Waching daily Oct 27 2017

The woman needs to agree upon having the pigeons inside the belly. Inside the house, I mean.

If the woman does not agree with her husband having pigeons,

it can't work, it just doesn't work

I'm son of a pigeon-fancier, so there have always been pigeons at home

Unfortunately my dad passed away very young when the was 48

So I found myself as the head of an elite dovecote

They told you not to talk!

He doesn't understand...

I've had pigeons since I was 12

That's exactly 71 years ago

Can you properly see the head?

If you wanna be a pigeon-fancier, you can't be lazy

It requires care in the morning and care in the evening. Every day.

Winter, Summer, rain, snow, cold...

You need to go take care of them

You know, pigeons are friendly

They've got really elegant feathers

You don't have to be mean to them, you have to be gentle

You have to talk to them

Pigeon racing was big in mining sites in the old days

You know, when we got to work on Monday

we used to talk about our pigeons that just got back from racing

We discussed different timings and all that

But these days there are no miners left

So there are no pigeon-fancier miners anymore

You know, I don't think so

At least I don't know of any

Here in Oignies it's just me

It films every corner, every direction

It's a hobby

If we didn't have this, what would we do?

80 and 83 years old. We'd let ourselves go

It makes us stay up

Every year I tell myself: "Last time I'm doing it"

And by the end of the year I renew my license

One more year

Pigeon keeping is a passion mainly taught in a family environment

I married Christelle, who's the daughter of a pigeon-fancier

and we managed to teach our passion to Ludovic, our son

So pigeons have a very innate character

that we call sense of direction

We think they use the Sun and the magnetic fields

to decide where they're going

When you see a pigeon return home after a 600 mile ride

it's a powerful image that will stay in your mind forever

So this is the basket with which the pigeon-fancier goes to the local

to bring the pigeons

which will be registered either with rubber rings

or electronically

The pigeons will then be put in baskets

and the baskets will be loaded in trucks

that will drive them to their release location

Add a bit more water. Release

Are we out of old ones, Eddy?

Go!