When, why and how, there will always be someone to take issue and have a second opinion with whatever is in print and our hobby is no exception and God forbid that ever changes.
If we have no feed-back we are dead in the water through stagnation, all I can say as a word of encouragement to all potential scribes and Dennis is, 'chin up'.
Yes I did read with interest that Dennis had been taken to task because he had taken the pen up and written about the beak on our beloved English Short Faced Tumblers. It has always been taken as cast in stone since my early days with Short Faced Tumblers that the finch beak was that of a Goldfinch - very fine, slender and pointed, not as we commonly see now, a miniature Long Face Tumbler box beak
I know the argument is that the box beak is easier to rear and is needed in the breeding programme to give substance to the beak's make-up but are we now heading away from the correct standard in the show pen? A wonderful standard set in time and is still elusive and inspiring. Goals that were set by eminent fanciers long gone, just because a box style beak is less of a challenge to perfect? Are we now heading down the road of producing a miniature Long Faced Tumbler?
As I see that even now some big-headed Long Face Tumblers are going the other way and now dropping their flights below the tail? What are we aiming for as objectives? Are the keys to our success a uniform bird with style and looking the part and hopefully all studs are like peas in a pod because the standard bar has been raised for all of us to challenge?
Dennis, I am sure many of the new fanciers who read these notes in Feathered World do not know that you were indeed the Short Faced Tumbler Club secretary for many years, even before my own adventure with the Short Face Tumblers started. My own involvement all came from the guidance of the late Joe Briggs in the seventies after a very fortunate visit to Rose Cottage in Darwin, Lancashire when I was a new fancier to the show scene. (From memory the first show I went to was the East Anglian Fancy Pigeon Show in 1969 where I first met Gerald Manning of SF Tumbler fame and a much younger Graham Bates with his father.) The reason I was fortunate was because Joe decided to divide his stud of Short Face into two halves and because I showed interest in the SF Tumbler he gave me the golden opportunity to choose 12 birds from his whole loft and he kept the other half plus one old hen.
