Racing pigeons is a minority sport in Ireland but, none the less, there are thousand’s of “Fanciers’ in the Country in almost every County of the Country North and South.

 Many birds get lost through bad weather conditions with wind and rain across the French- English and the Irish-English channels but there is also the threat that many of the birds, who can be of the value of Thousands of € are killed as they fly home by birds of pre such as Sparrow hawks and buzzards but the main culprit is the Peregrine Falcon the fastest animal in the world with a recorded speed at 220 miles per hour as they swoop for the “Kill”. The pigeon racing fraterinity claim that because the birds of prey are a “Protected species” in the U’K and Ireland they are devastating the valuable racing pigeons and owners are not allowed to eliminate them by any means.

So on Tuesday last Monaghan pigeon fancier Peter Tierney in Belgium Park in the border town received a phone call from a Gerry Mildren, who is originally from County Armagh, nut now lives in Penzance Cornwall England where the Monaghan birds had been sent for a race in June 2009 a racing distance of 300 flying miles..

Gerry informed Mr. Tierney that son of his had found the remains of a pigeon

 lying in a field with just a leg and the computerized racing ring on the leg which contains a phone number of the owner 2 weeks ago.

 Mr.Mildren then rang the owner to inform him that he would send evidence of the find in the post and, duly, on Thursday the Postman delivered the envelope to Mr. Tierney containing the leg and the computerized ring.

 Fortunately neither British or Irish customs or the postal service released that they were carrying the leg of a dead biird !. The  envelope had been posted from England by a correspondent of the renowned British Homing World magazine known as “ Cousin Jack” The details of the story of the Monaghan bird was carried in the magazine last week. The British Homing World is considered to be the “bible” of the sport and is read world wide after it had been sent to him by Mr. Mildren..

Peter Tierney said “ Its great that Gerry went to the trouble of sending me the evidence of where the bird died at least now know where and how it died, he is a great sportsman to o to the trouble of contacting me he did not have to but he did”.