There are at least four main types of competitive pigeon sport:
- Pigeon racing
- Tumbling
- Highflying
- Tippler (Endurance)
Though not quite a sport, fancy breeds of pigeons are also bred to standards and judged in a competitive fashion. Levi in his book The Pigeon describes all aspects of pigeon keeping. For exhibition purposes sport pigeons are sometimes grouped as Flying/Sporting Pigeons.
Famous quotes containing the words pigeon and/or sport:
“Suppose that humans happen to be so constructed that they desire the opportunity for freely undertaken productive work. Suppose that they want to be free from the meddling of technocrats and commissars, bankers and tycoons, mad bombers who engage in psychological tests of will with peasants defending their homes, behavioral scientists who can’t tell a pigeon from a poet, or anyone else who tries to wish freedom and dignity out of existence or beat them into oblivion.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain,
Where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain,
Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid,
And parting summer’s lingering blooms delayed,
Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease,
Seats of my youth, when every sport could please,
How often have I loitered o’er the green,
Where humble happiness endeared each scene.”
—Oliver Goldsmith (1730?–1774)