The Kursk pigeon

By N. Blagowschtschenski (written in 1895)

Translated into German by Hans J. Arnold Gräfenrode (Thanks a lot!)

With the completion of the 7th class I had to take leave of my pigeons. And after secondary school followed the studies at the university of Moscow that did not leave much time to dream of pigeons. But in the third year of studies circumstances arose that revived my passion for the pigeons. In the meantime my cousins, scholars of the secondary school had gotten the “pigeon-fever”. The parents were meaning to keep the “fever” in borders. Unfortunately the pigeons of my cousins were bad flyers and the boys lost a lot of time with the training. As a result the parents put down a condition: the pigeons could only be kept longer if both scholars prevailed in all exams!

I offered my help and got a look into their “pigeon-economy”. After that I bought a “grey” pigeon. In Kursk grey means the color of the half-wild city pigeons. This pigeon had white wing points and a white tail. A matching male was chosen on the pigeon market. After a short while the pair started to fly and also brought good offspring. The group of pigeons that were unfit to fly could be reduced. Now the cousins had excellent Height Flyers. I often visited the pigeonry when the pigeons were chased and took part in the grading of their flight. The pigeon group started to revive again, but the true rebirth only took place after a few years.

One day my cousin found a white male in the pigeonry that had flown in: thick neck, coarse head, light-reddish beak. He seemed not that young anymore, maybe he had not been chased for a long time, he only flew heavily from one roof to the next. The cousins decided – without me – to let the pigeon stay with them. Furthermore, an officer brought a female with an magpie coloring. She was paired with the white male. The male had not flown for almost a year. But now he was forced to follow his female, and he went as far as to be known as the best Height Flyer in all of Kursk between 1885 and 1887. Early in the morning, before going to school, the boys chased their pigeons and often found, after the others had finished their flight, the white and his female still high in the skies.

So it endured, until one day the female was gone. We assumed that the hawk was the guilty one. The male still flew lonely for one year, until he went above the clouds “into heaven”.

What is the reason that the best Height Flyers of Kursk do not die on earth, but are taken, still alive “into heaven”? It´s clear to me that when the pigeons have reached the height in which they are only visible through binoculars and fly over passing clouds, they loose orientation. They can find the pigeonry again when there are gaps in the clouds. Not few disoriented pigeons are captured by villagers in the surroundings of Kursk. Those are the pigeons that fly over the clouds and are led far away by these. After a long flight they grew tired, dove through the clouds and found strange surroundings. Such pigeons were found at a distance of 20 to 30 km. Irrational is the assumption that they would choke in the cloud masses. In Jalta in 1892 I could discover an interesting view about the reasons that the pigeons vanish with the clouds. In this nice town there are lots of people that have joy in the Height flying of the pigeons. Which race the pigeon friends of Jalta were chasing I could not make out. I only saw some black spotted, but the pigeons with light coloring were dominant, the whites but also red necks, clay colored and yellow spotted.

These pigeons flew well, but their flying style was another than the one of our Kursk pigeons. They flew faster and in rounds above the pigeonry without flying into the distance like the Woronisian Tschegrashi and the Orlower magpie do normally.

The sky above Jalta is often and swiftly covered with clouds coming from the sea. Height Flying pigeons are then above these. I inquired if the pigeons did not get lost in there and was surprised when the pigeon friends of Jalta denied it. I wanted to see for myself if this information was true. Next to our house, where I lived in Jalta, there was a pigeonry from which a swarm of pigeons was chased out to fly every morning. I observed the flight of these pigeons. The Height Flyers were covered from view by clouds and when the sky cleared again I could always see the pigeons flying their usual rounds. Even in cases where the clouds did not clear for several hours, the pigeons dived through the clouds right above the pigeonry. This mystery was explained thus that the pigeons of Jalta always have their orientation point. And those are the mountain tops that always tower above the clouds. I could only regret that such orientation points were not available for our Kursk pigeons. Thus, every year, we are sadly forced to part from very good Height Flyers. The Kursk pigeon breeder Ratzibor said: our love for the pigeons is like an “ungrateful horse”, the best get lost in the sky. Therefore he decided to sell all pigeons and occupy himself with bees.

Now I already deviated too far from the story of “the white” and I am now going to continue. Every breed from him and the magpie female were black with white wings, some additionally had white tails. A large part of them got lost with the clouds. Surprising was for me: they all had yellow eyes. I could not explain to me from where they had inherited this eye color.

In the year 1888 I could buy some pigeons again. The white did not live anymore, but one of his sons was with another breeder. I was able to buy it for a high price, but my joy did not last long. He soon got lost with the clouds without leaving any offspring. My cousins knew that there were offspring of the white in neighboring pigeonries, but they did not know which ones these were. But my future Kursk pigeon should have amber-yellow eyes. After searching for a long time I managed to find a white-tailed male with the Kursk Breeder Wischnewski, whom I gave later the name of “Kornia”. It cost me a lot of pain to find him a fitting female. Every market day I went to the pigeon market and bought all yellow-eyed pigeons, which I then sorted out according to their flying performance. Unfortunately the results were not satisfactory in most cases and such pigeons ended in the kitchen. Meanwhile the pigeon traders realized that I only bought yellow-eyed and asked for higher prices; so I had to take leave from this method. From the high amount of yellow-eyed pigeons I bought only one female flew according to my wishes. She was black with four white pinions on both sides. I called her “Sablja” (saber). This pigeon flew very calmly and slowly, as if she was rowing heavily with her wings. Sometimes she did a backwards flip. After a while I managed to buy five other pigeons that were usable for flight. But to start a breeding tree with that proved to be difficult.

In Kursk lived a pigeon breeder named “Kuriak” whose pigeons had yellow eyes. But the man asked for such a high price that I gave up on the purchase. The breeding tree of “Kuriak” was developed as following: in the past there were 4 breeding trees of Kursk Height Flyers in Kursk that all had their own name: Browik, Malenkije, Poluchwostije and Rjaptschiki. The first two trees are still there today. According to narrations the merchant Bokodarow brought the pigeons of these trees from Nikolajew to Kursk. Then there was another tree of the merchant Tscherwonow with yellow eyes. It is also told that the tree of the “Malenkije” originates from a female that had differently colored eyes. One of the eyes was supposedly yellow. About 25 years ago “Kuriak” bought a female from which the whole tree of his pigeons had developed, from Serpjonowitch, who originally was the owner of the trees “Browki” and “Malenkije”. Because the black pigeons of the “Malenkije” often had red offspring with white tails, one can assume that they could be related to the Moscow grey tumbler. Several red Kursk pigeons also have yellow eyes. Probably this comes from the distant, repeating relations. Unfortunately such yellow-eyed do not appear among the pigeons of Sarapjonowitch lately.

After a long search I found a yellow-eyed female with a breeder named Asarow and paired her with “Kornia”. The following winter I had to leave Kursk and left my pigeons in the care of an old man who loved chickens. Under his roof seven young pigeons developed during the winter, among them two females with white tails, one of them with yellow eyes. Only one of them flew well later. That was in 1889.

The next summer I spent at the Wolga. When I came back I found that only four of my pigeons were good flyers: the unforgettable “Sablja”, a white-tailed daughter of “Kornia”, a grey capped clear-eyed female and a male that had flown to me and got the name of “Prelestj” (excellent).

It was already autumn and the flights were interrupted as they were too dangerous because of the raptors. In winter the breeder Nestrujew proposed to me to let me have his male “Sultan”, under the terms to pair him with my female “Sablja” and give him a male from the first brood. Sultan was black with six white pinions, the eyes were broken yellow; he was already 12 years old. With “Sultan” I also got a yellow-eyed daughter from him. Many years ago “Sultan” was lost and flew to Nestrujew. After some thinking I decided to accept Nestrujews terms. But something was wrong with “Sabljas” health. At the time of laying the eggs she could neither fly nor walk normally. A vet was of the opinion that the nerves of the female were severed. He proposed to heal the female with Antipirine. The drug worked, “Sablja” laid two normal eggs and brood a male with differently colored eyes and a female, grey-blue with yellow eyes. In July of the same summer our family relocated from the city into a village, with all my pigeons. There “Sablja” bred two red females with yellow eyes. They got the names of “Pusiricha” and “Bombe” from us. Also, the old “Sultan” paired with the clear-eyed “Kurotschka” brought two red young. Like this assembled itself a rich family of red yellow-eyed pigeons that often tumbled and designed themselves through a correct flying style. Like this “Kornia´s” family and “Sultan” with his daughters, partly the offspring of Asarows pigeons and the offspring of “Sablja” formed my numerous pigeon tree in the largeness of up to 70 animals.

The Kursk pigeons have to show endurance in flight, They have to stay in great heights for 5-6 hours all the while showing their specific flying style that looks like the flight of a singing lark. The pigeons go against the wind and fly just so much ahead that they get pushed back by the wind. This way they always stay in one spot above the pigeonry. The best flyers only make one round above the house.

The pigeons should not fly loosely, they have to form a stable flying community. The flight of the Kursk pigeon should be slowly without haste. The Kursk pigeon friends call it “calm”. Every breeder trains the pigeons in his own way. The choice of the pigeons is important. Their flying style has to relate to the owner´s wish.

When the parents are good flyers so the young also learn easily the demanded flying style. Furthermore it also has to be inherited. I also was determined to breed the amber-yellow eyes, even though they were not necessarily related to good flyers. I also tried to “freshen up” the yellowish through cross-breeding. In Woronesch I couldn´t get anything usable, because the “Tschegrashi” fly completely different than the Kursk pigeons. I hoped to succeed in Oriol. The local breed of Oriol tumblers looks quite beautiful. Some pigeons of this breed can also fly, but their flight is not of high quality. There on the market you can find different breeds. One, a black-eyed, magpie-d caught my eye. I paid two rubles for the male and paired him with a yellow eyed Kursk female. Unfortunately I got not a single young from the two broods of the pair, the eggs would not develop. Paired with another female it was the same. Then I let the male fly. He rose very high in the air, but there he trashed left and right as if there was a fire in the sky. I was forced to part from him. I had even more worries while trying with “Moscow grey”. We Kursk breeders admire the beauty of these pigeons, but their flying style does not relate to us. In Tula I bought two pairs of these pigeons; one pair had light, the other dark eyes. I paired them with yellow-eyed Kursk pigeons. Two years I tried. The young lived barely a week, because the Moscow pigeons scarcely fed them. The Kursk pigeons on the other hand raise their young very good, even if they spend 5 hours a day flying. The Moscow pigeons are not useful in either feeding or warming their offspring. The Kursk pigeons do not even leave their nests on hot summer days if there are still featherless young in the nest. I put the cross-bred young of the Moscow pigeons to the Kursk pigeons. They inherited the head form and the shorter beaks of the Moscow pigeons, were black-eyed and unfortunately totally useless for flying.

With a friend breeder it was the same with a similar pairing: the offspring was also not usable for flight. They all had black eyes.

Nevertheless I still searched for a “Moscow grey” with yellow eyes on the pigeon market and was also ready to pay a higher price. But the money stayed in my pocket, there are no “Moscow grey” with yellow eyes.

It´s luck for our Kursk pigeon friends that we have many and very high flying pigeons of our local breed, and that there is no need to crossbreed with other breeds. The Kursk breeders also do not break their heads over color and design of the pigeons. But the black with white wings are the most popular.

It also doesn´t matter if all ten pinions are white or just a few. There are also different spotted and pigeons with colored tails. They are not bred out if they fly well and race typical. There are also uni-colored in white and black and wild blue.

The number of red Kursk pigeons is high, from clean red to light pink. The red color can be clean or dirty. The red are mostly white-winged.

There are also brown-black, that are called “cast iron colored”. These pigeons have then lighter tails and shimmer in white.

There are pigeon friends that only keep pigeons of a certain color. The pigeons of Iwanow are only white, those of Kretischew chocolate brown, Djadin breeds red spotted whites. I haven´t seen any Kursk Height Flyers in yellow yet. I repeat again, that the main goal of the Kursk breeder is the endurance of their pigeons and the specific flying style of the breed. In Kursk it is common to catch other pigeons and not give them back. For me it is unfortunate that I left the city years ago and moved into a village, because there is no opportunity to catch other pigeons. On the other hand it is pleasant that my pigeons can also not be caught by anyone.