From (l) Eddie McGettigan, Paddy Burns and John Ghent
I’d been waiting for this weekend for a fair old while. Just over two years since our friendship started, Eddie McGettigan were going to meet for the first time. What had started out as search for long distance birds by Eddie and his Uncle John, had now blossomed into almost daily communication between Eddie and I, discussing all the different things that us fanciers chat about! The Internet has its good points and its bad points but for this humble hobby of ours, it is all good as far as I am concerned (minus a few chatrooms that is!). Facebook in particular has been very kind to me, allowing friendships to be cultivated that fanciers of yester-year would not have been able to, yet we are able to undertake with the click of a button on our mobile phone.
So, the Saturday morning alarm rang, my loyal companion on many Blackpool adventures, my Uncle Gaz, knocked on the door to deliver me to East Midlands Airport for my 8:30am flight into Belfast City Airport, named after legendary George Best. When I got through to the boarding gate I was greeted with an aeroplane powered by propellers! I couldn’t believe my eyes if I’m honest, I had never flown internally before and was therefore expecting a small plane, but one at least powered by jet engines, alas it was not to be. Apart from a few turbulent moments on take-off the flight went seamlessly, and as the Northern Irish coastline came into view the excitement in my stomach fluttered up. This was my first real loft visiting tour of any kind. I have done many one-off visits but a weekend filled with top quality fanciers lay ahead of me and I was like a kid in a sweet shop. I kept reminding myself that I must take enough photos and make plenty of notes, I wanted these articles to be special, to inspire, and be there for me to look back on in years to come, maybe in a Blackpool bar one evening in 2037, with Eddie and his co-pilot Michael, reminiscing about “that weekend at in 2017.”
Well enough of that, here’s what happened!
As I stepped through the arrival lounge, a phone call from Eddie confirmed he had just pulled into the collection area and as I walked along the pavement, the red VW Golf pulled up. Little did I know at the time but that I would become so well acquainted with this piece of German machinery, all 158,000 miles of it! I was informed by Eddie that we were off to see Paddy Burns, “a great long-distance man” said Eddie, and he was not wrong!
Paddy Burns of Belfast
Paddy is a star. I could just leave it at that to be honest but I will put some meat on the bones for you! Having flown for many years alongside his brother Hughie, Paddy continued to fly the Burns Brothers flag following Hughie’s passing away a few years ago. Eddie, Michael and I were greeted by Paddy at the front door of his end town house in a Belfast suburb. Pigeons were in Paddy’s blood, you could sense it straight away, and the photos that clad the hallway walls were confirmation of this. We didn’t even get into garden for a good 15-20 minutes or so. Paddy was quite happy discussing the remarkable performances from France of the birds which adorned the aforementioned hallway walls, and we were all more than happy to listen, mesmerised by the words which flowed from Paddy’s lips. I was quickly getting up to speed with the Northern Irish accent, although one or two words did elude me, and I had to ask for a repeat on a couple of occasions, this was to become a recurring theme over the weekend. The Jewel in the Crown of the Burns was the hen “Dolly”. Famous around these parts for her performances. This Hall of Fame cheq pied hen flew in the Kings Cup in 2004, 2005 and 2006, recording 21st, 33rd and 40th Open against over 2000 birds every time. “Dolly” is the Mother of loft and her bloodlines still flow through the loft now.
"Dolly" - famous across the whole of Ireland
Around 10 years prior to “Dolly”, the Burns loft secured one of the most sought-after awards in the Irish National Flying Club, the Gold Medal. Paddy’s 1991 cheq hen went to Rennes as a yearling, finished 114th Open from 2,400+ birds and was doing just 364 YPM! Paddy must have known he had something quite special on his hands with her and she was prepared meticulously, as is the way at this loft, for the next 3 years to take 73rd Open, 95th Open and 188th Open. All from Rennes. All in the Kings Cup. All these results before she was even 5 years old, incredible.
I said whilst standing in that hallway that you could actually see the evolution of the long-distance pigeon in Northern Ireland on these photos. We had birds from the 1980’s, typical dark chequers with strapping frames, right through “Dolly” and then onto the most recent performer for the Burns household, the aptly named “Trish”, named after Paddy’s wife, who makes a splendid ham and cheese sandwich I might add! “Trish” went to the Quimper Friendship National as a 2-year-old, 460 miles covered on the day, doing 1144 YPM and putting the Burns name right up towards the top of the race result in 3rd Open. This is not a loft that has relied on one bird to do the damage year after year. The blood which flows in the Burns loft keeps churning out top pigeons in a remarkable manner, especially given the set up available to Paddy.
Two lofts, postage stamp sized by today’s standards, a simple trapping system with a landed board that runs the length of the main loft and a variety of perching and nesting opportunities for the birds. One could be forgiven for thinking that Paddy keeps things simple, but I would say he makes it LOOK simple, which is a world apart from it being simple! Think what Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo do with a football, they make it look easy, but give it a go, it’s not that straight forward. Paddy is the same, a wizard, a magician if you like. He gets every ounce of effort and performance out of his birds and my bet is that this has all come about after years and years of study, practice and most of all, hard work.
Paddy pairs late, around March, and the birds race natural. No splitting them up onto widowhood or celibate, just total natural. I asked Paddy if used any safe mates or different tactics for preparing natural pigeons for the main races, I may as well have been talking Swahili with the way Paddy looked at me! He said that “Dolly” and her mate went to the 2006 Kings Cup race and scored 11th and 40th Open between them, the cock was just a yearling, another yearling doing the business in these tough races across the Irish Sea, quote incredible.
A shot inside Paddy's loft
“Dolly”This may be a little controversial but I always think of the natural flyers that are still around today to be the truly greatest pigeon men. They treat pigeon racing like an art form, the birds are the colours and their methods are the brushes. The race result sheet becomes the canvas. Only by using the right brushes with the right colours, and the right techniques, can an outstanding artist ever hope to produce a masterpiece. Well if Paddy was an artist there would be a whole section of the Tate Modern honoured to him. This man can do things with pigeons that us mere mortals can only dream of.
One thing I don’t tend to do when speaking with successful fanciers is ask for a full run-down on their feeding methods as well as the exact system they use. Quite often there is no rigid system and as for feeding, well we all know there are a million and one different combinations so I am not even going to get into that. However, I do like to get one or two tips from the fanciers that any fancier could quite easily integrate into their own regime if they so wished. Paddy gave me a couple of really good ones. With him flying natural and the birds only getting a couple of times a day, no open hole here due to feline issues, Paddy trains his birds. He prefers private training to racing and will go as far as 60 miles with his birds. Anyway, the tip he gives is to let the birds up in threes if you can. This way they still have some form of flock to help them along but they avoid the wires and Paddy says he has not had too much peregrine trouble when training this way. Also, Paddy swears by Harkers 3-in1 tablets. He gives ½ a tablet to the babies when they are approaching 3 weeks old, whilst they are still in the nest, and then another tablet a few weeks later after they have learnt how to eat and drink for themselves with ease.
Following all this it was down to the house for a spot of lunch courtesy of Trish, a look at the Gold Medal won in 1995 and a little bit of nostalgia from some old publications that featured Paddy, usually reporting on one of the splendid performances that have been recorded to this little housing estate in Belfast. I cannot thank Paddy and Trish enough for making us feel so welcome, I hope you have enjoyed Part 1 of this little mini-series, there’s plenty more to come!
Burns Bros Gold Medal, won in 1995
To summarise, what may appear to be small tweaks can have much larger effects when you get to the long days of June and July and the Nationals are in full flow, this is where people like Paddy Burn come to the fore. The hard races that are flown to these parts of British Isles have been a happy hunting ground for Paddy, and from what we saw and heard on that morning, I would think that there will be plenty more hunting to come from the Burns house in the years to come!
“I dream my painting, and then I paint my dream”
Vincent Van Gogh
John Ghent
jeela@yahoo.com
