‘Worst day ever’ in pigeon racing history as 5,000 birds vanish
wrote in a Facebook post chronicling the feathery fiasco, which occurred Saturday after 9,000 racing birds took off from Peterborough, Cambs, on a journey to the Northeast. And while the 170-mile round-trip flight should’ve only taken three hours, over half the avian competitors were still unaccounted for as of last night.They were reportedly part of 250,000 pigeons released in approximately 50 racing events across the country — with just 10% returning on time and another tens of thousands reported missing, the Sun reported.This meteorological event may have distorted Earth’s magnetic field, which the pigeons use to navigate like a meteorological GPS.