MADRID — The Spanish city of Cádiz will undertake what some may see as a Sisyphean task: relocating 5,000 pigeons hundreds of miles away after a complaint that the birds are driving away tourists from the terraces of cafes in the most visited part of the southern port city.
Carrier pigeons probably date back to ancient Persia. But under a plan announced last month by Cádiz officials, the pigeons themselves will be carried: They will be captured and transported next year to a thinly populated countryside location in eastern Spain. There, they will find a new home in a dovecote near the town of Ribarroja del Turia.
The exile solution to pigeon overcrowding is being presented as a more animal-friendly approach than that taken in other places, where pigeons are treated like flying rats to be culled or fed contraceptive pills that may also be consumed by other species.
The city will use “the most respectful and sustainable method” to keep its pigeon population under control, Álvaro de la Fuente, the city official in charge of environmental policy, said in a statement.
The city came up with the plan after Horeca, a regional federation of hoteliers, complained two years ago that the pigeons were menacing tourists, particularly in the city’s emblematic cathedral square.
“When the pigeon gets hungry, it can get very forceful and often doesn’t even wait for the tourists to leave their table to go for their food,” said Antonio De María Ceballos, a restaurant owner and the president of Horeca.
Horeca also argued that pigeon excrement presents a health risk for waiters and other employees who have to clean pigeon-occupied dining and drinking areas.
The risk, Mr. De María Ceballos said, was confirmed last year by a court ruling in Catalonia that upheld the disability claim of a Barcelona tourism official who said that she contracted pulmonary fibrosis from exposure to floating particles of bird excrement while working in pigeon-filled city squares.
“Nobody here has anything against pigeons or other animals, but something must be done when they proliferate to the point of presenting a health risk,” said Mr. De María Ceballos.
The city hopes to carry out the relocation next year. The 5,000 or so pigeons will have to be trapped and undergo health checks before they are transported and released in eastern Spain, about 375 miles from Cádiz. The hope is that the highly adaptable rock pigeons will be happy to resettle there rather than be tempted to make the return flight.
Mr. de la Fuente, the city official, is also calling on residents to play their part and stop overfeeding pigeons.
He argued that fighting pigeon overpopulation can also helped avoid the spread of “other plagues like rodents.”
City Hall will distribute 3,000 leaflets about how to deal with pigeons, hoping to educate rather than fine its residents for overindulging the birds.
In London, under legislation adopted a decade ago, people risk a fine of as much as 500 pounds ($636) for feeding pigeons around Trafalgar Square.
Bird Gone, Pigeon Gone, Pigeon problems, pigeon spikes, 1-877-4NO-BIRD, 4-S Gel, Bird Control, Pigeon Control, bird repellent, Bird Spikes, sonic bird repellent, stainless steel bird spikes, bird spikes Vancouver, Ultra Sonic Bird Control, Bird Netting, Plastic Bird Spikes, Canada bird spike deterrents, Pigeon Pests, B Gone Pigeon, Pigeon Patrol, pest controller, pest control operator, pest control technician, Pigeon Control Products, humane pigeon spikes, pigeon deterrents, pigeon traps, Pigeon repellents, Sound & Laser Deterrents, wildlife control, raccoon, skunk, squirrel deterrent, De-Fence Spikes, Dragons Den.
A PRANK backfired badly on Sunday when a 14-year-old boy lost a finger after scaling a security fence at a Horndean park.
Reports suggest that the victim impaled one of his index fingers on the fence spikes while attempting to climb over it behind Jubilee Hall around 1.40pm.
Surgeons managed to reattach the victim’s index finger thanks to the quick actions of firefighters, Jubilee Hall users and an off-duty police officer.
A crew from Horndean fire station had to remove some fencing to get to the victim while hall users packed the finger in an ice box before the officer took the boy to hospital.
Details of the gruesome incident were relayed to the Post by Carla Baverstock-Jones as an accident report was filed with landowners Horndean Parish Council earlier this week.
“It’s a good thing there were people in the hall at the time,” said the parish clerk.
“They put the finger in an appropriate bag so it was preserved and could be re-attached.
“It’s quite a high security fence so I don’t know what the 14-year-old was thinking, really.
“I’ve been told the finger was reattached and everything is moving again.”
About Pigeon Patrol:
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products four years in a row.
Summary: “Some Noida residents say that they have had to make tough lifestyle choices just to keep the pigeons at bay. “Residents say that pigeons are almost omnipresent in Noida, and the windowsills and air conditioners in high-rises are their preferred locations for building nests. “Others say they have had to give up on some of life’s little pleasures, like enjoying the cool breeze and rains, just to keep the pigeons away. I have had to repeatedly shoo them away from my AC and throw away new nests they build outside the windows. If you are living in a high-rise building in Noida, this must be all too familiar to you.
It’s a bright sunny morning. But before the alarm clock can wake you up, the noisy flapping of the pigeons on your ledge does. If you are living in a high-rise building in Noida, this must be all too familiar to you.
Pigeons might have been great for lovers in ‘Maine Pyaar Kiya’, but they’re a bit of a menace in Noida, and like every other illegal tenant, they are no fun to deal with. Noida’s high-rise-dwellers tell us the things they have to resort to in order to fight the ‘vermin of the sky’.READ ALSO: Stray dog bites irk Noida residents The pigeons have adopted the ‘survival of the fittest’ motto and begun to outsmart the residents’ attempts to ward them off. Aravind Sinha, a resident of a high-rise in Noida Extension, says, “The pigeons would camp outside my bedroom window and make a lot of noise, so my wife and I came up with a solution – throw a glass of water at them through the window.
About Pigeon Patrol:
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products four years in a row.
Indian officials are so paranoid about Pakistan that they took a pigeon into custody on suspicion of espionage on Friday.
According to Indian media reports, investigators from the army and the state intelligence in Punjab’s Hoshiarpur district were inspecting the bird which had a text resembling the Urdu language written on its wings.
The bird was handed over to police by a local who spotted the “suspicious text.
“11 digits and some Urdu text were written on its wings which after translation stood for ‘Sunday, Wednesday, and Thursday,” said a police official.
In 2015, Indian authorities had captured what they claimed was a ‘spy’ pigeon from Pakistan.
Police in Chandigarh had claimed that the white pigeon bore markings in Urdu and a seal. The pigeon was taken to a local veterinary hospital for an x-ray but no clues were discovered establishing any links with Pakistan.
According to Indian media, the pigeon was flying in the border area during a meeting between Punjab Police and the Indian Army.
About Pigeon Patrol:
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products four years in a row.
People mostly see pigeons in the park. Some feed them while the others shoo them away. They are sometimes considered as “rats in the air.” But, beware because what you might be reading in the park can also be read by pigeons. As research shows, pigeons can also learn how to read.
Advertisement
In New Zealand, a team of researchers from the University of Otago, headed by Dr. Damien Scarf gathered 18 pigeons and trained them to identify words from the different string of letters. They introduced the birds to 308 four-letter words randomly mixed along thousands of string of letters, and their goal is to peck on the shown words.
For example, in the experiment, the pigeons come on the screen and need to distinguish words from non-words such as “USRP.” Then, the birds need to identify the word among the non-words through pecking. Meanwhile, among the 18 pigeons, researchers identify four pigeons to be outstanding in their experiment. For the birds, sooner or later built vocabularies with a scope of 26 to 58 words over the 8000 non-words shown in a report by IFL Science.com.
To make sure that the pigeons learn and not memorize the words from the non-words, the experts introduce them to new words which they have never seen before. Thus, the birds still correctly identify it.
As a result, Dr. Scarf shared that, the pigeons comprehends certain pairs of letters such as “TH” and “AL” as it was more often show in the English language. The birds were able to identify words with those letters quickly. He also added that “during training, the pigeons derived some general statistical knowledge about the letter combinations that distinguish words from non-words”
Advertisement
In line with this, another researcher, from the Otago’s Department of Psychology , Professor Michael Colombo suggested that “we may have to seriously re-think the use of the term ‘bird brain’ as a put-down,” according to Phys.org.com.
About Pigeon Patrol:
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products four years in a row.
A PRANK backfired badly on Sunday when a 14-year-old boy lost a finger after scaling a security fence at a Horndean park.
Summary: “Some Noida residents say that they have had to make tough lifestyle choices just to keep the pigeons at bay. “Residents say that pigeons are almost omnipresent in Noida, and the windowsills and air conditioners in high-rises are their preferred locations for building nests. “Others say they have had to give up on some of life’s little pleasures, like enjoying the cool breeze and rains, just to keep the pigeons away. I have had to repeatedly shoo them away from my AC and throw away new nests they build outside the windows. If you are living in a high-rise building in Noida, this must be all too familiar to you.
Indian officials are so paranoid about Pakistan that they took a pigeon into custody on suspicion of espionage on Friday.
People mostly see pigeons in the park. Some feed them while the others shoo them away. They are sometimes considered as “rats in the air.” But, beware because what you might be reading in the park can also be read by pigeons. As research shows, pigeons can also learn how to read.