Pigeon Racing?

Can anybody tell me more about pigeon racing here in Taiwan?

I live on the 10th floor in Sinjhuang City and can see 7 or 8 guys on various rooftops training their pigeons every afternoon.

Where do they race the pigeons?
How often are the races?
Is the race a straight line or do the birds fly in circles?
How do the pigeons know where to fly?
etc.

Thanks.

They are brought out to sea on a boat an than released … there has been an interesting documentary about that (Taiwan pigeon racing) on National Geographic or Discovery several times (re-runs)

How they find the way home … good food and sex I suppose … no, really check out wikipedia

In Belgium, season starts right after easter holiday until Octobre … every week twice and distances up to Bordeaux in France (1,000 KM+)

There’s a search engine called Google which I find pretty darn useful.
I typed www.google.com
I entered some key words; Taiwan pigeon racing
I found this article from the Taipei Times.
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2005/12/02/2003282606

If that article doesn’t answer your questions, let me know.

I’m continually amazed by the number of pigeon houses I see around Taiwan. Once you know what one looks like, they’re unmistakeable.

The most interesting thing they discovered is that pigeons also use freeways, roads, rivers and other landmarks, navigating to find home …

i believe they also compete by flying their flocks against each other, less well trained birds will tend to abandon their flock and join the other. i saw a show on discovery or something about this once, i think it was taipei though it may have been brooklyn or somewhere else lol.

I didn’t know pigeons were hard to identify.

Edit: oops, Chris was talking about the houses not the pidgeons. Or wait? Did he edit too?

Not in Taiwan … that’s an American version …

Belgians sometimes make it look as the main house :slight_smile: … they invest a lot of money in it …

First time I came to Taiwan I thought that every house had a pigeon trap … :slight_smile: