Congratulations to Steve & Tessa Howard of Guildford: 1st, 2nd, 4th Section G. BBC Thurso National

Congratulations to Steve and Tessa Howard of Guilford for their great performance in the British Barcelona Club Thurso (521 miles) National race on 16th July. It was a good weekend, with the 576 birds entered being liberated at 05.00hrs on the Friday morning. Day pigeon returns were very good, with 25 game pigeons being clocked on the day of liberation. Steve sent three birds and clocked all three to record: 1st, 2nd, 4th section G, 38th, 54th, 82nd open National. There was only four pigeons clocked in race time in section G and Steve clocked three of them down in Surrey. His first pigeon on the clock to win the section was his natural mealy cock, ‘Heinz’ and he was bred by Steve’s good friend, Peter Taylor, who lives in Pembrokeshire in Wales. The cock was sent driving his hen to nest and on his build up to the Thurso race he had two north road races with the Godalming club, and then was sent to the BBC Berwick which took him several days to get home from. His basic breeding is Ponderosa Muller / Aarden with a sprint cross in him. Most of his breeding is around ‘Ponderosa Tony’ and ‘Ponderosa Prince’, a pair of Muller / Aarden stock birds that Tony Hayne and Mary Bartlett gifted to me several years go. They were bred around Champion ‘Red Rising Sun’, the winner of 1st open National Dax (6,397 birds) and 39th open International Bergerac (20,643 birds). The Ponderosa stock was second to none and when I was gifted ‘Tony’ and ‘Princess’ by the stud, I had the pick from about 120 premier sale birds. Well done to Steve and Tessa on a brilliant performance from the BBC Thurso National! (July 2021)