Head over heels for those flitting wonders

Bobby Wilson, also known as “Kill Kill'', is a roller pigeon fancier — has been since he was a little boy in the projects in the Watts neighbourhood of south Los Angeles.

He was walking his dog down Holmes Avenue when he first spotted the birds flying above Eddie Scott's house.

He watched in wonder as they whirled and somersaulted through the sky. Wilson was 9 and a serial collector of animals — spiders, red ants, hamsters, lizards. But he had never seen this.

“You better not come in my yard!'' Scott barked. Someone had just stolen a few of his top rollers and he was not happy.

The year was 1981. Scott drove a city trash truck, owned one of the nicest houses in Watts and had no tolerance for wayward children.

He'd raised pigeons since his own childhood in the early 1960s. And some of his rollers came right down the line from the world's great prophet of roller pigeoning, William H. Pensom, the English master who lived over the hill in the San Fernando Valley neighbourhood of Canoga Park.

Watching in awe

Bobby wasn't going into Scott's yard but he sure as heck was coming back. Day after day he sat under the big shade tree across the street and watched those birds perform acrobatics, spiralling up and then wheeling down like falling angels.

“Come here,'' Scott finally said one day. He took Bobby out back and showed him the cages — all scabbed up with dried pigeon waste. If the boy would clean them out, he could have some baby squabs.

A couple of hours later, Bobby rolled home into the Jordan Downs housing project in Scott's pickup truck with a grin and 10 squeaking squabs in a wooden box.

He was a roller man now. In south Los Angeles, rollers rule the sky. Birmingham Roller pigeons came from coal country in England, bred for a genetic quirk that compelled them to launch into a streak of backward somersaults as they soared through the air.

For more than a century in England, they were a working-class pigeon — inexpensive and spectacular to watch.

When Pensom arrived in Southern California in 1950, people trekked out to his lofts in Canoga Park to buy his birds and seek his advice.

The English fancy grew and roller clubs popped up all over town, holding auctions and contests. In fly-offs, judges travelled from house to house to watch each competitor's birds roll, rating them on the distance of the tumble, the tightness of the spin and the number of pigeons that did it simultaneously.

Like amateur radios or model ships, this was a man's hobby by default. Roller men often fiddled in their plywood lofts well past dusk, enduring spousal complaints, trying to breed a pigeon that would roll farther, faster and tighter.

Unfortunately, hawks and falcons see all this cartwheeling flesh as snacks falling from the sky. They can ruin months of work in a blink, and are the bane of roller men everywhere.

These are no ragged, bruising street pigeons. They have the chest of an apple, a sheen to their plumage. A combination of a mother's warm care and a eugenicist's cold scheming go into their upbringing. And the best have a plucky, collected character.

Hard-earned knowledge

It can take years of trial and error to get a good team, a “kit'', bred and rolling well. This is no dilettante's hobby. Like an old-world apprenticeship, knowledge is hard-earned — passed gradually, if at all, to the lone neighbourhood kid to show a spark for the birds.

Bobby propped his baby pigeons on the roof outside his bedroom window, where no one could get them. He cleaned them, fed them and took comfort in their cooing in the middle of the night.

He marvelled at their colours and patterns — blue grizzles, red checks, duns, black and whites.

Scott built him a loft and set it up by his front door. Bobby holed up in that little shed so much that people in Jordan Downs took to calling him “Birdman''.

On a roll

Why roller pigeons roll is a mystery.

The behaviour certainly has no evolutionary advantage. Some breeders speculate that they could be suffering seizures. But the birds look to be under control — as if they're simply overcome with the urge to do a few flying backflips.

There is no training a bird to do this right. It's all in the breeding. Once the pigeons burst into the air, they are on their own.