Tippler races this Year in Chennai

There would be more than 10 clubs for Tipplers and Tumblers in Chennai. The races here are conducted during April-May time frame. I followed couple of Tippler races this year. One was conducted by Mr.Ayya Samy who is a famous person for pigeons in Chennai. He is called as "Pallipataar" among fanciers here as he resides in a place named PalliPattu which is near Tidel Park . I dont know the club name for the other one. Sadly none of the birds won both these races this year. In Pallipattar's club race 18 people participated and of which just 2 birds crossed the 3rd day. Both these birds were eliminated on 4th day as they did not cross the 5 hour mandatory flight timings.

Here are some of the rules for Tippler race in Chennai:

• The bird has to fly a minimum of 5 hours a day from 8AM to 1PM for five continuous days.If it clocks 7 hours a day for first 3 days and clock 4.5 hours alone on 4th day, it is a foul and bird will be eliminated.
  
• The bird has to fly alone and should not fly as a flock with other birds for more than 1 hour continuously. . It has to fly separately even if you have other birds flying from your loft or near by loft. It can join and fly with other birds but not more than 60 minutes continuously.
• While on flight, the birds has to come near your house (may be the area covering 100 to 200 mts radius from your house) once every 30 minutes. Some birds go far from their lofts (more than 5 kms away) while on flight. They have to return back and be spotted within closer proximity to their loft every 30 minutes. If a birds does not come near the loft area for more than 30 minutes it will get eliminated.
• Birds will fly very high and get into the clouds sometime. The temperature at higher altitude will be cool and they love flying high. Sometimes birds go so high that they will not be visible to naked eyes. A bird should not be at such heights for more than 30 minutes. The loft owner should be able to show the bird to the referee once every 30 minutes.
• When the bird goes to higher altitude and disappear, it has to be spotted at higher altitudes within next 30 minutes. Once spotted at higher altitude, the next spotting should be at comparable altitude.If they spot the bird at very low altitude, its a foul. The reason is to avoid situation where the bird flies to long distance, takes rests and then come back.
• Before the race, you can tell the referee two spots near the loft where the bird can land after flight. If the birds lands at any other spot even on your own loft/nearby its a foul.
• The owner has to handover the bird to the referee for inspection after it lands.

These rules are very challenging and its very difficult to train birds to win races. Many birds fly for long hours but they wont fly alone. Birds which fly alone are very few. Some breeds get too high and stay there for more than 30 minutes which will disqualify them. It takes lot of experience to breed birds carefully to get these desired characteristics.