Are the masons younger than the rest of the birds?

PS. if you are getting rid let me know.

When they're released the next day from your house, the theory is they then had such fun the day before, up they go and, thereafter, the low flying habit is now broken.

Just remember not to take them too far down the road. They need to be able to rise up and recognise their usual territory and their loft. If you take them too far, they can head off in a different direction and you might lose one or more of them. I find about a quarter of a mile works for me.

I spent the first two years moaning about my low flying Masons and have now come to realise it has definite advantages. Once you get them flying to a decent height, they don't disappear ever higher until they pin out. This means you don't risk losing them due to overflies, where they get can caught in the slipstream and are forced away from their known surroundings, whereby they get lost.

Secondly, for those who have peregrine troubles, a lower flying roller is probably better than a high flyer.

Thirdly, is purely personal. When I see birds up too high and rolling, the impact for me is much lessened. When my Masons roll around three times house roof height, the sight is much better, as you get to see much more of what it's all about. So long as they're not crashing into trees, that is!

Each year, I buy a 9 metre flagpole and I stick a flag on the end of it, to chase birds out of trees. However, the flag isn't quite long enough and I end up tossing the whole thing up to reach the top of the trees. Unfortunately, it sometimes gets stuck and other times it smashes to the ground and breaks. So, all in all, those bloody conifers are a pain in the arse.

Anyway, back to the low flying. Those trees are, as others are commenting, the usual reason for low flying Masons. However, don't give up hope; mine are flying way above them nowadays, simply because I got them used to flying higher by releasing them away from the trees, down the road.

It is a bit tricky because you don't want to take them too far where they go up, don't recognise where they are and so take off in the wrong direction and get lost. Equally, you don't want to release them so close to home that they don't need to rise up very far, because they know straightaway where they are, so they just fly back at their normal height.

I'd suggest you take them a bit further, say half a mile. I have had birds not return from one mile, but very few - most easily get back from a mile away. So, if you experiment from a quarter of a mile, then a bit further, then you might be able to break the habit.

At the moment, all my Masons are flying very well indeed. Now that the sparrowhawk has finally found a mate to shag her, she's not slaughtering my birds whilst she nests. She was such an ugly bitch that the male sparrowhawks all said "nah, I'm already spoken for, love", so it took her a while to get hitched this year. Anyhow, with the bitch out of the way, the Masons are flying at a great height (remember, I'm surrounded by very tall trees and live on the edge of a wood). They're also flying for the time I like - between 30 and 45 minutes.

I'll tell you something else, Lee, the worst problem I've had with Masons, has been youngsters that wanted to land early, bringing the kit down with them. Each day it would be a different youngster, so there was no pattern to it... no particular bird to remove from the kit. In the end I got rid of the whole lot and started again. So, what I would advise is that if the Masons you have are doing OK other than the low flying, then give them some time.

I used to let mine out in batches of four. I would mix the colours so I could identify them in the air. Even with loads of black and whites I have, there's always one with a white tail but with just one feather that's black. I can tell which one it is just by that. Or mix a red with a blue check with a black with a mealy... that type of thing.

Anyway, in batches of four I could see if any particular one was flying low, or away from the others, or rolling better or worse than the others. It's time-consuming, because you have to sort all the birds out for flying in batches, then you have to get each batch in before letting the next one out. However, I put a day aside to work through a whole kit of youngsters and by the end of it, I'd made a list of which birds were worth keeping and which ones were for the bin.

However, if I sometimes get the feed wrong (too little), or I let the older kit out into bright sunshine, after they've been cooped up in subdued light for a while, I can quite a lot of birds bumping on release. Any roller that hits anything I watch quite closely afterwards. Right now, I have an excellent roller, but he bumps too often going up and coming in for my liking. He's alright as a kit bird, but I wouldn't breed from him, as I've got others that roll as well but are more stable.

So, all in all it's really important that you get your birds up passed the trees and the house roofs. But, if your Masons kit well and you're seeing good rolling, then you should persevere. It usually comes good in the end.