Down to 15!

The play structure is finished. I'll post some pics as soon as I get them off of my camera.

The pigeons have been doing well. Until now, I haven't lost any. They were on hiatus for the last 2-1/2 weeks because we have been traveling and camping.
After returning from traveling and camping, I thought I would start them off from the same 25 km area that we had been to the last time. At 6:30pm last Thursday, the pigeons were released, my family and I went out for supper and got back around 8:30pm.... no pigeons had come back. I knew that it was a bit late in the day to release them. It takes them about an hour to get back, but they like to roost as it gets close to dark. Upon releasing them, I could see that two were having a hard time keeping up to the rest of the kit, but there is nothing you can do once they are gone from the release cage.
At dark, still no birds had returned... I thought I had lost all 17 birds I had been training all summer. The next morning there were two birds home. During the day a couple trickled in here and there until there were nine back. There were still eight that needed to return. The next morning there were 2 more ready to get in when I went outside... and then shortly after another 4 showed up. It is amazing that after two nights out, the pigeons would still come back. The two that could not keep up are probably the missing pigeons and they were likely not healthy enough to return.
I'm down to 15 pigeons that are being trained, but there are a lot more left in the pigeon coop to be trained. Lesson learned... it isn't a good idea to release the pigeons late in the afternoon (even though most of them came back!).