Page 16 2026 Animal Stories Lincoln Daily News February 2026 Special Sometime in 1964, on a market day (our town had a market on Thursdays), I went to downtown Genk (my hometown in Belgium) to buy a couple of fancy pigeons (“sierduiven”). I bought a beautiful couple (a white male and a dark female). I built a home for them and put it high on a sturdy pole to protect them from cats. The birds were easy to take care of and, before long they had made a nest in the box and laid two eggs! It was a little while later, after the eggs had hatched, that I also took in a stray dog I found wandering in our neighborhood. Now I already had previously taken in a stray dog (as well as a stray cat), but this large dog looked like it also needed a home. One unfortunate evening, both doves had flown down into the backyard to forage for food, and the dog had killed both my doves. That was the sad end of those pigeons. I decided I had to let go of the dog. However, my interest in pigeons has always continued. We had, at the time, a neighbor on our street in Winterslag (a suburb in Genk) who kept a large “duivekot’ (pigeon loft). Many men throughout my home country cared for these “homing” pigeons in large coops. They are called “homing” pigeons because wherever they are released, these special birds can find their way back home with great speed and amazing persistence! At different times during the day, I remember as a boy seeing flights of these pigeons in formation, circling around our neighborhood. On my last few trips to see my family in Genk, I noticed only a few such remaining pigeon houses. I don’t think younger men are picking up on this unique hobby Racing pigeons had become a sport for many men in Belgium somewhere in the midnineteenth century. I was surprised to learn that this hobby actually started in my home country of Belgium. From there it spread to France, England, and then to the rest of the world (Pigeon racing - Wikipedia). Pigeon fanciers can make good money if they can breed fast pigeons who can win important pigeon races. The Wikipedia article has this succinct, very informative description: Pigeon racing is the sport of releasing specialized, trained homing pigeons, which then return to their homes over a carefully measured distance. The time it takes the animal to cover the specified distance is measured, and the bird's rate of travel is calculated and compared with all the other pigeons in the race to determine which animal returned at the highest speed. Pigeon racing requires a specific breed of pigeon bred for the sport, the Racing Homer. Competing pigeons are specially trained and conditioned for races that vary in distance from approximately 100 kilometers (62 mi) to 1,000 kilometers (620 mi). Despite these lengths, races can be won and lost by seconds, so many different timing and measuring devices have been developed. The traditional timing method involves rubber rings being placed into a specially designed clock, whereas a newer development uses RFID [radio-frequency identification] tags to record arrival time. Pigeons
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