A practice flight for Sunday’s race

If you look in the lower right corner you can see the owner releasing the cages. He had more pigeons in the car but was releasing them from a different place. They had been in the air less than a minute and a bird of prey was circling.

[JackieR]

Favulous!! Great timing

[Mags]

A nice take off capture!

[Babs]

Great timing. Hope they all get home with no mishaps.

[Esther Rosenberg]

oh wow, I hope that bird of prey was not hungry.

[Dione Giorgio]

Ooh, hope the bird of prey was not a danger to the pigeons. Beautiful capture of these racing pigeons. Amazing how they can find their way home from hundreds of miles away. Besides, a good racing pigeon could cost thousands of euros to its owner.

[Diana]

Fabulous capture and timing, hope they all made it home again.

[Nina Ganci]

perfect timing with all the birds in flight

[Bill]

I didn’t realise this still happened, nice to see.

[KV]

Cool shot.

[Lis Lapthorn]

Great capture.

[Carole Sandford]

Good timing!

[Bri]

Great timing and shot

[Kathy]

Initially, given the setting, I thought the person was feeding the seagulls but your commentary regarding the photo is intriguing. Are these homing pigeons? I've never heard of racing pigeons before.

[Susan Wakely]

@randystreat yes they are.
Pigeon racing is the sport of releasing specially trained homing pigeons, which then return to their homes over a carefully measured distance. (more info on Wikipedia)

[Kathy]

I've often thought this was something from the past.