In the media there was a lot of commotion concerning the international race of Narbonne. “Some 20.000 pigeons missing after international competition in France”.
This difficult race was caused by a mistake of liberating the pigeons in front of bad weather. This caused bad circumstances for the pigeons to return properly to their loft.
Also worth mentioning is that the number of 20.000 is not correct at all, because 1 week after the liberation of the race in Narbonne, a great percentage of the pigeons were already at home.
International races have distances up till 1300 km or more to fly, which is no problem at all for pigeons when they have good weather circumstances. They are very well trained step by step to do so. Releasing in bad circumstances however can cause such difficult races.
The need of revising the protocol for releasing the pigeons is very important to make this not happen anymore in the future.