Clay Owen

Chip Piller holds bird number 734, a registered pedigree homing pigeon born in 2007 that's part of his young bird racing team.

Clay Owen

One of Chip Piller's homing pigeons sits on top of his loft Thursday following a flight.

STORY TOOLS

• E-mail story
• Comments
• iPod friendly
• Printer friendly

More State and Regional

• State briefs for Oct. 12
• Man preserves forest's history
• Creation Museum doing well after its first year

Share and Enjoy [?]

Get Reprints

Want to use this article? Click here for options!

OAKDALE, Tenn. — It was a clear, cold morning, and Chip Piller’s racing pigeons were feeling good.

Circling over the field, they flew in a manner that suggested pure play. Like a swarm of cartoon bees, the flock darted and dived in synchronous formation, the wind whistling through their wings as they swooped low to the ground.

“They’re having fun,” Piller said. “They enjoy the exercise.”

Piller is secretary of the Smoky Mountain Racing Pigeon Club. In addition to racing pigeons, he also maintains the club’s Web site and heads their racing committee.

Pigeon racing in Knoxville goes back a long way. The Smoky Mountain Racing Pigeon Club was incorporated in 1950, but its predecessor, the Oglethorpe Pigeon Club, existed as far back as the 1930s. The club has 15 members including Piller, who makes his living as an electrical engineer in Oak Ridge.

When Piller was 12 years old, he and his brother had a loft of pigeons. They lived in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., and one day they decided to release a couple of their birds 10 miles from the house to see which one returned first.

Piller’s pigeon was named Wings, and his brother’s was named Beauty. When they got home, Wings was waiting for them at the loft, and Beauty was still en route.

The difference? Wings was a homing pigeon, and Beauty was not.

“They were a mated pair, so we thought they’d be even, but Wings beat him home,” Piller said.

How homing pigeons are able to return to their loft over hundreds of unfamiliar miles remains an intriguing mystery. Researchers believe the birds have the ability to detect mag-netic fields, and can navigate by the sun.

What’s more, they can hear sounds 11 octaves below middle C, allowing them to detect earthquakes and electrical storms.

According to the Pigeon Racing Booklet published by the American Racing Pigeon Union, Inc., it is the homing pigeon’s “love of its home and the fear of the unknown which brings it home at breakneck speed.”

Piller said racing pigeons belong to the same family as run-of-the-mill wild pigeons, but have been selectively bred for more speed, and enhanced homing instinct.

He and his family recently moved from West Knoxville to a mountaintop farm in Morgan County so he’d have room to raise and fly his pigeons. He has 80 — 24 young birds born in 2007 that are part of his racing team and 56 older pigeons that serve as brood stock.

“You can get by with a lot less,” he said.

Races are held in the spring and summer for older birds, while the fall racing season is for young pigeons that hatched early that same year.

These days, racing pigeons are monitored electronically. Each bird is equipped with a leg band embedded with a micro-chip. When the pigeon returns to the loft, a pad equipped with an internal antennae automatically reads the leg band and transmits the information to a hand-held computer, which calculates the pigeon’s average speed.

Everything is recorded automatically. Under the electronic system, the pigeon fancier doesn’t even have to be at the loft to clock the birds as they return.

The race results are calculated by computer, then uploaded into the American Racing Pigeon Union’s national database on the Internet. Older pigeons race up to 600 miles, while the young birds compete over shorter distances.

The Smoky Mountain Racing Pigeon Club holds young bird races at distances of 100, 200 and 300 miles. The club’s 100-mile release station is in Smyrna, Tenn., and its 200-mile re-lease station is in Princeton, Ky. For races of 300 miles, the birds are released at a site in Mt. Vernon, Ill.

The precise distances from the release stations to the club members’ respective loft is determined by GPS coordinates. Speeds are expressed in yards-per-minute and calculated ac-cording to distance and flying times.

Last October, one of Piller’s young hens won the 300-mile race from Mt. Vernon, Ill., with a time of 1,205.71 yards-per-minute, which translates into almost 40 miles an hour. Last year the speeds posted by the club’s racing pigeons averaged between 700 to 1,300 yards-per-minute.

A well-conditioned homing pigeon can fly non-stop for up to 15 hours to get home.

“These birds are incredible aerobic specimens,” Piller said. “In order to compete, we pamper them. We keep them healthy and happy. We get them to love the loft.”

Piller feeds his pigeons fortified grit and high quality grain. Their water is mixed with electrolytes, and their diet includes garlic, vitamins and brewer’s yeast. Even to the uninitiated, his birds look healthy.

“A champion racing pigeon comes in all shapes and sizes,” he said. “I can read their moods and gauge their health. When they’re not feeling well, they’re puffed up and quiet, and when they’re content, they coo.”

Piller doesn’t exercise his pigeons much in the winter because that’s the season when hawks migrate through East Tennessee. He said the biggest threat to his birds is Cooper’s hawks.

The pigeons fly six to eight weeks after they’re hatched. When the young birds are strong enough to exercise around the loft for at least an hour, they’re ready for “road training,” whereby they’re placed in a carrying crate, driven miles from home, and released.

Pillar usually exercises his pigeons in the morning when winds are light. He also makes sure they’re hungry enough to want to return to the loft to feed.

Like all homing pigeon enthusiasts, Piller keeps meticulous breeding records. One of his pigeons is a grandson of one of the Queen of England’s racing pigeons. He can discern a fam-ily resemblance in his birds just by their physical appearance, and sometimes, he gives them nicknames.

On a recent morning, Piller handled pigeon number 712, a powder blue hen he described as his slowest bird.

“She’s a beautiful pigeon even if she’s not fast,” he said. “These birds are amazing. Some are like pets. After awhile, you can’t help but get attached.”

Morgan Simmons may be reached at 865-342-6321.

© 2008, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.