A wing and a prayer

Pigeon racer working to keep flock of birds in Moses Lake

MOSES LAKE — Unless you're looking for them, it may be hard to spot the birds in Mick Nicholas' back yard.

Tucked away in a brown-painted loft which looks to many like a shed behind his home, approximately 70 homing racing pigeons spend much of their day.

"If you're not looking for it, you're not gong to notice it," Nicholas said of his loft, a converted 8-by-8-foot shed which houses his birds and can easily be seen from busy Division Street on the opposite side of the fence. Nicholas said he has tried to make the loft blend into his Desert Highlands residential neighborhood.

But for one hour every morning, dozens of those pigeons make laps around the sky, a sight some neighbors flock to with gazes of amazement. This exercise is the prelude to the birds' daily meal, and their physical training for races of up to 400 miles on the weekends.

"They don't get to eat until they come in," Nicholas said, describing the daily routine he and his pigeons keep. "When they go loose in the morning, they haven't eaten for 23 hours normally. Feed is a training tool."

For the last few months Nicholas has been fighting to keep his pigeon loft and his 70 birds. A complaint of pigeon mess to the city earlier this year led Moses Lake code enforcement officers to give Nicholas a 10-day removal order for the flock Nicholas began breeding in 2005. The city's nuisance ordinance does not allow the keeping or housing of fowl within the city limits.

Nicholas argues the dictionary definition of fowl does not include pigeons, which are instead classified as Columbiformes. He approached the city council last month to disagree with city officials' interpretation of their nuisance codes, and has asked for a change to the city code to accommodate him and future pigeon racers in the city.

"What my goal is with the council is to get an ordinance in place that does apply to pigeons," he said. Nicholas has supplied the city with a sample pigeon ordinance drafted by the American Racing Pigeon Union. Under that ordinance, he concedes the city could fine bird owners who don't comply with the rules.

"Basically I'm just trying to have it where people (who) are conscientious and responsible have the opportunity," he said.

Nicholas has documents signed from his adjacent neighbors stating the homing pigeons are not a nuisance. He's told his neighbors that if his birds do become a nuisance, they are not doing what they're trained to do. Besides, he notes, with all the birds in city neighborhoods, who's to say if the problem came from his birds?

But Community Development Director Gilbert Alvarado points out that while Nicholas has received support from his adjacent neighbors, the issue began with a complaint by one of his neighbors.

Alvarado noted although the area is well kept behind Nicholas' house, "just based on our code it's not permitted," he said. The city's ordinance also applies to chickens and other fowl, and Alvarado said it sometimes has to be enforced after stores give away baby chicks to families in residential areas around Easter.

Nicholas got back into pigeon racing last year, a hobby he first encountered as a child when he and his neighbors raced pigeons in Aberdeen. The Moses Lake man picked up the hobby again after his son graduated from college, and has continued to breed his birds to create his current flock. He sees pigeon racing as a pastime similar to boating or all-terrain vehicle riding. He's part of the Columbia Basin Flyers, a group with about half a dozen members in the area.

"I had time and a little money to deal with it," Nicholas said. "So I just decided it was time to get back into it."

Each bird is banded with a tag identifying its club membership and number. During races they are also banded with computer chip identification tags to identify the bird and its time in a race, detected as they cross the finish line into their home loft as swiftly as a bar code on a box of cereal across a grocery store scanner. Racers determine the distance and time their birds have traveled, and measure race success by a bird's fastest average speed.

Nicholas understands the difference between his pigeons and the pigeons council members have shown concern about as a nuisance. Nicholas compares the difference between a racing pigeon and a street pigeon as the difference between a mustang and a thoroughbred horse, and has acknowledged that he too is concerned about the presence of street pigeons which could pose health risks to his birds.

He cleans the loft and bathes his birds each week to keep them healthy.

"For the most part, the more people know about the raising of purebred, pedigreed racing birds, they start to realize that there is a big difference between those and the nuisance birds downtown," he said.

He said he's learned quite a bit since first venturing into the hobby, and he's racing pigeons just for the fun of doing it. But he has also put in thousands of dollars into his hobby, the vast majority into the birds themselves.

The city has suspended enforcement on Nicholas pending a decision by the city council on the issue.

The council will come back at their meeting next week and discuss whether they want to amend the ordinance to allow pigeons. If the council does decide to enforce its current code it could mean the end of Nicholas' pastime, and it could mean the case would find its way in the court system.

He can always appeal a decision which doesn't end in his favor, but Nicholas said he is concerned for his older birds, who have been trained to come to their loft at his home, and might have to be put down in the event they were forced to be removed.

"I hope they allow it," Nicholas said, "because it's not a bad hobby when it's done right."