Fireball Rollers

 

I am currently maintaining a small family of the famous Fireball Rollers. During the 1930's and early 1940's, the Fireballs were considered one of the most important strains of North American Highflying Roller Pigeons and gave the Pensom imports their biggest run for their money in Roller supremacy.

 

The Fireballs were developed by the late Rev. James Earl Graham of Ontario, Canada who secured his start in rollers from the legendary J.V. McAree in 1916. McAree was a well known journalist of great financial means who had resources enough to routinely import high quality pigeons from England on a regular basis. McAree made important contributions to the Canadian Roller Fancy through his regular importations from Thomas Whittingham and his sons starting around 1898 or 1899, as well as high quality Tipplers from leading English fliers starting in 1902. McAree was also a noted rabbit breeder, specializing in breeding Belgian Hares.

 

Though Graham built his Fireballs mainly on descendants of McAree's imports from Whittingham, the fact that many of the Fireballs were yellows, clearly indicates that his family was not exclusively Whittingham blood. Contrary to popular misconception, Thomas Whittingham's letters to McAree clearly indicate that neither he, nor did his mentors in Rollers, ever have any yellow rollers. In fact, Thomas Whittingham himself felt that the color was something indicating a common tumbler background opposed to a full-blooded roller and it is apparent, that much like Bill Pensom years later, he held such pigeons in a very low regard as to their rolling ability. According to McAree (in 1948), Whittingham did eventually send him some yellows after McAree had hounded after him for some for years, but they were not exclusively Whittingham blooded and had come from another breeder. Most of Thomas Whittingham's best birds were Black Badges, Black Saddles and Black Mottles, as well as Blue Bar Badges and had originated from two old breeders named Thomas Boddy and Thomas Fullard (sometimes also known as "Fuller"). McAree's original interest in the Whittinghams seems to have been mostly due to Thomas Whittingham's personal connection to these two old timers.

 

Another popular misconception about these original Whittingham imports is that even though their descendants came to be known throughout North America as deep rollers, Thomas Whittingham's own personal credo was to always sacrifice depth of the roll for individual quality of roll.  Much the same, the elder Whittingham politely scolded McAree over his emphasis for depth of roll, adding that he strove for kits that rolled in unison on the turn. McAree, by contrast, strived for the old North American standard of birds that rolled as deep as possible and his personal idea of a "perfect roller" was one that could roll one hundred feet or more and do so safely.  

 

In the future, I'll write about J.V. McAree at length, as well as provide some details about his roller importations from Whittingham.

 

As a general rule of thumb, most of the Fireballs were typically Black Badges and Red or Yellow marked birds, typically badges or mottles. They were particularly known for their high and long flying abilities, as well as for being very deep rollers.

 

Currently, I am maintaining a small family of Fireball Rollers in exclusively red and yellow mottles.

 

 

Fireball Rollers as they first appeared in  James Graham's book "Acrobats of the Air"

The Red Badge cock with the "Brooch" marking in the foreground is the famous "Fireball" cock, the namesake of the strain and was hatched in 1931.