A mystery has taken wing in Western Australia, after dozens of elite athletes went missing mid-race.

Almost the entire field of a 650 km annual racing event has failed to arrive at the finish line over week after it began.

Thirty-eight pigeons have failed to return home after taking off in the annual race from Leonora in the goldfields of WA to the town of Geraldton on the coast.

The high-level racing pigeons normally take just a few days to finish the run, but it has no been over a week and just a single competitor has made it home to roost.

For the pigeon-fanciers involved, it has been a tense wait.

Race organiser and racing pigeon breeder Ian Heberle has told the ABC that it is the first time so few have returned.

“There's a bit of a theory that the goshawks and the falcons may have pushed them to ground. They'll stay in trees or on the ground under bushes until they clear off,” he said this week.

He said others hadn’t seen a single feather of their entrants either, and it is making all involved very anxious.

Pigeons have for thousands of years done what Twitter has been doing in the last few – allowing people to send short messages over great distances.

The birds played an important role in World War One and Two, delivering messages from behind enemy lines.

Two pigeons serving with the Royal Australian Signals Corp were among 32 to have been awarded the Dickin Medal for gallantry by animals in war.

One recipient was the only survivor of three pigeons released to warn of an impending attack at Manus Island. It managed to reach headquarters in time to warn a US Marine Corps patrol.

Another Australian pigeon got the prize after it brought news of a foundered ship in the Huon Gulf in time to salvage it and its cargo.