Scientists say they have a made a potentially “gamechanging” breakthrough in breast cancer research after discovering how to preserve breast tissue outside the body for at least a week.

The study, which was funded by the Prevent Breast Cancer charity, found tissue could be preserved in a special gel solution, which will help scientists identify the most effective drug treatments for patients.

Experts found the preserved breast tissue maintained its structure, cell types and ability to respond to a series of drugs in the same way as normal breast tissue.

Published in the Journal of Mammary Gland Biology and Neoplasia, the research could bolster the development of new drugs to treat and prevent breast cancer, without the need for testing on animals.

Dr Hannah Harrison, a research fellow at the University of Manchester, said the discovery would help scientists test the most appropriate drugs on living tissue for the treatment and prevention of breast cancer.

She said: “There are various risk-reducing options for women at high risk of developing breast cancer – for example, those with a significant family history or who have mutations in the BRCA [breast cancer] genes.

“However, not all drugs work for all women. This new approach means that we can start to determine which drugs will work for which women by measuring their impact on living tissue.

“Ultimately, this means that women can take the most effective drug for their particular genetic makeup.”

Harrison and her team managed to keep breast tissue viable outside the body for relatively long periods. “By testing different hydrogel formulas we were able to find a solution that preserves human breast tissue for at least a week – and often even longer,” she said.

“This is a real gamechanger for breast cancer research in many ways. We can better test drugs for both the prevention and treatment of cancer, and can examine how factors like breast density – which we know is a risk factor for breast cancer – react to particular hormones or chemicals to see if this has an impact on cancer development.”

Scientists used the gel solution VitroGel to preserve the tissue.

In their work, they said the identification of new drugs had been “hampered by a lack of good pre-clinical models”.

What has been available until now cannot “fully recapitulate the complexities of the human tissue, lacking human extracellular matrix, stroma, and immune cells, all of which are known to influence therapy response”, they said.

Lester Barr, a consultant breast surgeon and founder of Prevent Breast Cancer, said: “Breast cancer mortality is decreasing in the UK thanks to improved screening and treatment options, but incidences continue to rise and breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in the UK.

“It’s therefore really important that we develop new prevention and risk-reduction options for women, especially for those with a high risk due to their family history or genetics.

“This breakthrough means that researchers will be able to test new drugs in the lab with far greater accuracy, which should mean fewer drugs failing at clinical trials and ultimately better results for women affected by this terrible disease.

“It’s a hugely exciting development in animal-free research which puts us in a really strong place to find new drugs to prevent breast cancer.”

On average, almost 56,000 women a year in UK are diagnosed with breast cancer, according to figures from Cancer Research UK.

Globally, breast cancer is the second most common form of cancer accounting for 11.6% of newly diagnosed cancer cases, behind lung cancer which accounts for 12.4% of new cases, according to the World Health Organization.

But survival rates for breast cancer have improved significantly. Women diagnosed with early breast cancer are 66% less likely to die from the disease than they were 20 years ago, according to research from the University of Oxford.

Figures from Cancer UK show that 76% of breast cancer patients survive for 10 years or more.

Pep Guardiola admitted next season may be his last as Manchester City manager after the club made history as the first team since the inception of the Football League in 1888 to claim four consecutive titles, following a 3‑1 victory against West Ham.

Guardiola, who was close to tears when talking about Jürgen Klopp’s departure as Liverpool manager, he also revealed that he initially struggled for motivation following the ­treble triumph last season that was confirmed by winning the ­Champions League final in Turkey.

“After Istanbul I said: ‘It’s over, there’s nothing left.’ But I have a contract, I’m still here,” he said. “Some moments I’m a bit tired but some of the moments I love and we are here winning games, looking good with new players. I start to think that no one has done four in a row, why don’t we try? And now I feel it’s done, so what next? FA Cup [final against ­Manchester United on Saturday] – Gary Lineker told me that no team has done back-to-back Premier Leagues and FA Cups.”

Guardiola’s contract expires at the end of next season, the 53-year-old having taken over in the summer of 2016. “The reality is I am closer to leaving than staying [after next season],” he said. “We have talked with the club – my feeling is that I want to stay now. I will stay next season and during the season we will talk. But eight or nine years – we will see.

“What I want for my players is to enjoy two or three days [of this title success] and then we have two days to prepare for the final. But right now I don’t know what exactly the moti­vation is to do it [next season] because it’s difficult to find it when everything is done. But knowing the players and myself I know that when we are there we will say why should we not win today? Why should we not work as much as possible to do what we have to do? And I know we are going to do it [work].”

The latest title triumph came after City launched a 23-match unbeaten run in the Premier League that featured 19 wins and four draws, and began after a 1-0 defeat at Aston Villa on 6 December. They finished on 91 points, two ahead of Arsenal, ­Guardiola’s five other City titles coming with 89, 93, 96, 98 and 100 points.

He said: “In terms of numbers, nobody has been better than us – the records, the goals, the points and four in a row. If I land here tomorrow and you say I will win six Premier Leagues in seven years, I would say: ‘Are you crazy?’ It’s impossible. We have done something unbelievable. Six ­Premier Leagues in seven years, in this ­country with modern football and the teams and everything.

“Before it was Liverpool to push our limits and now it was Arsenal. I want to congratulate Mikel [Arteta, manager], his staff and players from the depths of my heart. They have had an incredible season. I feel it and they push us to our best like before.

“We got the message from Mikel and his players. We have to make the right decisions in the next few years because they are here to stay. He is young. You see Declan Rice, [Martin] Ødegaard, [William] Saliba, Gabriel, [Kai] Havertz and [Bukayo] Saka. They are so young and have expe­rience in the Champions League. For two years they were close. We compete incredibly well and again and for a little margin we won it. We did it and I am incredibly pleased.”

Klopp has said the reason City had won four consecutive crowns was down to Guardiola. When this was put to him Guardiola’s voice wavered and he was close to tears.

“I will miss him a lot – Jürgen has been a really important part of my life,” Guardiola said. “He brought me to another level as a manager. We respect each other incredibly. I have the feeling he will be back and thank you so much for his words but he knows that behind me there is a lot that this club provides me with, otherwise alone I can’t do it.

“I’m humble enough to understand that. He helps me with his team, he has been a huge competitor in my life. I didn’t discover the way I can punish them [Liverpool] like I can find for other teams. With him it has been so difficult. I’m pretty sure Mikel will continue his legacy to drive us to another level. I wish him all the best and hope his final game was special, he deserved it.

“He made Liverpool recognised with his stamp, and the incredible pride of being a Liverpool fan. It’s not just about titles, there are personalities that when they arrive in one place they stay for ever and Jürgen and ­Liverpool will be part of the level of [Bill] Shankly and [Bob] Paisley and these incredible legends.”

After overseeing his last West Ham match as the manager, David Moyes said he had already received offers from around the world. “I’ve got some things come to me already but I’m probably not going to take them,” he said.

The leader of an attempted coup on Sunday in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been killed and some 50 people including three American citizens arrested, a spokesperson for the Central African country’s army told Reuters.

Gunfire rang out around 4am in the capital Kinshasa, a Reuters reporter said. Armed men attacked the presidency in the city centre, according to spokesperson Sylvain Ekenge.

Another attack took place at the nearby home of Vital Kamerhe, a member of parliament who is tipped to become speaker, Kamerhe’s spokesperson, Michel Moto Muhima, and the Japanese ambassador said in posts on Twitter/X.

Moto Muhima said two guards and an attacker had been killed in that incident. Ekenge also said one attacker was killed there.

A shell fired from Kinshasa hit the city of Brazzaville in neighbouring Republic of Congo, injuring several people, that country’s government said in a statement, adding that one person had been hospitalised.

Ekenge named Christian Malanga, a US-based Congolese politician, as the leader of the attempted coup.

“Malanga was definitively neutralised during the attack on the Palais de la Nation, a certain Aboubacar was neutralised during the attack on the residence of Vital Kamarhe the others – around 50 including three American citizens – were arrested and are currently undergoing interrogation by the specialised services of the Armed Forces,” Ekenge told Reuters.

He said Malanga first attempted and aborted a coup in 2017 and that one of the American citizens arrested was Malanga’s son.

A Facebook page appearing to belong to Malanga posted a livestreamed video of what appeared to be the attack.

“We, the militants, are tired. We cannot drag on with Tshisekedi and Kamerhe, they have done too many stupid things in this country,” Malanga said in Lingala in the video, which has not been independently verified by Reuters.

US ambassador Lucy Tamlyn said in a post on social media that she was “very concerned” by reports that US citizens had allegedly been involved in the events.

“Please be assured that we will cooperate with the DRC authorities to the fullest extent as they investigate these criminal acts and hold accountable any US citizen involved in criminal acts,” she said.

The US embassy had earlier issued a security alert warning of “ongoing activity by DRC security elements” and reports of gunfire in the area.

The United Nations’ stabilisation mission in the DRC said that its chief, Bintou Keita, condemned the incidents in the strongest terms and offered her support to the Congolese authorities in a post on X.

Tshisekedi was re-elected for a second term as president in December, but has yet to name a government, six weeks after appointing a prime minister.

Kamerhe was a candidate for speaker of parliament in an election that had been scheduled for Saturday but was delayed by Tshisekedi.

Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, who is missing in Iran’s mountains after a helicopter crash near the border with Azerbaijan, is a hardliner who was instrumental in the last few years in steering Iran back towards the more uncompromising beliefs of the Islamic Republic’s revolutionary founders.

A supporter of deeply conservative values on the domestic front, in terms of foreign policy, Raisi also carved out an increasingly aggressive stance, and it was on his watch that Tehran opted to launch its recent unprecedented missile and drone strike against Israel bringing the two countries into direct and open conflict for the first time.

While he was elected president in June 2021, having represented himself as the best person to fight corruption and Iran’s economic problems, Raisi had long occupied important positions in Iran, including an alleged key role in the so-called Death Committee responsible for executing thousands of prisoners in the 1980s – a claim he has denied.

Born in 1960 into a clerical family in Mashdad, Raisi was a child of the revolution that overthrew the Shah after he had travelled to Qom to attend a Shia seminary at the age of 15, following in his father’s footsteps.

While still a young student, he joined the mass protests against the western-backed Shah in 1979 that would lead to the Islamic Revolution under the guidance of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a cleric until his dramatic return from exile in France.

In the turbulent first years of the Islamic Revolution, the young Raisi continued with his studies at the Shahid Motahari University in Tehran, where he received a doctorate in Islamic jurisprudence and law.

Joining the judiciary, Raisi, aged just 25 – like many other young men of his generation – would find himself catapulted into important office, in his case as the deputy prosecutor of Tehran.

It was while still in that role, say human rights groups, that he became one of four judges sitting on the infamous Death Committee, a secret tribunal set up in 1988 to retry thousands of prisoners, many of them members of the Mujahedin-e Khalq group.

It served as a springboard to his wider ambitions. Raisi would later serve as Tehran’s chief prosecutor, then as the head of the State Inspectorate Organisation. By 2006, he had been elected to the Assembly of Experts, which is charged with appointing and overseeing the supreme leader and whose members are approved by the powerful Guardian Council.

After the disputed 2009 presidential election triggered months of public protests, Raisi backed the brutal crackdowns and mass incarcerations. He became the country’s prosecutor general in 2014. He was placed under sanctions by the US Treasury in 2019 for his role in domestic repression.

Raisi’s election win, which saw him succeed Hassan Rouhani as president, represented a push back from Iran’s ultra-conservatives against the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers that gave Iran relief from international sanctions.

Now, under Raisi, Iran enriches uranium at nearly weapons-grade levels and obstructs international inspections.

Raisi’s first effort to displace Rouhani, in 2017, fell short, as Rouhani won 57% of the vote. His profile, however, was given a new boost when Ayatollah Ali Khamenei appointed him deputy chief of the Assembly of Experts in 2019.

Raisi won the 2021 presidential election, although that vote saw the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic’s history.

In late 2022, a wave of nationwide protests erupted after the death in custody of Mahsa Amini who had been arrested for allegedly breaching Iran’s strict Islamic dress code for women.

In March 2023, Iran and Saudi Arabia, longtime regional foes, announced a surprise deal that restored diplomatic relations.

The detente with Saudi Arabia, however, has been something of an outlier in terms of Iranian foreign policy under Raisi as Iran has supplied arms to Russia in its war on Ukraine, launched a massive drone and missile attack on Israel, and continued arming proxy groups in the Middle East, such as Yemen’s Houthi rebels and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

I had heat pumps installed in my 100-year-old seafront house in 2009, with air-to-air systems – outside units connected with highly controllable indoor heaters – in three of the four flats. Why are systems like this – relatively cheap to install and run, and easy to manage, requiring no plumbing because they don’t use radiators – so often ignored? Your article on air-source heat pumps doesn’t even mention them (Are heat pumps more expensive to run than gas boilers?, 13 May).

My experience of air-to-air heaters has been brilliant; they are not only cheap to run, but they also work as air conditioners on hot days. I heat water separately, without hot water cylinders; the water is heated only when the hot tap is turned on, so there’s minimal waste of energy.

In my middle flat, I thought an air-to-air system would be impractical, so I had an air-to-water system installed, with radiators. It has proved much more expensive to run and more troublesome to maintain. The heat pump itself is brilliant; the problems are with the control systems and the fact that hot water has to be stored at a higher temperature than the heat pump produces, which requires the use of direct heating in the hot water cylinder. Had I known this when I bought the system – which was expensive, despite the grant – I would never have had it installed.

Please let your readers know: air-to-air heat pump systems, involving no water or radiators, are wonderful.
Arabella Melville
Pwllheli, Gwynedd

Your myth-busting article examining the relative cost of heat pumps versus gas boilers rightly mentions the expense and disruption of insulation and larger radiators necessary for some heat pump installations to work properly. What is seldom discussed is the cost and disruption of installing the cylinder needed to store water heated by a heat pump.

With a heat pump, the hot water is typically stored at a lower temperature to enhance efficiency, and the consequence is that a larger store is needed. For modern, moderately sized houses with a gas combination boiler (hence no existing hot water cylinder), this can make a heat pump installation practically impossible. What is needed is a hybrid: the heat pump supplies space-heating via radiators and hot water is supplied on demand by an electric “boiler” akin to a gas combination boiler.
Robert Palgrave
Cranleigh, Surrey

No wonder the uptake of heat pumps in the UK is so low. Planning permission is sometimes required. With the necessary noise impact study, that alone can cost £2,000. A quote for a small three-bedroom converted flat in central London for replacing a gas boiler with a heat pump and underfloor heating, without the cost of a new floor? £74,000.

I wonder how other countries manage to install heat pumps. Are installers in other countries really that much more efficient? Or might there be other reasons, such as price gouging when businesses see a central London postcode?
Jan-Peter Onstwedder
London

Please don’t forget that an air-to-air heat pump (the most efficient type) can be supplied and installed for about £4,000 to heat a house’s living area or extension without any other changes necessary. Think of it as an air-conditioning unit that keeps you warm as toast too.
Chris Sugden
Biggar, South Lanarkshire

Ships calling at the UK’s most-polluted ports produce more nitrogen oxides than all the cars registered in the same cities or regions, analysis has shown.

A report from Transport & Environment (T&E) said that ships were continuing to discharge huge quantities of air pollutants at ports, with Milford Haven, Southampton and Immingham topping the list for emissions of harmful sulphur oxides and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) as well as nitrogen oxides (NOx).

The NGO said the data underlined the urgent need for government action to ensure ships used cleaner fuels and that ports enforce more zero-emission technology such as shore-side electricity.

Shipping and ports representatives said the report used “flawed methodology” and disputed the comparisons, but said they supported moves to reduce pollution.

The report found that in the top 10 NOx-polluted ports, about 4,000 ships produced an estimated 1.75 times as much NOx as almost one million cars registered to the same areas.

Ships calling at Southampton, a major cruise ship port, produced four times more NOx than cars in the city, T&E said. Southampton was also the worst for PM2.5, with cruise ships responsible for more than half the particulate pollution.

Jonathan Hood, the UK sustainable shipping manager at T&E, said: “The awful levels of pollution revealed in this analysis demonstrate how the UK’s port cities are being choked by the harmful fumes caused by a shipping industry that, thanks to years of government inaction, has no impetus to change.

“The government has its last chance to chart a better course for the industry with the updated clean maritime plan and it must not waste this opportunity. We need to see a rapid switch away from filthy fossil fuels, and ports must set binding targets to implement zero-emission technologies. These must include shore side electricity, which would ensure ships can plug in at port and switch off their polluting engines.”

A UK Chamber of Shipping spokesperson said the report did not take account of shore-side power now being used in Southampton by cruise ships, improving the air quality, but admitted that the UK was “behind the curve” and that more facilities should be installed.

The spokesperson added: “The industry supports the ambition to reduce emissions and is investing billions worldwide to do so. A long-term plan, codesigned by industry and government, is the way to set out the clear roadmap for emissions reduction [and] unlock future investment.”

Mark Simmonds, director of policy at the British Ports Association, said the industry’s net zero targets would also improve air quality. But he said the report was “irresponsible” and “discredited” by not examining how emissions dispersed before affecting population centres.

“Air pollutant emissions have a very localised impact and comparing emissions from ships, which deliver 450m tonnes of goods a year including half our of food and energy, to local car journeys is absurd. Emissions from ships are limited while at-berth when the main engines are turned off,” Simmonds said.

Lord Deben, the former chairman of the government’s Climate Change Committee, said it was “disheartening to see the staggering levels of emissions from ships around UK ports” and said the government should prioritise stricter emissions control measures. He said: “Without decisive action, the health impacts for residents and workers in port towns, not to mention economic costs, will continue to soar.”

A Department for Transport spokesperson said the UK would be publishing an updated clean maritime plan for shipping as part of its 2050 net zero targets. The spokesperson said: “We’ve already invested over £200m to develop innovative technology that will decarbonise the industry [and] are currently looking at extending emission restrictions across our waters after their success in the North Sea.”

A graphic novel investigating Indigenous identity in Canada has prompted outrage from Métis groups, who say the book undermines their history and represents an attack on their sovereignty.

The work is the result of a third-year history seminar at Dalhousie University, where students collaborated on a book examining thorny questions over ancestry and identity.

While the French term métis initially referred to those with mixed European and First Nations ancestry, the term has come refer to descendants of a specific group in western Canada’s Red River region. Historically maligned by colonial powers, who dubbed them “traitors”, the Métis people emerged in the 1800s and have a distinct culture and history, as well as their own language, Michif.

They are one of the three Indigenous peoples, alongside Inuit and First Nations, recognized in Canada’s Constitution Act, an acknowledgment that stems from decades of political and legal battles for nationhood.

Mixed relationships were common along the historic fur trade trade routes, but Métis people in the Canadian prairies have long asserted the term can’t simply be used to define anyone with mixed ancestry.

Other groups have challenged that definition, and a growing number of people have started identifying as Métis , especially in regions of Canada like New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Quebec, where the group doesn’t have a homeland or deep historic ties. Those groups are referred to as Eastern Métis, and their status as Métis is strongly disputed by those in the west.

Lisa Binkley, an assistant professor of history at Dalhousie, said she wanted to help students understand the current arguments around Métis identity in Canada. Students in the seminar were exposed to “scholarship, laws, oral histories and the constitution” in order to better understand the complexity of the debate, she said.

“A lot of people only hear one side. These students are curious and they just want to know more about who they are,” she said. “There’s so much fear around ideas of ‘pretendians’ and discussions around race-shifting.”

The result was the graphic novel Rocking Spurs: The Anti-Bullying Tour, which explores issues of “stereotyping and lateral violence”, said Binkley. The book, an adaptation of the novel Rocking Ten by prolific author KD Beckett, is published by the Métis Nation of Canada (MNC), a group that isn’t recognized by the federal government. KD Beckett is the pen name of Karole Dumont, the group’s national chief.

The book’s main character is an Innu-Métis artist from Quebec who is bullied over her Eastern Métis identity.

“Some people deny the existence of the Métis people from Nova Scotia to eastern Ontario,” the text says. “They claim that anyone identifying as Eastern Métis is a race shifter and doing it for benefits, tax evasion and money. They claim we’re cheating First Nations of their lands and treaty rights.”

Binkley, also a member of the non-recognized MNC, said students discussed the controversy of “Métis-ness” in eastern Canada.

“We thought that if you take this idea of the word ‘Méttis’ out of it, you realize there are a lot of people still in Canada that are of mixed descent, and that are just interested in understanding and engaging with that culture,” said Binkley.

Nearly 1,500 copies have been sent to schools across the country for educational purposes, but the book has drawn outrage from Métis leadership.

“This attempt to make it look like we’re bunch of mixed bloods – that you can have an ancestor going back several hundred years and that you can claim you’re Métis – that is so, so far from what being Métis is” said David Chartrand, president of the Manitoba Métis Federation (MMF).

“They’ve created a fantasy. But we’ve fought battles for our people, our nation and for our identity. We’re not going to give it up now, because a group has decided there are benefits to calling themselves Métis.”

Cassidy Caron, president of the Métis National Council (MNC), told APTN “there is no such thing” as Eastern Métis.

“Our communities come from the historic north-west. There is no such thing as a Métis-Innu community and we stand firm against this fight against the ‘Eastern Métis’.” The MNC has pledged to “take action” and ask the boards to remove the books, arguing the book undermines Métis sovereignty.

Frustration over the book has created an unlikely alliance: the MMF and the MNC previously have publicly sparred over the definition of Métis.

The row over the book comes days after First Nations, Inuit and Métis groups met in Winnipeg for a summit on identity fraud, which they say is a growing threat to their constitutional rights. The summit passed resolutions condemning another group, the Métis Nation of Ontario (MNO), which Chartrand likened to “thieves” stealing rights from his nation.

“Indigenous peoples only lose when we fight amongst ourselves and approach self-determination as a zero-sum game,” the MNO said in a statement. “The only winners are colonial governments who find further reason to ignore our inherent rights and stand idly by.”

The summit also passed a resolution condemning Nunatukavut, a group that identifies as Inuit but which previously identified as Métis. Federally recognized Inuit groups say Nunatukavut represents a threat to their sovereignty.

Indigenous groups also worry the federal government will push through self-governance legislation that would recognize new Métis nations, leading to an explosion in claims to Métis identity.

Binkley says “powerful and well-funded” groups need to “recognize that there were other iterations of ‘Métis-ness’ that happened” across Canada, including people who never really fit into First Nations or European groups.

“We’re a diverse land. And we should be embracing that and not trying to suppress information about our history,” Binkley said.

But for Chartrand, the possibility that hard-fought constitutional rights for the Métis could be diluted has left him angered and defiant.

“Canada is not taking this seriously. It’s not a battle they’re prepared to have. They think it’s just one person and one story about what it means to be Métis,” he said. “But they don’t see the damage it will cause. They don’t see how one hell of a storm is coming.”

When Boris the fantail arrived in Callum Percy’s life in 2020, the 29-year-old trainee teacher was immediately smitten. Boris had been discovered by a family friend in a dishevelled state after what looked like a run-in with a sparrow hawk, its blond-white tail as fluffy as a cumulus cloud.
“We called him Boris after the prime minister as his feathers were all over the place when we found him,” Callum laughs as his 13-strong flock of fantails, frillbacks and capuchines coo in the aviary behind him. He and his girlfriend, Serena Mihaila, 24, also a trainee teacher, installed the 6ft by 4ft wooden and mesh aviary and nesting area in the garden of their Derby home earlier this year.

For now, Callum and Serena are fancy birders – they keep their frilled, coloured and crested feathered friends for the sheer pleasure of appreciating their looks. But next year, when the couple buy their own home, they would like to start exhibiting at shows. That means upstaging Boris and co with some purer-breed pigeons, such as frillbacks with more erect frills or capuchines with elaborate, super-fluffy head crests. At show, these headturners will be assessed for their appearance, good breeding and how they sit in their handlers’ hands.

Along with fancy birders, there are two other distinct groups of pigeoneers: keepers of long-distance pigeons for the racing circuit, as kept by King Charles on his Norfolk estate in Sandringham; and performance pigeon enthusiasts, such as those who keep Birmingham rollers – first bred in the West Midlands city in the 1860s for their ability to perform aerial acrobatics – and high-flying breeds, such as teddies and Indian pearls, prized for their soaring flight.

As 20-something pigeoneers, Callum and Serena are no longer a rare species. Since the pandemic, the Royal Pigeon Racing Association has reported a rising interest from younger people in pigeon-keeping. In the US, according to Phillip Fry, host of the All About Pigeons Podcast, which covers Europe, Australia and the US, 80% of the new intake of his pigeon racing clubs are aged 20 or below, a demographic matched in Europe, says Fry. The rise of “one loft racing”, in which pigeoneers buy a bird and send it to be raised with other pigeons in a shared loft where they are then raced against each other, has increased access to the sport for younger enthusiasts. “You now no longer need outdoor space or infrastructure like lofts to dabble,” says Fry. Plus, “pigeons are usually cheap to purchase and feed, they are very hardy and they don’t present the ethical problems you can have with pet birds, such as parrots, which are often trapped in the wild to be sold as pets.”

Callum is perfectly aware that his hobby does seem odd to some of his contemporaries. “When you tell them you keep pigeons, they think of town pigeons – the rock pigeons you see in cities that people call, unfairly I think, ‘rats of the sky’,” he says. “But if I have a bad day, I head into the aviary and Boris pets me and does a little dance, or I stroke one of my frillbacks, with their soft, curly down, and I feel really at peace.” That said, relations within the aviary are not always peaceful. Boris’s son, Brian, recently seduced a female fantail named Marilyn, introduced to the aviary as a mate for Boris. “It can be a bit tricky managing the pigeons’ romantic lives,” he admits.

Keelie Wright, 19, former UK Young Pigeon Fancier of the Year and winner of the coveted “Best Racing Pigeon” award at the British Homing World Show of the Year 2024, the Crufts of pigeon-keeping, believes this is an exciting time for the sport. “Young pigeoneers are causing a stir in a traditional scene that can sometimes live up to the flat cap and pipe-smoking stereotypes. There’s a bit of a rebirth with all the new blood after years of being seen as a dying hobby.”

Nicknamed “pigeon girl” in her home town of Magheralin, County Down, Keelie decided to stay close to home for her undergraduate degree, so she could spend her weekends mucking out the loft of more than 200 pigeons she shares with her father and grandad. All of the birds are related and bred down from a Belgian fast-racing line of Heremans-Ceusters that her dad first bought in the 2000s.

Keelie exhibits her birds “through the wire” (for their breeding and appearance in the cage) and “out of the pen” (for their feel and handling in the judges’ hands). “I tend to do best through the wire as our birds are good-looking,” she coos. From April to August, she races her birds: dropping them at sites in Penzance and St Malo in France, to fly back to Magheralin in clocked times.

Fellow racer Trent Lightfoot, 15, runs a one-loft race for owners under the age of 16 from his family home in Todmorden, West Yorkshire. Fifty-five young bird owners have entered his Northwest Junior One Loft Race in its inaugural year, for £50 an entry. The birds race back to the loft from “hotspots” (drop-off points) in Marlborough, Worcester and Stow on the Wold. Trent and his mum, Lisa Lightfoot, have secured sponsorship from seed companies Triple S and Benzing to reduce the birds’ upkeep costs. With Lisa on camera, Trent broadcasts the birds’ progress on Facebook live once a week.

“Staging the race means I get to race amazing pigeons from some amazing fanciers that I wouldn’t be able to afford otherwise,” says Trent, who also keeps sheep, chickens, ducks and turkeys on the family’s smallholding. Keen to spread the joy of pigeon-keeping as a sport for young people, “the love they have for home, the way they find their way back from afar” fills him with wonder. “I also love it when the tame ones sit on my head and shoulders.”

For ecologist Rob Dunn, it’s not only the fancy birds that deserve our love and attention. In 2007, the academic coined the term “the pigeon paradox” to account for the fact that the most common creatures that humans encounter in our urban world – rats, insects and city pigeons – are actively disliked or rarely noticed. If we could learn to connect with these urban creatures instead, says Dunn, we’d be more attuned to nature and, in turn, to the importance of animal conservation.

It’s an idea that speaks to Nottingham pigeon champion Hannah Hall, 28, who went viral on TikTok in 2022 after recounting her meeting with Penny, a “scraggly” fledgling pigeon who decided to sit on her lap in a pub beer garden in Nottingham. Hall adopted the ailing pigeon, which other pub-goers had been shooing away, taking the bird home perched on her shoulder. She named the baby rock pigeon Penny with TikTokers’ help, and quickly became a mainstay of #pigeontok, where millions of social media users watch videos that exhibit a different side of the urban bird more often viewed as a pest than as a pet. (The 2024 breakout star of this online trend is Pidge, a bird adopted as a “purse pigeon” from a trash can by 26-year-old New Yorker Abby Jardine and who now accompanies her on adventures around the Big Apple.) Earlier this year, Hall founded Penny’s Pigeon Aid in tribute to her feathered pal, an advocacy group to rehabilitate pigeons’ reputation and combat what she sees as a rise in “anti-pigeon propaganda”.
“People are unkind towards pigeons and don’t see them as living things,” Hall says. The NHS worker is campaigning for measures to reduce the plastic and fishing litter that can wrap around birds’ necks, and a ban on anti-pigeon spikes in UK cities. Due to conflict with humans, town pigeons live an average of four years, whereas loft-kept pigeons live up to the age of 20. “I’d like there to be a pigeon appreciation day in the UK [as there is in the US] and I’d love to stage a celebratory ‘pigeon parade’ in Nottingham,” she says.

Pigeon spectacles already feature in the lives of Bilal Liaquat, 29, and wife Sadaf, 24. The couple have kept pigeons on the balcony of their Chiswick flat, and in a friend’s garden in Birmingham, since they moved to the UK from Pakistan in 2019. Bilal loves watching footage of tumbling roller pigeons, but the couple’s particular passion is for teddies, a high-flying performance pigeon first bred in the Pakistani city of Kasoor in 1963.
“I love that they fly high, it makes me feel so happy to watch them,” Bilal says. “The birds are calm with our two small children, too,” Sadaf adds. “They are nice to have as pets.” Bilal and Sadaf fly their birds in high-flight competitions in Pakistan, painting their wings pink and yellow so they can be spotted among a black mass of other birds. The 115,000 subscribers on Bilal’s YouTube channel, Bilal’s Pigeon Sport, tune in for weekly breeding tips in English and Urdu and to watch the soaring flights, his birds carving fluid arabesques against the skies of Lahore and west London.

Bilal, like other bird keepers, admits that his hobby presents increasing challenges. Brexit red tape has inhibited imports of birds from prime racing breeders in Belgium and Germany, pigeons are being killed in number by peregrine falcons and sparrowhawks as populations of these birds of prey boom, and bird flu has led to intermittent bans on races from the continent. But back in Derby, Callum and Serena’s toddler son, Sami, has taken to the family’s feathered friends, particularly Boris, and a chirpy king pigeon called Kong. The couple’s more curious friends now come to hang out in the couple’s aviary and Callum plans to install a seating area so visitors can sit amid his perching birds. Serena tells me that pigeons are traditionally kept in her native Romania to teach children responsibility towards animals, though less sentimental eastern Europeans also keep pigeons for meat and for their eggs that taste like quails’ eggs. “I don’t like to eat them though, I’m quite squeamish,” she says.

There’s a bright future for these misunderstood avians in the Percy-Mihaila home, if not, alas, for Boris’s love life. “Yes, Brian and Marilyn are still an item,” Callum says of his aviary’s social dynamics. “Pigeons tend to be together for life once they’re bonded, you see.” He pauses: “Boris is taking it quite well though.” A bird coos. “That was Boris agreeing,” he laughs.

Douglas Russell, a senior curator at London’s Natural History Museum, was examining a collection of nests gathered on the island of Guam when he made an unsettling discovery.

“The nests had been picked up more than 100 years ago, and I was curating them with the aim of adding them to the museum’s main collection. They turned out to be one of the most tragic, saddest accumulations of objects I’ve ever had to deal with,” Russell told the Observer last week.

In almost every case, the nests belonged to birds that had once thrived on the western Pacific island but which were now extinct. “A dozen species, many unique to Guam, had been wiped out since those nests had been collected. All that was left was this grim reminder of wildlife that once flourished on the island.”

As to the cause of this devastation, conservationists blame brown tree snakes, which were brought to the island on US transport – probably as stowaways on military ships – at the end of the second world war. These expert climbers spend their time on high branches, where they eat birds and their eggs. They slowly swept through Guam’s forests during the latter half of the last century.

Huge numbers of indigenous mammals, lizards and birds, including the Guam rail and the Guam flycatcher, were wiped out in its wake. Within a few decades, Boiga irregularis had silenced the island’s forests.

It is an unsettling story that will be highlighted at Birds: Brilliant and Bizarre, which opens on 24 May at the Natural History Museum. The exhibition will reveal how birds evolved from a group of meat-eating dinosaurs called theropods and eventually spread across the planet to settle on all its continents.

Today there are more than 11,000 species of birds on Earth and the exhibition will reveal the many strange ways they have found to survive. Some bathe in formic acid to kill off parasites. Others, such as the vampire finch, suck blood for food.

The show will also focus on the impact that humans are having on birds and their habitats, and the story of the brown tree snake will provide a key display that will include an image of one of the Guam flycatcher’s nests that Russell has studied, a symbol of a species lost to the world because of human interference.

“Nests have only one purpose,” said Russell, whose book, Interesting Bird Nests and Eggs, will be published in September. “They exist to help to nurture future generations of life, and there is something particularly tragic about looking at a nest which will never see a live bird within it.”

Many efforts are being made to restore the fortunes of Guam’s lost birds, including an international project backed by the Zoological Society of London and several US universities. It aims to return Guam kingfishers to the wild this year using birds bred from members of the species that were rescued just before the kingfishers succumbed to the predations of the brown tree snake. These captive-bred birds will be released on another Pacific island, Palmyra Atoll, which is free of predators.

However, the loss of these birds has had other worrying impacts on their habitat, as revealed in a paper in Nature Communications. Scientists at Iowa State University and other research centres found that the removal of birds that once thrived on local fruits on Guam “resulted in the complete loss of seed dispersal there”. The result has been a reduction in the growth of local trees and a big decline in the health of ecosystems across the island, an observation that underlines the key role of birds in maintaining the health of habitats across the planet.

“When you take out a whole group of organisms – for example, its birdlife – from an ecosystem, you don’t just lose those organisms. The whole ecosystem itself suffers, as we are finding out on Guam,” added Russell.

This is particularly worrying given that brown tree snakes’ homes have been spotted in recent years on Saipan, an island north of Guam, added Russell. “There is now a risk, an absolutely devastating one, that brown tree snakes could become established there. And that, of course, would have a terrible impact on the birdlife and habitats of the island.

“Birds are fantastic creatures but they are now very vulnerable to the effects of human behaviour. People should come from the exhibition with a sense that we must learn from our failures, and most importantly, protect and cherish what we’ve got left.”