Opening one of his many cages, Michal Trojczak watches proudly as more than 70 dusty-blue pigeons take flight, soaring high above snow-covered fields in eastern Poland.
“My birds are athletes,” said the 42-year-old pigeon fancier, who inherited his passion for breeding the birds from his father and grandfather.
Poland boasts Europe’s biggest community of homing pigeon breeders — and a string of international competition trophies — but trails other countries in the breeding of pedigree birds that command a higher value.
Photo: AFP
As one of those who has decided to do something about that, Trojczak said that he had turned professional after retiring from the army a few years ago and teamed up with a friend.
Together, they bought Belgian pigeons with prestigious pedigrees, investing thousands of euros, including 11,000 euros (US$12,418) alone for the progeny of a bird called Porsche 911.
“He’s provided us with a lot of satisfaction and money,” the ex-army captain said.
Now, he hopes the sky is the limit for Polish pigeon enthusiasts who, he believes, will rise to rival their Belgian and Dutch counterparts within a decade.
Pigeon lofts are a part of Poland’s landscape, especially in the mining region of Silesia, where pigeon breeding has historic roots and the birds enjoy near-mythic status.
After a day underground, it is still common to see miners emerge into the daylight, scanning the skies for their winged friends.
Released hundreds of kilometers from their pigeon lofts, the birds find their way home thanks to an ability to detect the earth’s magnetic field and orient themselves according to the sun. Flying with the wind, they can reach up to 120kph.
After Poland won back its independence in 1918, the use, breeding and racing of pigeons was regulated by the military affairs ministry due to the strategic importance of the birds’ ability to carry communications.
The Nazis immediately banned pigeon breeding after occupying Poland in 1939, and enthusiasts were forced to start again from scratch after the war.
“With more than 40,000 members, we’re the largest organization of its kind in Europe, founded more than 100 years ago,” said Krzysztof Kawaler, head of the Polish association of homing pigeon breeders.
France and Belgium — where pigeon fancying has deep roots — have about 11,000 and 13,000 breeders respectively, according to their associations.
“We take home the most prizes at international competitions,” Kawaler said at a trade fair in Katowice, in the heart of the Silesia region.
Those tournaments do not see the pigeons congregate in one place, as world athletes do at the Olympics. Instead, every country holds its own local races in which the pigeons are equipped with electronic rings to record their flight time.
The results are calculated across the countries using coefficients that notably take into account the number of participating pigeons.
Since Poland has so many breeders, it helps boost its scores, Trojczak said.
“But it doesn’t reflect the pigeons’ actual worth,” he said, lamenting that Polish pigeon fanciers are still viewed as amateurs in Western Europe.
“On the Polish market, pigeons go for between 250 zlotys (US$61.47) and 4,000, 5,000 or even 6,000 zlotys for those participate in international tournaments,” veteran breeder Zbigniew Oleksiak said.
However, in Western Europe, prices start at about 200 euros, but can go sky high, like the Belgian pigeon, Armando, which fetched 1.25 million euros at auction in 2019.
The buyer was Chinese, as was the proud new owner of New Kim, another Belgian bird that sold for 1.6 million euros the following year. Like racehorses, it is the pedigree — the bird’s family tree — that matters to buyers, especially those from Asia.
For Trojczak, the days are long, especially in spring and summer.
“You have to train the pigeons to get them into shape, monitor their health, feed them well,” he said.
“When you have to prep the birds for a race, sometimes I’ll be up and running at 4am and won’t finish till 9pm,” he said.
He now sells about 100 pigeons a year at prices ranging from 100 to 2,500 euros, which allows him to “live quite comfortably when combined with my military pension.”
However, it is not just a money-maker; pigeon breeding is above all a labor of love.
“I can trace each of my pigeons back three or four generations... I know their family trees better than my own,” he said laughing.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not