![]() If you are a poacher or a wildlife smuggler, if you sell turtle-skin boots to Houston oilmen or Caspian caviar to Beverly Hills matrons, chances are good that one day you’ll meet Ed Newcomer. And the men he’d just spent the day with were about to enter a world of trouble. Ted Nelson wasn’t just a curious hobbyist. He called in to the office to let his colleagues know he was safe. He drank a Coke and made notes on what he’d just seen. He turned off the surveillance equipment hidden under his clothes. Though his face didn’t show it, he was sickened by what he heard.Īt the end of the day, Nelson climbed into his car and drove to a nearby McDonald’s. “I get a stick and just pummel them.” Then he smiled and told the rookie that eventually he’d understand. Later, Nelson asked Navarro what he did with the trapped raptors. “The first two years I was here, I caught 40 every year,” Navarro said. Nelson asked Navarro if he found hawk traps to be useful. The problem for Juan Navarro was the park’s red-tailed hawks and peregrine falcons. Coyotes, mountain lions, red foxes, and mule deer roam the park’s brushy hillsides, along with humans on 53 miles of hiking trails. He lived in Los Angeles in a million-dollar house near the edge of Griffith Park, a 4,200-acre refuge full of wildlife. Navarro was president of the National Birmingham Roller Club, the hobby’s nationwide association. In the late morning, the caravan pulled up to Juan Navarro’s house. “It’s illegal to kill ’em,” the man said. “You want to bag them up and throw them in a dumpster a few miles away,” he said. He said he killed the birds with a pump-action pellet gun. “Caught a couple hawks in my trap last week,” one man told Nelson. It seemed like these guys were killing a lot of birds–or at least were armed for it. In every backyard he entered, Nelson noticed guns and hawk traps. Pigeon flies are moveable feasts competitors drive from house to house to watch the birds spin within their home range. He was there on the pole, but my neighbor was in the yard, and she’d have called me in. “I grabbed my gun and ran into the street. “Falcon got one of my birds last week,” another fancier told Nelson. Hawks and falcons were a menace to the hobby, the guy said. “What do you need that for?” Nelson asked. “That’s a hawk trap,” one of the guys told him. When he saw a wood-and-wire contraption the size of a doghouse, he asked what it was. Most of the competitors were blue-collar guys who enjoyed the camaraderie of a shared hobby. Nelson was a newbie, but he fit right in with his droopy mustache, dirty jeans, and old ball cap. ![]() Like a lot of Southern California subcultures, the world of “spinners,” as the birds are called, had its own peculiar vernacular, trade secrets, and bitter rivalries. Ted Nelson was new to the world of roller pigeons. “There they go!” a man hollered as the pigeons began to tumble. A top competitive flock will “kit,” or fly together like a school of fish, and spin almost as one. Birmingham rollers possess a genetic disposition to roll in midair–they somersault backward so quickly that the birds resemble a pinwheel of whirling feathers. It was mid-April 2006, and this was Nelson’s first “fly,” a competition among fanciers of Birmingham roller pigeons. ![]() In a suburban backyard in Southern California, Ted Nelson stood among a group of men watching a flock of pigeons soar on a blue-sky Saturday. Heading out the door? Read this article on the new Outside+ app available now on iOS devices for members!Įnjoy this tale from the Backpacker archive
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