FEATHERED FLIERS TRAIN FOR RACE\Pigeon handler teaches birds to find way home.

Byline: Chris Coursey Santa Rosa Press Democrat

A squadron of gray birds flies wide circles around Bob Young's home northwest of Santa Rosa - once, twice, three times.

Young and his friend Armando de la O squint against the sun, following the aerial ballet.

"This toss was too short for them," says de la O, who had released the birds near Healdsburg less than a half-hour before. "They don't want to land. They have too much energy. They're like children - they want to play outside."

For these birds, the 15 miles between Healdsburg and their home in Young's yard is hardly a warmup. They are racing pigeons, and they're in training for a race in which they'll fly nonstop from central Oregon to Santa Rosa in about seven to eight hours.

Do the math: 350 miles in seven hours. That's 50 mph.

"They are bred for racing," says Young. "They love to fly."

And fly. And fly. The birds circle again: four, five, six times. Finally, one of the 10 veers off from the group and floats down to a ledge on a small wooden building in Young's field. It coos to the birds inside, then slips through a one-way gate into the safety of its home loft. Eventually, the others follow.

Once again, nature has brought them home.

Young dived into the sport of racing pigeons three years ago when he retired as director of Santa Rosa's recreation programs. What started as three pairs of birds in an old chicken coop has turned into a racing team of 96 birds housed in a row of low wooden buildings on Young's semirural spread.

"This beats playing golf," Young says, gently holding a cooing bird against his stomach. "It takes a lot of time, a lot of study. Pigeons can't talk, so it's up to you to get to know about them."

He trades birds and information with area pigeon fanciers like de la O and the other members of the Sonoma County Racing Pigeon Club. The club has monthly meetings and several local races each year. Every February, it sponsors the President's Cup, which pits birds from around the nation in a race from La Pine, Ore., near the city of Bend, to Santa Rosa.

Breeders from around the country have sent birds to Sonoma County to be raised and trained for the event. Young, a relative newcomer to the sport, is handling a dozen birds from as far as Brooklyn, N.Y. Other club members have more.

For this invitational race, homing pigeons are sent to handlers like Young before they are a month old, to imprint on the finish line as their home base. Young raises and trains the birds, then receives 30 percent of any prize won by the breeder.

Homing pigeons first were domesticated by the Egyptians 5,000 years ago and have been used for military, commercial and hobby purposes ever since. Organized racing began in Europe in the 1800s.

No one knows for sure why homing pigeons unfailingly return home after being released far away. Theories include that the birds are sensitive to the Earth's magnetic field, can read ultraviolet light patterns in the sky and are able to recognize landmarks.

Young doesn't worry about it.

"I don't know why they come home," he says. "But they always do."

Before they begin to fly, young birds are trained to enter their loft through one-way gates that allow a bird easy access, but no exit. As they grow, the trainer takes them out for repeated "tosses" - training flights of increasing length.

"When they are youngsters, they have no direction," says Young. "They fly away, land on the roof, land in the trees."

But soon they learn that Young's high-pitched whistling means feed awaits inside the loft.

"We train them every day," says Young, who works with his wife, Joannie. "They have to be conditioned like any runner. We go in intervals: 5, 10, up to 100 miles a toss."

As race day approaches, the birds are "light, balanced, buoyant" flying machines. According to a documentary video supplied by de la O, the birds' hearts will pound at 600 beats per minute, and they'll flap their wings 30,000 times an hour during the nonstop race.

While stormy weather may force postponement of a race, little else can keep a pigeon from making a beeline for home. Headwinds may double the race time, but the birds keep flying, not resting until they're inside the home loft.

Still, some don't make it home. Young says each loft loses about 20 percent of its birds each year.

The reasons vary. Birds get sick and can't make it. Hunters shoot them. Peregrine falcons, the swift predators of the sky, take their toll. Cooper's hawks can't catch a racing pigeon in flight, but even around Young's spread, they wait in the trees for pigeons to land in an exposed spot.

But the reason is never that the birds don't try. The record of a Sept. 30 race from Lovelock, Nev., shows that all 16 of Young's birds made it home that day, but one bears the entry: "Killed by hawk."

"He came home, split open, bleeding," Young says, describing the instinct that overrides even mortal wounds. "Then he died."

When racing, birds stay pretty much together for the first 10 miles, Young says. Then the better fliers begin to separate from the flock; stragglers begin to fall behind. They all follow the same general course for 99 percent of the race, but when they approach home turf, they'll split off to fly to their individual lofts.

Those last few minutes of the race are crucial.

Months of training pay off when the birds glide straight to the lofts without hesitation. Handlers quickly grab the birds and remove rubber identification bands from around the pigeons' legs. The bands are dropped into the secure compartments of special clocks, which record their time of arrival.

The distance between the starting line and each handler's loft is calculated to the thousandth of a mile. Time and distance are combined to show the bird's speed in yards per minute, and the winner is declared.

"I've lost races by a half-yard," says de la O.

CAPTION(S):

PHOTO

Photo (1) Pigeon breeder Bob Young releases some of his homing pigeons, which are raised to be able to locate their home loft across hundreds of miles. (2) A flock of pigeons races over Santa Rosa, Calif. The birds can reach speeds up to 60 mph. Associated Press