What happened to the racing pigeons that mysteriously vanished?

What took place?

Thousands of British homing pigeons mysteriously disappeared during races across the country on Saturday 19 June, with as many as 250,000 released in competition that day and only a fraction arriving at their intended destination.

One race from Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, to the North East of England saw 9,000 released but only around 4,000 reach their goal, while another race between Swindon in Wiltshire and Swansea in South Wales saw thousands more vanish without trace.

“We’ve seen one of the very worst ever racing days in our history,” said pigeon fancier Richard Sayers of Sayers Bros & Son from Skinningrove, North Yorkshire, part of the East Cleveland Federation, who lost an estimated 40 per cent of his flock in the disaster.

“Most of the breeders I’m talking to are blaming the atmospheric conditions - possibly a solar storm above the clouds that created static in the atmosphere - but no one really knows.”

Homing pigeons use the earth’s magnetic field to navigate but their sense of direction can be interfered with by a geomagnetic storm.

Dene Simpson, race controller for the South West Wales Federation of pigeon fanciers, recounted his traumatic experience to The Daily Mail, explaining: “We’d let ours go from Swindon at midday on the same Saturday - that’s a 92 mile journey with the wind behind them, so it shouldn’t have taken that long.

“But, of the 1,400 that went out, only about 200 to 300 made it home. And when we looked on social media later on we saw that lots of other federations around the UK had experienced something similar.”

Like Mr Sayers, Mr Simpson suggested an unusual weather event was to blame for the disappearance of the pigeons.

“The forecast had been overcast in the morning but with good visibility - by the afternoon there were clear blue skies back home in Swansea, which is why I think something invisible to the naked eye occurred, something that messed with the birds’ internal sat nav and caused them to veer off course drastically,” he said.

“There was definitely something strange going on that day because there were hardly any wild birds in the sky at all beforehand, it was just dead up there. Personally, I’ve not ruled out a series of mini tornadoes being to blame.”

Ian Evans, CEO of the Royal Pigeon Racing Association (RPRA), was also baffled, telling The Sun: “We became aware quite quickly that something very unusual was happening.”

“I have never heard of anything like this,” he said. “On the face of it, the weather conditions were good. But in the event, thousands of birds simply didn’t return.

“Something happened that disrupted their navigational abilities. We believe it may have had something to do with solar wind activity.”

While a freak weather event does appear to be the most likely explanation, Met Office spokesperson Nicola Maxey told The Times that there has been “nothing unusual” in the atmosphere to impact the birds’ behaviour.

“Looking at space weather, there has been nothing unusual that has happened in the last few weeks,” she said.

“It has all been business as usual. There has been some low-level geomagnetic activity but just fairly regular occurrences, nothing strange or extreme that we haven’t seen lots of times before.”

How many have been returned?

Since the initial story of the strange mass disappearance broke, some of the birds have put in belated reappearances.

“I’d like to think the number missing today is a lot less and it should get a lot less over the next few days,” Mr Evans told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that week.

“Pigeons are actually very clever. If they do get tired and into difficulty they’ll find another pigeon loft where they can rest up and the people there will take care of them. Then when they’re fit enough and healthy enough, they will liberate them to return home.”

The RPRA tells The Independent that they are unable to confirm precisely how many birds have come home to roost and are still unsure of the cause but that Mr Evans himself released 27 pigeons that day and has had all but two return.

There have also been reports of individual birds pitching up in unexpected places and identified by the registration tags tied around their legs.

One from the Peterborough race was subsequently found in West Cork, Ireland, according to The Cambridge Times, with a woman in Clonakilty spotting it perched on her windowsill.

“We have tried to catch him but even though he is approachable he manages to thwart all our attempts,” she said.

“He is perched on our bedroom window and we have been feeding him with bird seed and water… We have already saved him from a neighbour’s cat who made a rush at it. It doesn’t appear to be streetwise where cats are concerned.”

A resident of County Mayo found another of the Peterborough birds dead in her garden.

In better news, The Sun reported another sighting in the Spanish holiday resort of Santa Ponsa, Majorca, prompting some lovely PhotoShop work from the tabloid and a “Wish Coo Were Here” headline.

The British expat who spotted it told the newspaper: “We’ve got millions of wood pigeons here and feral ones in nearby cities like Palma, so they’re easily identifiable. I had friends who used to keep pigeons.

“I know the difference. This one was a racing pigeon. It was well looked after, glossy and groomed. It was disorientated and tired.”

According to Mr Simpson, one of the birds belonging to a member of his federation has turned up in the Netherlands.

“It’s upsetting for the boys because they’ve reared these birds by hand, really looked after them,” he said.

“And, while money is the last thing on anyone’s mind at a time like this, pigeon fancying can be an expensive hobby. Losing this many birds will have cost a fortune.”

Further suspected sighting of the missing pigeons have also been reported on social media:

The RPRA, incidentally, offers advice on how to care for lost pigeons and report your discovery.

Why are we asking this now?

The story attracted widespread interest across the world last month and was reported everywhere from The Times of India to NPR in the United States, but, three weeks later, its cause remains a mystery, with some news outlets excitedly proposing a “Bermuda Triangle” lurking in the skies above the British Isles, an idea that overlooks the fact similar episodes have been reported in Belgium and Portugal.

While some birds have returned or been rescued, many are still missing and, without an explanation of its cause, the possibility remains that it could happen again, a source of likely concern to breeders.

A major weather event like the solar storm or mini tornado suggested by the fanciers would appear to be the most likely explanation but, that avenue of inquiry having been shut down by meteorologists, we are left without a clear understanding of what caused this strange occurrence, rarely heard of in a sport whose traditions date back as far as Rameses III and Ancient Egypt.

Independent reader tigger444 offered an interesting suggestion in a comment under our original story by pointing to a precedent in American science writer Arthur Firstenberg’s book The Invisible Rainbow (2017), which records the disappearance of 90 per cent of pigeons from races across the US in October 1998 and explains: “The trigger for the two weeks of sudden bird disorientation was apparently the commencement of microwave rain falling from satellites.”

Firstenberg blames the recent launch of 66 Iridium satellites by Motorola a month earlier to support its new mobile phone network and connects the phenomenon with the discovery by Canadian researchers in the late 1960s that “bird feathers make fine receiving aerials for microwaves.”

Whatever the truth, homing pigeons are too often unkindly written off by some city-dwellers as “rats with wings” but actually have a noble tradition of public service, delivering vital communications across battlelines in both World Wars, which is all the more reason to be concerned for the plight of our feathered friends now.