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The History of the Wuta
A purely Greek bird, the Wuta originated many years ago in the city of
Tyrnavos.
Wuta origins from
Columba Oenas, which was a cross breeding with a local pigeon in the city of Tirnavos and after many generations became the today’s Vouta that we are all familiar with. Today after many years the birds have the same characteristics to those of their ancestors. Characteristics of a wild pigeon are the grey tail at its edge, the white nose and the coloring.
The Wuta quickly spread to nearby cities like Larissa, Volos and
Kozani, and, via pigeon-fancier emigrants, to Canada, the USA, Germany, France, Italy and Australia.
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So wherever you find a Wuta, you know that it is an import and that its roots can be traced back to Tyrnavos.
In the early years, since there were very few of these birds, and since there was great curiosity about them, any pigeon-fancier who only had a single Wuta would mate it with whatever he could – a Donek, a homing pigeon, a Nikolayev, etc. This resulted in many different species. Most of this cross-breeding was done by pigeon-fanciers in Volos, who selected and cross-bred from their most spectacular birds, emphasising appearance and paying insufficient attention to intelligence and run-down. And when Athens entered the pigeon flying world and the fanciers from Volos realised what demand there was for their birds and what high prices people were willing to pay for them, they stopped flying them altogether, and thus whatever defects they had were handed on from generation to generation.
And so we have reached the point where 98% of pigeon-fanciers talk about how an individual bird flies, and there are very few connoisseurs who talk about how the team flies. It is the team that has the weight and the mystery. You get the mystery when the birds fly up in a straight line, then fan out so spectacularly. And again when they drop out of the sky, one by one (not altogether), with a tremendous rushing sound. If when you see a team of pigeons performing there are no stragglers, then that is a top-flight team. When you see individuals performing differently, then the team is uneven and you should be on your guard in the matter of transfers.
About 15 years ago, a few pigeons moved northwards from Volos, and while they had substantial defects – essentially because 1) they couldn’t fly high, 2) they didn’t dive, 3) they wheeled like Doneks, and 4) they lost strength at 2 Beaufort – they succeeded, because they were so spectacular, in establishing themselves in most parts of Greece and displacing or bastardising genuine races, because the uninitiated buyers who paid millions to show that they had the best birds bought them either from the ground (without seeing them fly at all) or watching them do a maximum of 50 metres. And so today the genuine race of Wutas is in danger of changing into a different bird.
Contact
If anybody is interested in exchanging views on
anything that has to do with pigeons,
do not hesitate to
contact me. Tel.
(+30 23310) 72011, 72012 :
GSM. +30 6977 441 441 :
e-mail.
polimer@otenet.gr
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