churchill Dining Room
several years ago? Well it has a great impact on how our sport can
survive, much less grow.
Why we should care about people being able to enjoy pigeon racing
can be illustrated in my sharing my own personal journey to this room.
And I don't mean the 7,000 miles to fly here from the Rocky Mountains of
Montana. I mean the emotional and intellectual journey that I have experienced
because of my fascination with homing pigeons. I'm going to mention it
because I know I am not unique, I know my comments here will bring many nods of
agreement from the pigeon fanciers here tonight.
I was ten years old when my family moved from the country to the
city. At school one day a boy brought a couple of street pigeons, in a
bird cage, for show and tell. I'd never seen these big birds up close.
And I had never had the experience of looking into a bird's eye and
having it, basically look back, with an obvious intelligence that was taking my
measure. Science now tells us that the bird was indeed thinking, pigeons
have been found to be able to remember hundreds of faces, and are equal to
higher order animals, such as dolphins and porpoises, in their cognitive
abilities.
Anyway, I followed my new friend home and became part of a pack of
black and white boys who roamed the city catching and keeping street pigeons.
I then visited the library and, for the first time in my life I had a
topic that I wanted to know about. I discovered the incredible story of
homing pigeons in war and the fact that pedigreed racing pigeons, in countries
like
Like many little boys of my generation I became a pigeon keeper.
I had to learn how to design a pigeon loft. I had to learn how to
build it. I had to learn how to find racing pigeons to buy and the very
basics of having a feathered family in my back garden that I was responsible
for. At ten years old I ruled my own little world. Twice a day it was up
to me to feed and care for my birds. I made mistakes, such as trying to
help a hatching baby bird out of its shell, a hard lesson when you realize that
mother nature often doesn't want assistance, and the death of the living thing
I was trying to help broke my heart.
I learned how to convert dollars to pounds so I could send away for
precious English books that annually carried the stories of the Kingdom's
greatest pigeon men. I learned these champions could be commoner or King
and that a great pigeon could win a race flying to a loft near a countryside
manor house or to the kitchen window of a Welsh coal miner. I learned
about the birds and the bees, well the birds anyway, without having to have a
sit down with my father!
I learned how the life cycle of all living creatures is tied to
the seasons, to the changes in the length of the day. I learned to
observe and understand the weather. I learned about nutrition and the
components of grain, such as fiber, fat and protein, in what I fed my birds.
I learned about genetics and how the findings of Mendel became evident
in the feather colors of the babies of birds I mated together. Let me
repeat, I was ten years old, and I was learning in the best way a child can,
by hands-on experience, self-study and observation. Far different that
having my face glued to a video game.
Outside my little back garden pigeon world, I had to respect and
deal with my elders, because in my city there were Champion pigeon men I wanted
to know. Many of these expert trainers were professional people, but
others were salt of the earth, working men, and I had to learn how to speak to
them, and win them over, before I stood a chance to talk them out of precious
eggs or babies to raise.
I learned about management and planning and hygiene. And
every day I alone was responsible for delivering clean feed and clean water to
my birds and always scrapping away their droppings.
And for all this hard work, and all this study, I was rewarded.
Because each day I could visit my birds, birds I had raised, and I could
let them outside into the sky. And from where I stood, earthbound, I
could watch them fly. I would watch them disappear, often for an hour and then,
magically, come back, come back to me. At the age of ten I saw a creature
give up its freedom, to return to my care, because of the bond I had built
between us.
It's easy to be poetic about this part of my life because the
emotions are so deep within me. But the magic I am describing was not
unique to little Jim Jenner in the Northwest corner of
Now, like most pigeon men, there was a period when teenage hormones
became stronger than the pull of the birds, well a pull to a different kind of
bird you could say, the unfeathered variety. But the emotional
satisfaction of those early years was always in my heart and when I finally
settled down I took up the hobby again.
But what I am trying to describe here, by sharing what is by no
means a unique experience, is a simple illustration of how profound an impact
homing pigeons can have on a young person. Since then I have seen, in
virtually every country I have visited, that my own story has been repeated
several million times. That's how many people keep pigeons world-wide,
and the emotions I've described are the same for the boys of
Why is this important? Well I read with interest Lord
Carter's report on sport in the
Can we call pigeon racing a sport? Well a dictionary
definition of sport is a game or organized activity. It may or may not
involve hard physical play. Worldwide, pigeon racing is far greater in
terms of participation and prize money than dog racing for example. Much like
horse racing it involves highly bred contestants, although no horse race on
earth matches the twenty to two hundred thousand birds that can take part in a
pigeon race on a summer Saturday. In terms of size the Royal Pigeon
Racing Assoc, the RPRA, with over thirty employees, is much larger than the
vast majority of sport bodies in the
I'm sorry that House of Commons decorum doesn't permit the showing
of films. Because, let's face it, a filmmaker's work speaks louder than
his words. If I could, I would have shown you one of the stories that
was in my last film, "Share The Blue Sky".
It was called "Pigeons Go To School" and it told about a
program for at risk teenagers at a secondary school in the
At this school the science teacher is a pigeon fancier, as is his
father. Together they created a small pigeon loft behind the classroom
and the students were in charge of raising and training a flock of racing
birds. These teenagers, mostly from poor Hispanic families in a small
farming community, represent much of what modern society is burdened with.
Most are from single parent families, most ended up at this last chance,
alternative school because of serious attendance or behavior problems.
They were no strangers to teen pregnancy, drugs, crime or abusive home lives.
What you see in this film is the simple connection that pigeons can
bring between human beings and the natural world. And I need to point out
to our honored guests something they may not know. As a child's pet,
domestic racing pigeons are hardy, they live happily in small spaces, they are
easily tamed and most of all, they fly. Since time began these big birds
have imparted something special to the soul of a child who cares for them.
My favorite images are of a huge boy, a legend as a vicious fighter
before he was tossed out of the mainstream school, cupping a tiny baby pigeon
in his big hands. My favorite comments are his words about how gentle
pigeon parents are with their young and how calm he feels when he watches the
birds fly. The most profound comments come from the school principal who
relates that the problems of the class have changed. Before the pigeon
program, he says, the problem was they didn't come to school. Now, he
says with a smile, the problem is they don't want to go home. A
follow-up study, commissioned by the state education department,
found that the students in the pigeon project improved by over a
full grade point in their academic performance. Their attendance
rose dramatically. Most significant the incidents of aggressive behavior
all but went away. Phenomenal results for any sport program to be sure.
In my story one girl spoke of how it made her feel to be asked to care
for an abandoned baby pigeon. In her own words she said she went from
contemplating suicide to deciding to continue with school, find a job and build
a life for herself. I'm not making this up. It's all there.
So here we are, in the House of Commons, talking about pigeons.
And you've succeeded brilliantly in honoring the homing pigeons
contribution to saving lives in war. But what is next? Where does
pigeon racing fit in the future of society? Why should we fight to be
recognized as a viable and important part of youth sport?
Speaking of competitive sport I think of my friend Gerry Francis
here. It's true to say he's one in a million in more ways than one.
Statistically there can only be so many champions of his caliber, only so
many heroes of Team
That's where we come in. I think this is the next
step. A critical component of the entire sports effort is active
recreation that gets children out of a sedentary lifestyle and mentally engaged
in something other than TV or a computer screen. It is up to us to
produce the tools that can help to do this by working to help more young people
become interested in racing pigeons.
Now some will tell you this is impossible. Many within our
sport will say we are the last generation, that kids today just can't be
engaged in our hobby. I beg to differ. In fact I venture that any
pigeon person who has visited a school to talk about pigeons in the last few
years, would also beg to differ. Say what you will about the spoiled and
disinterested youth of today, I have witnessed the same magic in their eyes
that I had when I saw my first pigeons. The flame can still be lit, and
it is our job to light it.
Ohhh, that will never work, others will say, schools or youth
centers would never let pigeons be around. Well, I'm reminded of a film I
worked on twenty years ago for a group that advocated introducing animals,
particularly cats and dogs, into the then antiseptic environments of
convalescent centers and homes for the elderly. Have you been to any of
these places lately? They have dogs, and cats, and birds all over.
And do you know why the administrators changed their minds? Because you
can show, scientifically, that contact with other living creatures makes humans
calmer and happier and we live longer!
Why should we care about this? Well the more young people
interested in our hobby today means the more people likely to take up the hobby
later in life. And all of the wonderful things that pigeon keeping
brought into my life, and yours, are still there to change the lives of a new
generation. And they need it more than ever.
Again, let me share what I've learned around the globe.
Attracting youth is a big problem for the pigeon sport everywhere. And I
believe one of the problems is that most efforts try to bring young people
directly into existing racing clubs. In most cases this is a mistake.
First, let's remember that pigeon racing is the toughest competition out
of the box of any sport in the world. Unlike golf where you have a
handicap, or tennis where they have seedings, or football where the teams are
scaled based on their overall performance, from day one in pigeon racing you
are competing with the top trainers on an equal footing. You are often
up against hundreds of other fanciers with years more experience. Your
birds are competing against thousands of other pigeons each weekend, in races
where a few seconds means the difference between first and fiftieth place.
Unless you are a genius, early success is hard to achieve. What's
more the average pigeon club is typically full of older folks who look forward
to their weekends with their mates, it is often not a place a young person is
comfortable, at least until they learn the ropes.
That said there are ample opportunities to put pigeons in front of
young people through their science education. Today's teachers are
desperate for new and engaging curriculums that break the chain of young
people's slavish devotion to their cell phones and video games. Whether
it's a small loft at a school, or a youth center or even at a local zoo or a
nature center. We have to think about putting live, flying homing pigeons
in front of young people and be ready to help encourage those that become
fascinated by our birds. It can be done. It must be done.
Imagine for example if there was a replica of an historic military loft,
with live birds inside and display boards and a movie screen around it that
described military birds and modern pigeon racing. Now imagine that this
entire unit is at the London Zoo. How many people a day would get a
positive impression of our hobby?
Probably the single most significant change in the sport is the
advent of electronic clocking. Although it has not been adopted
officially in the U.K. it is still a fantastic resource to create programs that
engage young people. By that I mean it is possible for a small loft of
birds to be clocked over a series of races, either one bird sprints, or as a
group, download the data and come up with an overall winning bird. It's
the kind of competitive information that can keep kids engaged in how their
individual birds are doing, and the races can be as simple as ten or twenty
mile events. And it also means that a single pigeon loft can serve as a focal point
for many children even if they couldn't have their own birds at home. And
let's also remember how little physical space all this takes compared to a
sports pitch. A demonstration pigeon loft can be the size of a single
parking stall.
What I really want to emphasis is that there is no significant
youth oriented program that is being used by the hobby world-wide, and I
believe this is the perfect forum for this type of effort to be launched.
And I don't bring it up as a challenge that I make and walk away from,
but as something I would love to be involved with at any level.
I believe that this is the forum for several reasons. First
the bulk of the national pigeon organizations, world wide, are almost totally
devoted to the complex business running races and issuing bands. And,
occasionally, dealing with controversies like doping. I must digress for a
moment to point out to our many dignitaries here tonight that when I was here a
year ago the big news was the RPRA's drug testing of British race birds. Sadly,
there has been virtually no follow-up report that this effort, which made the
Wall Street Journal, American television, etc. and made us look like we had a
shady sport going on, has turned up no, zero, I repeat no instances, of drug use
among the winning trainers who were suspect.
And this lack of positive public affairs is part of what I see as a
problem with the organizations themselves trying to reach out to youth.
Most of them are run by older pigeon men, who are often not the best or
most sophisticated marketers in the world. I believe an outside, ad hoc
group, like your amalgamation which has been so successful at attracting
celebrity support and positive media attention, would be far more effective at
bridging the many different arenas of the sport and be able to work at the
highest levels of government and education to tell our dramatic story.
As a side light there are considerable cultural advantages to this
as well. The highest number of at risk youth are those with the least
access to nature. They are often poor, disadvantaged and living in single
family, urban environments. Many of them, Muslims youth for example, also
have a cultural legacy of pigeon keeping that goes back hundreds of generations.
I can't tell you how often I get letters in fractured English from
pigeon fanciers in Egypt, Iran, Pakistan and other Muslim countries who are
reaching out to learn more about pigeons worldwide. And let's remember
that while the hobby is dwindling in many parts of the West, it is exploding in
countries such as China, Poland and Portugal, countries where a growing middle
class is taking up pigeon racing.
If we started today to create a U.K. and global effort to promote
the pigeon sport, to make it part of science curriculums and youth activities,
how on earth would you fund such an effort? Well, let me leave you with this
thought. The pigeon racers in this room know our hobby is a sport in
every sense of the word. It is mentally challenging, it is highly competitive,
it is extremely emotionally satisfying, and not just in your youth. We
care about our hobby's survival. We honor what it has done for us in our
lives. Here's what I mean.
Let me go back to Gerry Francis for a minute because he has a new
job you may not know about. Gerry said he didn't want to coach but he is
coaching. Not on the field. He's in his back garden breeding, training
and conditioning athletes that can go fifty miles an hour, flat out, all day
long. He's the coach of what is arguably the formula one flying machine of the
avian kingdom. And, even though he may not be running up and down a
football pitch, Gerry is mentally and emotionally tied to his team. And if one
of his players wins, if one of his birds is best, there won't be cheering fans
or headlines in the newspaper. But there will be a little smile on
Gerry's face when he sees the other fanciers in his club, and the emotional
satisfaction he gleans from that victory will go deep in his heart. Best
of all, it is a sport he can play, a team he can coach, until the day he can no
longer walk to the loft. Our sport is magical because the older you get
the better you get at it! And a successful and dedicated fancier like
Gerry is willing to commit his time and money to helping the hobby he enjoys so
much.
I don't make light of the importance of physically active sports.
I've quarterbacked my school team. I've reminisced with my buddies
about our victories on the field. You have too probably. But I
venture no victory in athletics is as clear in your mind as the first pigeon
race you won, or the band number of the marvelous creature that won it for you.
That is what we are talking about helping bring to other people in
the world. And based on my world travels I can tell you that many other
intelligent pigeon leaders, world-wide would be proud to be invited to
England's House of Commons to work on improving our hobby, to have it
recognized as a sport, to try to develop a global program to encourage youth
involvement in this hobby. But what about the money?
Well think about this. Is pigeon racing in your will?
For all the thousands of hours of satisfaction this hobby has brought to you,
is there anywhere you could send your money that would further the sport, that
would help it live on for future generations? No there is not. And as we
witness the passing of an entire generation of pigeon fanciers, I maintain that
the right program, achieving the type of success you have achieved with the war
memorial, could easily become a place that a fancier would bequeath a few
hundred or a few thousand pounds.
Our hobby is a wonderful, competitive sport that is beneficial to
the emotional well-being of the people who practice it, young or old. It
is indeed a sport worth fighting for. I hope some of these comments and
radical ideas may be a catalyst for where we go from here.
Again, to Lord Banks, thank you so much for hosting this event.
Honored guests, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for inviting us.