Lord
Banks, honored guests, ladies and gentlemen,
it is a great honor to be here tonight to
speak to you about a subject dear to my heart.
I
believe I was invited tonight to bring a little
outside perspective to your wonderful efforts
here. My film-making has indeed taken me all
over the world and I stand before you as someone
who may be able to shed a little light on
the issues of the pigeon sport globally and
where it fits in to modern society.
First
of all it is important to note that the tremendous
effort made here, by my English racing colleagues,
ably assisted by Lord Banks, to elevate the
legacy of homing pigeons as a vital part of
our wartime history, is unprecedented. Thanks
to you, there is now a beautiful, and permanent,
monument to these brave birds here in London.
And the fact we are gathered here tonight,
at the very epicenter of English society,
to talk about Columba Livia is the most positive
step that I’m aware of, world wide,
to bring back some respect for a species that
I like to think of as the Underdog of the
Animal Kingdom.
I
use the term “Underdog” to refer
to pigeons because it is the saddest irony
of my lifetime to see such a phenomenal creature,
our oldest domestic bird, our oldest feathered
friend, become so misunderstood and vilified
in the last half century.
But
why should we care about how pigeons are perceived
by the public today? Well, first of all, let’s
remember what has changed and how these birds
once enjoyed a much more vaunted position
in society.
As
Jean Hansell has so beautifully documented
in her books, it is the Rock Dove, Columba
Livia, that symbolizes the holy spirit in
all the world’s major religions. This
species’ gentleness and loyalty, and
their success as caring parents, made them
an icon of Venus, goddess of love. The bird
is also the international symbol of peace,
and it is almost certain that the bird that
brought the olive branch to Noah was a rock
dove, because this is the family that has
been a companion to man since ancient humans
lived with these birds in the rocky caves
around the Mediterranean. So, for centuries,
domestic pigeons were revered. They were a
big part of everyday life. Pigeon keeping
was a huge pastime in the Middle East, Asia
and Europe. Today there are over 1,000 varieties
of domestic pigeons that descend from the
Rock Dove.
Pigeon
racing, in one form or another, is easily
as old as horse racing, the sport of Kings.
I guess it is more accurate to call our hobby
the sport of Queens, because her majesty Queen
Elizabeth is a pigeon racer. Actually she
is a third generation racer because it was
her grandfather King George who first established
a racing loft at Sandringham a century ago.
When
the Olympic Games open in London in 2012,
tradition calls for the release of homing
pigeons to mark the official start of the
games. This again is symbolic of an ancient
friendship. During the original games in Greece
it was common for an athlete to carry pigeons
from his village to the Olympics. If he won
a race, he would tie a strand of the finish
line to the bird and release it to fly home
and let his fellow villagers know of his victory.
And
speaking of Olympic athletes, I have to share
some comments I recently got about pigeons
as part of the latest film we are releasing
next week. In the United States Professor
Ken Dial is one of the world’s foremost
experts on how birds fly. For over 20 years
this Harvard trained scientist has conducted
experiments on bird locomotion. He has been
recognized universally for many breakthrough
findings, particularly on how dinosaurs likely
learned to fly. Professor Dial has studied
the greatest fliers in the avian kingdom and
he calls our pigeons the ultimate Olympic
athlete. According to Professor Dial no bird,
in fact no creature on earth, can match the
speed and endurance of modern racing pigeons.
But
given all this rich history, from the Royal
family to respect from eminent scientists,
how is it that we are fighting so hard to
earn recognition for the racing birds we care
for? How did Columba Livia become an “underdog”
if you will.
We
are victims of several factors, a perfect
storm of negative components that have made
for reduced status for our birds. First, during
the 1960’s and 1970’s there was
a concerted effort by the pest control industry
to convince public officials that pigeons
carried dozens of diseases, including tuberculosis.
This false campaign was intended to elevate
the pigeon as a public health threat that
could then be exterminated, for a profit mind
you, by the industry. And, even though the
pigeon sport eventually got them to cease
and desist with their medical falsehoods,
the stigma has remained.
Secondly
the American comedian, Woody Allen, coined
a phrase in one of his movies for the feral
pigeons in New York City. He called them feathered
rats. Sadly, this too, took root in the minds
of the public, or worse, in the minds of everyone
in the media who ever thought to do a story
on pigeons.
For
us this stigma is very serious, because no
matter how different our pedigreed and pampered
race birds are, to a city council they are
just pigeons and they now regulate us as if
our birds were a health threat and a nuisance.
Now we have the joys of bird flu to deal with
as well.
So,
in our lifetime, one of the world’s
most revered creatures, and one of nature’s
most phenomenal athletes, has been reduced
to the status of vermin in the minds of the
media and much of the general public.
Why
is this important? Why should we care about
this if we can still quietly practice our
hobby? And what has this got to do with what
may be next for the effort that was born here
in the Churchill Dining Room several years
ago? Well it has a great impact on how our
sport can survive, much less grow.
Why
we should care about people being able to
enjoy pigeon racing can be illustrated in
my sharing my own personal journey to this
room. And I don’t mean the 7,000 miles
to fly here from the Rocky Mountains of Montana.
I mean the emotional and intellectual journey
that I have experienced because of my fascination
with homing pigeons. I’m going to mention
it because I know I am not unique, I know
my comments here will bring many nods of agreement
from the pigeon fanciers here tonight.
I
was ten years old when my family moved from
the country to the city. At school one day
a boy brought a couple of street pigeons,
in a bird cage, for show and tell. I’d
never seen these big birds up close. And I
had never had the experience of looking into
a bird’s eye and having it, basically
look back, with an obvious intelligence that
was taking my measure. Science now tells us
that the bird was indeed thinking, pigeons
have been found to be able to remember hundreds
of faces, and are equal to higher order animals,
such as dolphins and porpoises, in their cognitive
abilities.
Anyway,
I followed my new friend home and became part
of a pack of black and white boys who roamed
the city catching and keeping street pigeons.
I then visited the library and, for the first
time in my life I had a topic that I wanted
to know about. I discovered the incredible
story of homing pigeons in war and the fact
that pedigreed racing pigeons, in countries
like England and Belgium, were raced by the
thousands in competitions of 100 to 600 miles.
Like
many little boys of my generation I became
a pigeon keeper. I had to learn how to design
a pigeon loft. I had to learn how to build
it. I had to learn how to find racing pigeons
to buy and the very basics of having a feathered
family in my back garden that I was responsible
for. At ten years old I ruled my own little
world. Twice a day it was up to me to feed
and care for my birds. I made mistakes, such
as trying to help a hatching baby bird out
of its shell, a hard lesson when you realize
that mother nature often doesn’t want
assistance, and the death of the living thing
I was trying to help broke my heart.
I
learned how to convert dollars to pounds so
I could send away for precious English books
that annually carried the stories of the Kingdom’s
greatest pigeon men. I learned these champions
could be commoner or King and that a great
pigeon could win a race flying to a loft near
a countryside manor house or to the kitchen
window of a Welsh coal miner. I learned about
the birds and the bees, well the birds anyway,
without having to have a sit down with my
father! I learned how the life cycle of all
living creatures is tied to the seasons, to
the changes in the length of the day. I learned
to observe and understand the weather. I learned
about nutrition and the components of grain,
such as fiber, fat and protein, in what I
fed my birds. I learned about genetics and
how the findings of Mendel became evident
in the feather colors of the babies of birds
I mated together. Let me repeat, I was ten
years old, and I was learning in the best
way a child can, by hands-on experience, self-study
and observation. Far different that having
my face glued to a video game.
Outside
my little back garden pigeon world, I had
to respect and deal with my elders, because
in my city there were Champion pigeon men
I wanted to know. Many of these expert trainers
were professional people, but others were
salt of the earth, working men, and I had
to learn how to speak to them, and win them
over, before I stood a chance to talk them
out of precious eggs or babies to raise.
I
learned about management and planning and
hygiene. And every day I alone was responsible
for delivering clean feed and clean water
to my birds and always scrapping away their
droppings.
And
for all this hard work, and all this study,
I was rewarded. Because each day I could visit
my birds, birds I had raised, and I could
let them outside into the sky. And from where
I stood, earthbound, I could watch them fly.
I would watch them disappear, often for an
hour and then, magically, come back, come
back to me. At the age of ten I saw a creature
give up its freedom, to return to my care,
because of the bond I had built between us.
It’s
easy to be poetic about this part of my life
because the emotions are so deep within me.
But the magic I am describing was not unique
to little Jim Jenner in the Northwest corner
of America. These emotions, the life lessons,
are in the heart of every pigeon person in
this room. They are, in large part, what made
us what we are today. And I can tell you that
all of we pigeons boys turned out OK, while
many boys didn’t do so well and fell
into drugs and crime.
Now,
like most pigeon men, there was a period when
teenage hormones became stronger than the
pull of the birds, well a pull to a different
kind of bird you could say, the unfeathered
variety. But the emotional satisfaction of
those early years was always in my heart and
when I finally settled down I took up the
hobby again.
But
what I am trying to describe here, by sharing
what is by no means a unique experience, is
a simple illustration of how profound an impact
homing pigeons can have on a young person.
Since then I have seen, in virtually every
country I have visited, that my own story
has been repeated several million times. That’s
how many people keep pigeons world-wide, and
the emotions I’ve described are the
same for the boys of Belfast or Beijing, Cardiff
or Calcutta.
Why
is this important? Well I read with interest
Lord Carter’s report on sport in the
U.K. It is obviously very much on the radar
screen of government today to encourage sport
and active recreation for young people that
gets them away from television and violent
video games, and into drug free activities
that engage their minds. For many experts
sport is the answer.
Can
we call pigeon racing a sport? Well a dictionary
definition of sport is a game or organized
activity. It may or may not involve hard physical
play. Worldwide, pigeon racing is far greater
in terms of participation and prize money
than dog racing for example. Much like horse
racing it involves highly bred contestants,
although no horse race on earth matches the
twenty to two hundred thousand birds that
can take part in a pigeon race on a summer
Saturday. In terms of size the Royal Pigeon
Racing Assoc, the RPRA, with over thirty employees,
is much larger than the vast majority of sport
bodies in the U.K. When you read Lord Carter’s
report you realize that as many people race
pigeons in the U.K. today as play volleyball,
or hockey or sail or learn gymnastics. And
while building and managing a team of racing
pigeons may not be as physically demanding
as running down a football pitch, let’s
look at the some other benefits. First of
all we can’t make light of the physical
demands and responsibilities of, twice a day,
every day, hauling food and water back and
forth to your loft. And cleaning and cleaning
and cleaning. But it is the mental and emotional
component that I think I can best address.
A lot of Lord Carter’s report discusses
the benefits of sport that go beyond mere
exercise. It is the aspects of getting away
from the TV, interfacing with others and getting
your mental gears turning that are listed
as key goals of the hundreds of millions of
pounds investment in youth that the study
contemplates. That’s where the huge
impact on my own life becomes noteworthy because
it is not unique. Pigeons can literally change
children for the better. Here’s what
I mean by that.
I’m
sorry that House of Commons decorum doesn’t
permit the showing of films. Because, let’s
face it, a filmmaker’s work speaks louder
than his words. If I could, I would have shown
you one of the stories that was in my last
film, “Share The Blue Sky”.
It
was called “Pigeons Go To School”
and it told about a program for at risk teenagers
at a secondary school in the United States.
I’m going to provide copies to Lord
Banks and others so you have a chance to see
this saga.
At
this school the science teacher is a pigeon
fancier, as is his father. Together they created
a small pigeon loft behind the classroom and
the students were in charge of raising and
training a flock of racing birds. These teenagers,
mostly from poor Hispanic families in a small
farming community, represent much of what
modern society is burdened with. Most are
from single parent families, most ended up
at this last chance, alternative school because
of serious attendance or behavior problems.
They were no strangers to teen pregnancy,
drugs, crime or abusive home lives. What you
see in this film is the simple connection
that pigeons can bring between human beings
and the natural world. And I need to point
out to our honored guests something they may
not know. As a child’s pet, domestic
racing pigeons are hardy, they live happily
in small spaces, they are easily tamed and
most of all, they fly. Since time began these
big birds have imparted something special
to the soul of a child who cares for them.
My
favorite images are of a huge boy, a legend
as a vicious fighter before he was tossed
out of the mainstream school, cupping a tiny
baby pigeon in his big hands. My favorite
comments are his words about how gentle pigeon
parents are with their young and how calm
he feels when he watches the birds fly. The
most profound comments come from the school
principal who relates that the problems of
the class have changed. Before the pigeon
program, he says, the problem was they didn’t
come to school. Now, he says with a smile,
the problem is they don’t want to go
home. A follow-up study, commissioned by the
state education department,
found that the students in the pigeon project
improved by over a full grade point in their
academic performance. Their attendance rose
dramatically. Most significant the incidents
of aggressive behavior all but went away.
Phenomenal results for any sport program to
be sure. In my story one girl spoke of how
it made her feel to be asked to care for an
abandoned baby pigeon. In her own words she
said she went from contemplating suicide to
deciding to continue with school, find a job
and build a life for herself. I’m not
making this up. It’s all there.
So
here we are, in the House of Commons, talking
about pigeons. And you’ve succeeded
brilliantly in honoring the homing pigeons
contribution to saving lives in war. But what
is next? Where does pigeon racing fit in the
future of society? Why should we fight to
be recognized as a viable and important part
of youth sport?
Speaking
of competitive sport I think of my friend
Gerry Francis here. It’s true to say
he’s one in a million in more ways than
one. Statistically there can only be so many
champions of his caliber, only so many heroes
of Team England. No matter how many hundred
million pounds are invested in expanding sport
in the U.K., mother nature is going to produce
very few athletes of Gerry’s caliber.
That leaves several millions other kids on
the sidelines. And, for many, simple exercise
is only small part of what is missing in their
lives.
That’s
where we come in. I think this is the next
step. A critical component of the entire sports
effort is active recreation that gets children
out of a sedentary lifestyle and mentally
engaged in something other than TV or a computer
screen. It is up to us to produce the tools
that can help to do this by working to help
more young people become interested in racing
pigeons.
Now
some will tell you this is impossible. Many
within our sport will say we are the last
generation, that kids today just can’t
be engaged in our hobby. I beg to differ.
In fact I venture that any pigeon person who
has visited a school to talk about pigeons
in the last few years, would also beg to differ.
Say what you will about the spoiled and disinterested
youth of today, I have witnessed the same
magic in their eyes that I had when I saw
my first pigeons. The flame can still be lit,
and it is our job to light it.
Ohhh,
that will never work, others will say, schools
or youth centers would never let pigeons be
around. Well, I’m reminded of a film
I worked on twenty years ago for a group that
advocated introducing animals, particularly
cats and dogs, into the then antiseptic environments
of convalescent centers and homes for the
elderly. Have you been to any of these places
lately? They have dogs, and cats, and birds
all over. And do you know why the administrators
changed their minds? Because you can show,
scientifically, that contact with other living
creatures makes humans calmer and happier
and we live longer!
Why
should we care about this? Well the more young
people interested in our hobby today means
the more people likely to take up the hobby
later in life. And all of the wonderful things
that pigeon keeping brought into my life,
and yours, are still there to change the lives
of a new generation. And they need it more
than ever.
Again,
let me share what I’ve learned around
the globe. Attracting youth is a big problem
for the pigeon sport everywhere. And I believe
one of the problems is that most efforts try
to bring young people directly into existing
racing clubs. In most cases this is a mistake.
First, let’s remember that pigeon racing
is the toughest competition out of the box
of any sport in the world. Unlike golf where
you have a handicap, or tennis where they
have seedings, or football where the teams
are scaled based on their overall performance,
from day one in pigeon racing you are competing
with the top trainers on an equal footing.
You are often up against hundreds of other
fanciers with years more experience. Your
birds are competing against thousands of other
pigeons each weekend, in races where a few
seconds means the difference between first
and fiftieth place. Unless you are a genius,
early success is hard to achieve. What’s
more the average pigeon club is typically
full of older folks who look forward to their
weekends with their mates, it is often not
a place a young person is comfortable, at
least until they learn the ropes.
That
said there are ample opportunities to put
pigeons in front of young people through their
science education. Today’s teachers
are desperate for new and engaging curriculums
that break the chain of young people’s
slavish devotion to their cell phones and
video games. Whether it’s a small loft
at a school, or a youth center or even at
a local zoo or a nature center. We have to
think about putting live, flying homing pigeons
in front of young people and be ready to help
encourage those that become fascinated by
our birds. It can be done. It must be done.
Imagine for example if there was a replica
of an historic military loft, with live birds
inside and display boards and a movie screen
around it that described military birds and
modern pigeon racing. Now imagine that this
entire unit is at the London Zoo. How many
people a day would get a positive impression
of our hobby?
Probably
the single most significant change in the
sport is the advent of electronic clocking.
Although it has not been adopted officially
in the U.K. it is still a fantastic resource
to create programs that engage young people.
By that I mean it is possible for a small
loft of birds to be clocked over a series
of races, either one bird sprints, or as a
group, download the data and come up with
an overall winning bird. It’s the kind
of competitive information that can keep kids
engaged in how their individual birds are
doing, and the races can be as simple as ten
or twenty mile events. And it also means that
a single pigeon loft can serve as a focal
point for many children even if they couldn’t
have their own birds at home. And let’s
also remember how little physical space all
this takes compared to a sports pitch. A demonstration
pigeon loft can be the size of a single parking
stall.
What
I really want to emphasis is that there is
no significant youth oriented program that
is being used by the hobby world-wide, and
I believe this is the perfect forum for this
type of effort to be launched. And I don’t
bring it up as a challenge that I make and
walk away from, but as something I would love
to be involved with at any level.
I
believe that this is the forum for several
reasons. First the bulk of the national pigeon
organizations, world wide, are almost totally
devoted to the complex business running races
and issuing bands. And, occasionally, dealing
with controversies like doping. I must digress
for a moment to point out to our many dignitaries
here tonight that when I was here a year ago
the big news was the RPRA’s drug testing
of British race birds. Sadly, there has been
virtually no follow-up report that this effort,
which made the Wall Street Journal, American
television, etc. and made us look like we
had a shady sport going on, has turned up
no, zero, I repeat no instances, of drug use
among the winning trainers who were suspect.
And
this lack of positive public affairs is part
of what I see as a problem with the organizations
themselves trying to reach out to youth. Most
of them are run by older pigeon men, who are
often not the best or most sophisticated marketers
in the world. I believe an outside, ad hoc
group, like your amalgamation which has been
so successful at attracting celebrity support
and positive media attention, would be far
more effective at bridging the many different
arenas of the sport and be able to work at
the highest levels of government and education
to tell our dramatic story.
As
a side light there are considerable cultural
advantages to this as well. The highest number
of at risk youth are those with the least
access to nature. They are often poor, disadvantaged
and living in single family, urban environments.
Many of them, Muslims youth for example, also
have a cultural legacy of pigeon keeping that
goes back hundreds of generations. I can’t
tell you how often I get letters in fractured
English from pigeon fanciers in Egypt, Iran,
Pakistan and other Muslim countries who are
reaching out to learn more about pigeons worldwide.
And let’s remember that while the hobby
is dwindling in many parts of the West, it
is exploding in countries such as China, Poland
and Portugal, countries where a growing middle
class is taking up pigeon racing.
If
we started today to create a U.K. and global
effort to promote the pigeon sport, to make
it part of science curriculums and youth activities,
how on earth would you fund such an effort?
Well, let me leave you with this thought.
The pigeon racers in this room know our hobby
is a sport in every sense of the word. It
is mentally challenging, it is highly competitive,
it is extremely emotionally satisfying, and
not just in your youth. We care about our
hobby’s survival. We honor what it has
done for us in our lives. Here’s what
I mean.
Let
me go back to Gerry Francis for a minute because
he has a new job you may not know about. Gerry
said he didn’t want to coach but he
is coaching. Not on the field. He’s
in his back garden breeding, training and
conditioning athletes that can go fifty miles
an hour, flat out, all day long. He’s
the coach of what is arguably the formula
one flying machine of the avian kingdom. And,
even though he may not be running up and down
a football pitch, Gerry is mentally and emotionally
tied to his team. And if one of his players
wins, if one of his birds is best, there won’t
be cheering fans or headlines in the newspaper.
But there will be a little smile on Gerry’s
face when he sees the other fanciers in his
club, and the emotional satisfaction he gleans
from that victory will go deep in his heart.
Best of all, it is a sport he can play, a
team he can coach, until the day he can no
longer walk to the loft. Our sport is magical
because the older you get the better you get
at it! And a successful and dedicated fancier
like Gerry is willing to commit his time and
money to helping the hobby he enjoys so much.
I
don’t make light of the importance of
physically active sports. I’ve quarterbacked
my school team. I’ve reminisced with
my buddies about our victories on the field.
You have too probably. But I venture no victory
in athletics is as clear in your mind as the
first pigeon race you won, or the band number
of the marvelous creature that won it for
you.
That
is what we are talking about helping bring
to other people in the world. And based on
my world travels I can tell you that many
other intelligent pigeon leaders, world-wide
would be proud to be invited to England’s
House of Commons to work on improving our
hobby, to have it recognized as a sport, to
try to develop a global program to encourage
youth involvement in this hobby. But what
about the money?
Well
think about this. Is pigeon racing in your
will? For all the thousands of hours of satisfaction
this hobby has brought to you, is there anywhere
you could send your money that would further
the sport, that would help it live on for
future generations? No there is not. And as
we witness the passing of an entire generation
of pigeon fanciers, I maintain that the right
program, achieving the type of success you
have achieved with the war memorial, could
easily become a place that a fancier would
bequeath a few hundred or a few thousand pounds.
Our
hobby is a wonderful, competitive sport that
is beneficial to the emotional well-being
of the people who practice it, young or old.
It is indeed a sport worth fighting for. I
hope some of these comments and radical ideas
may be a catalyst for where we go from here.
Again,
to Lord Banks, thank you so much for hosting
this event. Honored guests, ladies and gentlemen,
thank you for inviting us.
About Jim Jenner
A
boyhood interest in homing pigeons, combined
with a career in broadcasting, lead Jim Jenner
to create what are considered the finest documentaries
on pigeons ever made.
A
native of Washington State, Jenner became
interested in pigeons at the age of ten and
kept them in his back yard in Seattle. At
the age of 17 his family moved to Hong Kong,
where his father worked for an international
bank, and Jenner became a writer for the South
China Morning Post, Asia’s largest English
language paper. Three years later he joined
CBS News and worked throughout Asia and the
Middle East. In the summer of 1971, at 21,
he became the youngest reporter ever to appear
on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite
when he covered the dramatic story of the
bombing of the Intercontinental Hotel in Dacca,
East Pakistan [now Bangla Desh]. CBS later
transferred Jenner to New York where he worked
in the Special Events unit covering the 1972
Presidential election and the Apollo 16 and
17 missions to the moon.
He
left CBS in 1973 to return to the Pacific
Northwest where he founded Pacific Communications,
Inc [PACCOM], one of the earliest video production
companies in the region. Over the years the
firm grew to more than 60 employees and produced
television commercials and video programs.
In 1988 Jenner constructed a special pigeon
loft in order to film the life cycle of his
homing pigeons. This material, combined with
stunning aerial footage of racing pigeons
in flight, and footage taken in the US and
Europe became the basis for his 57 minute
“Marathon In The Sky”. The documentary
was narrated by the late Michael Landon, who
provided his voice for the documentary in
exchange for using Jenner’s pigeon footage
in Landon’s last movie “Where
Pigeons Go To Die”. When it was released
in 1990 the film was hailed as a classic story
of pigeon racing.
In
1993 Jenner sold his advertising production
company and took time off to be part of the
effort to create the World of Wings pigeon
museum in Oklahoma City. In 1996 he released
“Oldest Feather Friend”, which
include 11 stories about the ancient relationship
of people and pigeons. The film won four first
place awards in documentary film festivals.
During production of this film Jenner worked
closely with IF members in the New York area
to capture the story of modern pigeon racing
men.
In
late 2001 Jenner was invited to China by Beijing
Television to discuss the creation of a documentary
series on pigeons for broadcast in Mainland
China. Jenner was eventually invited to write
and direct the five-hour, twenty episode series,
the first instance of a joint production agreement
between a mainland broadcaster and a non-Chinese
production company. Released in 2003, “Share
The Blue Sky – Stories of the Bird of
Peace”, included stories from five continents
and 19 countries. It also won documentary
production awards. Following this production
Jenner was asked by the IF to help with a
membership recruiting film, which is now available
for IF members to use to promote the hobby.
Following
completion of his epic “Share The Blue
Sky” in the Spring of 2003, Jenner and
his wife Susan moved to the tiny mountain
town of Philipsburg, Montana where they had
owned property for many years. They renovated
an historic hotel, The Broadway Hotel, which
Susan Jenner manages. In the Summer of 2005
Jenner again took up a camera to create “Secrets
of Champions” a film which chronicles
the methods of many of the world’s longest-winning
pigeon racers, whom Jenner had met and befriended
over the course of his 15 years of documentary
work on pigeon racing.
Jenner’s
work has provided the pigeon hobby with important
materials to promote the hobby and fight back
regulations to restrict the keeping of pigeons.
Portions of his films have been shown at over
a hundred city councils in the US, Canada
and the UK to offset the negative image of
pigeons with elected officials. England’s
venerable Racing Pigeon magazine called Jenner
”the pigeon world’s greatest story
teller” and he has been honored with
the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American
Pigeon Fancier’s Council along with
honors from other pigeon organizations.
As
to his future plans with pigeon films Jenner
has written a movie screen play, about a group
of inner-city kids who accidentally capture
a champion racing, which he hopes to turn
into a feature film. He is also converting
his production system to High Definition television
and hopes to update his classic “Marathon
In the Sky” with equipment which produces
a stunning new level of picture quality.
