Oriental Roller
pigeon breed
The Oriental Roller is a breed of fancy pigeon developed over many years of selective breeding. Oriental Rollers, along with all other varieties of domesticated pigeons, are descended from the rock pigeon (Columba livia).
They were developed in Germany but originated in the Middle East.
They are the oldest known performing pigeons.
Flying style
The key hallmark of the Oriental Roller is its flying style. They show a variety of different figures in the air, which are single somersaults, double somersaults, rolling (a number of uncountable somersaults), rotation with open wings, nose dives, sudden change of direction during flight and very rarely axial turns. Some breeds fly up to 1000 m high, others stay in the air for several hours.
The aerobatics that these Oriental Rollers perform are comparable to those of the Galatz Roller and Birmingham Roller pigeons.
Oriental Rollers are swift flyers and can fly for a few hours if trained.
Characteristics
The head is rather long with a long straight beak and white eyes.
“Oriental Roller” enters the record as pigeon breed. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Oriental, Roller and pigeon can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Oriental Roller” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.