13/10/2026
This is my buy of the week. Original, documented racing pigeons are near impossible to find. This is Little Jenny, hatched in 1907, her career spanned a pivotal moment in pigeon racing history lasteing 7 years from 1907 to 1914 and may well have gone on if it hadn’t been for that pesky world war - the government banned racing to protect the communications of the National Homing Service. Little Jenny lived long enough to see the war through, dying in 1919. Keeping a racing pigeon alive for 12 years would have been pretty unusual unless she was highly revered by her owner so she probably spent the war years breeding in relative comfort. This case is clearly his homage to Little Jenny as this period was a time of exceptional hardship and taxidermy was not cheap! The piece gives an indication of how extraordinarily highly she was considered in her Manchester loft!
