by Pigeon Patrol | Feb 15, 2023 | Bird Spike, Pigeon Patrol's Services, Pigeon Predators, Pigeon Spikes, Pigeons, Pigeons in the News
A September expedition to Papua New Guinea confirmed via video the existence of the black-naped pheasant pigeon, a critically endangered species that has not been reported for 140 years.
“For much of the trip, it seemed like we had no chance of finding this bird,” said Jordan Boersma, co-leader of the expedition and a postdoctoral researcher at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. “We were just two days away from the end of our time on Fergusson Island in Papua New Guinea when one of our remote cameras recorded the bird walking around and fanning its tail.”
The group captured the first-ever video and still photos of the bird, a large ground-dwelling species with a rust-colored back, a black head and body, and a bobbing pheasant-like tail. It may only exist far inland on Fergusson Island in hot, extremely rugged geothermal terrain laced with twisty rivers and dense with biting insects and leeches.
“After a month of searching, seeing those first photos of the pheasant pigeon felt like finding a unicorn,” said John C. Mittermeier, director of the Search for Lost Birds project at American Bird Conservancy and a core member of the expedition team. “It’s the kind of moment you dream about your entire life as a conservationist and birdwatcher.”
Almost nothing is known of the black-naped pheasant pigeon apart from two specimens collected in 1882. There are no recordings of its sounds. The researchers think it would likely sound similar to a different pheasant pigeon species on mainland Papua New Guinea—a sound locals compare to the despairing cry of a woman ostracized by her community.
Tapping into Indigenous knowledge was key to the expedition’s success. Doka Nason, a local bird expert, joined the search and advised the team on where to look. Nason set up the camera that eventually recorded the bird. “When I saw the photos, I was incredibly excited,” he said. “I was jumping around yelling, ‘We did it!'”
“It was an experience of a lifetime working with Fergusson Islanders to find the pheasant pigeon and giving talks at schools and villages about our search was a highlight,” said Jason Gregg, a co-leader of the expedition. “Kids were whispering the local name of the bird—Auwo—and everyone was talking about it. I’m so happy we know this species survives, and it opens opportunities to learn even more about the bird and its incredible home.”
But conservationists are concerned. The principal landowner where the bird was found told the search team he’d just signed a deal with a logging company—a move that could threaten the black-naped pheasant pigeon and its habitat. The team is pursuing funding so they can go back to Fergusson and try to find out how many of the species are left.
“The reason I care, why I think we should all care, is that this bird has meant something and continues to mean something to the local people,” Boersma said. “It’s part of their legends and culture. If we lose this species, then its cultural importance will be lost along with the role it plays in this fantastic ecosystem.”
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Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor or 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 Bird Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products ten years in a row.
Contact us at 1 877-4-NO-BIRD,(604) 585-9279 or visit our website at www.pigeonpatrol.ca
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by Pigeon Patrol | Feb 15, 2023 | 4-S Gel Bird repellent, Animal Deterrent Products, Bird Deterrent Products, Bird Law, Bird Netting
A week after a dove — dyed pink from head to claw — was found on the streets of New York City and brought to a local bird-rescue organization for medical treatment, the bird has died, largely from toxic paint-fume inhalation.
“We are deeply sad to report that Flamingo, our sweet pink pigeon, has passed away,” announced the Wild Bird Fund on Facebook and Instagram regarding the domestic king pigeon breed. “Despite our best efforts to reduce the fumes coming off the dye, while keeping him calm and stable, he died in the night. We believe his death was caused by inhaling the toxins.”
The loss of the pigeon made headlines around the world, and the organization took the opportunity to speak on the evils of dove releases, noting, “Domestic birds — birds raised in captivity — should never be released to the wild. They will die of starvation or predation … ‘Dove releases’ sound romantic, but take away the decorations and Instagram photos, and they are the equivalent of dumping your helpless pets on the side of the road. This is no way to celebrate anything.”
The situation also reignited discussion of so-called gender-reveal celebrations, as that’s been the theory behind the bird being dyed pink and released.
“It has to be a gender reveal,” noted one of many commenters in one of several posts from the Wild Bird Fund (which did not respond to Yahoo Life’s request for comment but told a local ABC affiliate the same). “I had the same horrifying thought,” responded another commenter, with others adding, “Gender reveals are so dumb,” “Stupid freaking gender reveals” and “I will never understand the lengths straight people go to for gender reveals.”
What they’re referring to is the tradition of announcing the expected baby’s sex anatomy — not gender, incidentally, which refers to the expression of social constructs of boys and girls or women and men, and therefore not something that could be known in utero. This is often done through elaborate, made-for-Instagram displays of pink or blue, in the form of colored smoke bombs, glitter explosions and even fireworks. Or, in the likely case of Flamingo — as well as a bright blue dove that was given aid by the Connecticut-based Animal Nation rescue in 2021 — dyed birds.
“We had one that came in last year dyed blue and unfortunately didn’t make it either. Such a horrible industry for these innocent animals,” noted the rescue in an Instagram comment below the post about Flamingo. On its own post about the blue bird, Animal Nation said, “We’ve heard of pigeons and doves being dyed for gender-reveal parties or simply a ‘wow’ factor — and to have one come in like this broke our hearts. When a bird is dyed and gets wet, the water is absorbed into the dye making their feathers less water repellent which takes away their number one defense — their ability to fly.”
Bottom line, say many, holding sex-reveal parties is a practice that has got to go — for both environmental and gender-stereotyping reasons.
“I think there are a lot of points to keep in mind, things like how plastic confetti and glitter and balloon bits all contribute to plastic pollutions … sequins are all made of plastic, glitter is a microplastic, which NOAA has acknowledged can be part of marine debris,” Elizabeth Brandt, national field manager for Moms Clean Air Force, a nonprofit of mothers campaigning against air pollution, tells Yahoo Life. (NOAA is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.)
“You just have to keep in mind that it’s exciting to watch a balloon go up in the air but not if it comes back down in a pond, and if a bird eats it. That’s not what you had in mind with your celebration,” she adds. “People also don’t always consider that plastic is made up of fossil fuels, and their production facilities, for those who live next to them, have health impacts.” Smoke bombs can also wreak havoc, depending on what they are made of; those with potassium chlorate release toxins into the atmosphere.
Recent examples of environmental hazards from these celebrations have included California’s El Dorado Wildfire, started by such a party’s pyrotechnic display gone awry; a similar wildfire in Arizona, the Sawmill Fire, caused by a massive blue smoke bomb and resulting in $8 million in damage; a Tannerite explosion in New Hampshire so strong it cracked a house’s foundation and turned the area’s tap water brown; a Miami helicopter flyover shooting blue confetti into the ocean, prompting an environmental group to call it out for “illegal dumping” and the pollution of an entire river in Brazil after one couple had the bright idea of dyeing a waterfall blue — in the midst of a local drought, no less.
“So many ways to do a gender-reveal party and they chose just the one that has an environmental impact,” Brazilian forestry engineer Vanessa Costa said in a tweet translated by the Washington Post at the time.
Regarding fireworks, Brandt says, “Nobody wants to start their journey in parenthood with starting a forest fire, but that’s happened; the parents were charged with multiple crimes in the El Dorado fire. … Is this really what you want to be remembered for? Is this the sort of stress you want when you are bringing another form of stress in already by becoming a parent?”
These reveal parties, she notes, “are meant as celebrations as this new era of life … and we can honor that people are excited about having a baby … [without] knowing glitter that went on to pollute the environment.” After all, she adds, “our children inherit these problems. And that’s very motivating me.”
There have even been reveal-party deaths, including those of two people related to a stunt involving flying a plane in Cancun and that of a party guest in Tennessee, where a piece of shrapnel instantly killed a woman after the parents-to-be inadvertently built a pipe bomb to explode their colored smoke. And, of course, the death of Flamingo.
“A reminder: never dye a bird!” noted the Wild Bird Fund in a post before the one announcing the bird’s death. “And please never release domestic birds or other domestic animals to the wild. They have no survival instincts and will starve or be preyed on. Dove releases in all forms are cruel. Please celebrate your life events peacefully without harming others.”
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Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor or 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 Bird Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products ten years in a row.
Contact us at 1 877-4-NO-BIRD,(604) 585-9279 or visit our website at www.pigeonpatrol.ca
Pigeon/Pigeon Patrol / Pigeons Roosing / Vancouver Pigeon Control / Bird Spikes / Bird Control / Bird Deterrent / PIgeon Deterrent / Surrey Pigeon Control / Pest / Seagull deterrent / Vancouver Pigeon Blog / Birds Inside Home / Pigeons in the cities / Ice Pigeons / What to do about pigeons / sparrows, Damage by Sparrows, How to Keep Raccoons Away, Why Are Raccoons Considered Pests / De-fence / Pigeon Nesting / Bird Droppings / Pigeon Dropping / woodpecker control / Professional Bird Control Company / Keep The Birds Away / Birds/rats/seagull/pigeon/woodpecker/dove/sparrow/pidgeon control/pidgeon problem/pidgeon control/flying rats/pigeon problems/ bird netting/bird gel/bird spray/bird nails/bird guard
by Pigeon Patrol | Feb 6, 2023 | MBCA, pet bird, Pigeon Control, Pigeon Droppings, Pigeon Patrol's Services, Pigeon Predators
A raving lunatic beheaded two pigeons in Bryant Park, proclaimed he was a “vampire” — and guzzled their blood in front of a horrified crowd, witnesses told The Post.
“He was holding up the pigeons and drinking their blood, letting the blood drip down his shirt,” recalled shocked onlooker Dominic D.
“He did it twice,” the 32-year-old said. “He was covered in blood. He said he was a vampire. It was pretty disgusting.”
Witnesses told The Post that the man threw one of the dead bird heads and splattered blood all over the shirt of a person who was eating lunch. He then calmly waited for cops to arrive.
“He was very calm when the police came,” explained Clarissa Plair, a 26-year-old Theology student who spends a lot of time in Bryant Park and has seen the pigeon perp before.
“He’s always here, yelling at people on the street,” she said. “He was telling [police] he’s a vampire.”
Authorities took a man into custody about 15 minutes later and transported him to St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital for a pysch evaluation, according to officials.
Photos and video posted on Twitter showed the bloody aftermath, with several pigeons swooping in to mourn their fallen bird brethren.
While the man behind the fowl fatalities is known to sit in the Bryant Park fountain drinking beer, witnesses said he’s never gone after any of his feathered friends before.
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Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor or 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 Bird Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products ten years in a row.
Contact us at 1 877-4-NO-BIRD,(604) 585-9279 or visit our website at www.pigeonpatrol.ca
Pigeon/Pigeon Patrol / Pigeons Roosing / Vancouver Pigeon Control / Bird Spikes / Bird Control / Bird Deterrent / PIgeon Deterrent / Surrey Pigeon Control / Pest / Seagull deterrent / Vancouver Pigeon Blog / Birds Inside Home / Pigeons in the cities / Ice Pigeons / What to do about pigeons / sparrows, Damage by Sparrows, How to Keep Raccoons Away, Why Are Raccoons Considered Pests / De-fence / Pigeon Nesting / Bird Droppings / Pigeon Dropping / woodpecker control / Professional Bird Control Company / Keep The Birds Away / Birds/rats/seagull/pigeon/woodpecker/dove/sparrow/pidgeon control/pidgeon problem/pidgeon control/flying rats/pigeon problems/ bird netting/bird gel/bird spray/bird nails/bird guard
by Pigeon Patrol | Feb 6, 2023 | Bird Spike, Pigeon Droppings, Pigeon Patrol's Services, Pigeon Predators, Pigeon Spikes, Pigeons
Homing pigeons may share the human capacity to build on the knowledge of others, improving their navigational efficiency over time, a new Oxford University study has found.
The ability to gather, pass on and improve on knowledge over generations is known as cumulative culture. Until now humans and, arguably some other primates, were the only species thought to be capable of it.
Takao Sasaki and Dora Biro, Research Associates in the Department of Zoology at Oxford University, conducted a study testing whether homing pigeons can gradually improve their flight paths, over time. They removed and replaced individuals in pairs of birds that were given a specific navigational task. Ten chains of birds were released from the same site and generational succession was simulated with the continuous replacement of birds familiar with the route with inexperienced birds who had never flown the course before. The idea was that these individuals could then pass their experience of the route down to the next pair generation, and also enable the collective intelligence of the group to continuously improve the route’s efficiency.
The findings, published in Nature Communications, suggest that over time, the student does indeed become the teacher. The pairs’ homing performance improved consistently over generations — they streamlined their route to be more direct. Later generation groups eventually outperformed individuals that flew solo or in groups that never changed membership. Homing routes were also found to be more similar in consecutive generations of the same chain of pigeon pairs than across them, showing cross-generational knowledge transfer, or a “culture” of homing routes.
Takao Sasaki, co-author and Research Fellow in the Department of Zoology said: ‘At one stage scientists thought that only humans had the cognitive capacity to accumulate knowledge as a society. Our study shows that pigeons share these abilities with humans, at least to the extent that they are capable of improving on a behavioural solution progressively over time. Nonetheless, we do not claim that they achieve this through the same processes.’
When people share and pass knowledge down through generations, our culture tends to become more complex over time, There are many good examples of this from manufacturing and engineering. By contrast, when the process occurs between homing pigeons, the end result is an increase in the efficiency, (in this case navigational), but not necessarily the complexity, of the behaviour.
Takao Sasaki added: ‘Although they have different processes, our findings demonstrate that pigeons can accumulate knowledge and progressively improve their performance, satisfying the criteria for cumulative culture. Our results further suggest that cumulative culture does not require sophisticated cognitive abilities as previously thought.’
This study shows that collective intelligence, which typically focuses on one-time performance, can emerge from accumulation of knowledge over time.
Dora Biro, co-author and Associate Professor of Animal Behaviour concludes: ‘One key novelty, we think, is that the gradual improvement we see is not due to new ‘ideas’ about how to improve the route being introduced by individual birds. Instead, the necessary innovations in each generation come from a form of collective intelligence that arises through pairs of birds having to solve the problem together — in other words through ‘two heads being better than one’.’
Moving forward, the team intend to build on the study by investigating if a similar style of knowledge sharing and accumulation occurs in other multi-generational species’ social groups. Many animal groups have to solve the same problems repeatedly in the natural world, and if they use feedback from past outcomes of these tasks or events, this has the potential to influence, and potentially improve, the decisions the groups make in the future.
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Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor or 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 Bird Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products ten years in a row.
Contact us at 1 877-4-NO-BIRD,(604) 585-9279 or visit our website at www.pigeonpatrol.ca
Pigeon/Pigeon Patrol / Pigeons Roosing / Vancouver Pigeon Control / Bird Spikes / Bird Control / Bird Deterrent / PIgeon Deterrent / Surrey Pigeon Control / Pest / Seagull deterrent / Vancouver Pigeon Blog / Birds Inside Home / Pigeons in the cities / Ice Pigeons / What to do about pigeons / sparrows, Damage by Sparrows, How to Keep Raccoons Away, Why Are Raccoons Considered Pests / De-fence / Pigeon Nesting / Bird Droppings / Pigeon Dropping / woodpecker control / Professional Bird Control Company / Keep The Birds Away / Birds/rats/seagull/pigeon/woodpecker/dove/sparrow/pidgeon control/pidgeon problem/pidgeon control/flying rats/pigeon problems/ bird netting/bird gel/bird spray/bird nails/bird guard
by Pigeon Patrol | Feb 6, 2023 | history of pigeons, MBCA, pet bird, Pigeon Control, Pigeon Droppings, Pigeon Patrol's Services
FERAL PIGEONS, WHICH LIVE ON every continent in the world except Antartica, are famously adaptable—They shack up all over, from San Francisco to London to Mumbai.
They are also in Calgary, where around 200 of them have made their home on the roof of the South Health Campus, a 269-bed hospital. This was an unwelcome development, since pigeons can carry disease, and they poop a lot.
The hospital’s efforts to get rid of them—including with noise, which worked at first, before the birds got used to it—haven’t been successful, so recently they chose to get a little more serious. They’ve hired three baby peregrine falcons, according to the CBC, as a future anti-pigeon patrol.
A falconer, John Campbell, plans to release the falcons from the building, where it is hoped they will hunt down the pigeons and “other small game,” the CBC reports.
“You could [use] anything that would scare them, that would go after them as prey,” Campbell said. “It doesn’t have to be falcons but the falcons work very well.”
It will be a little time before the falcons get to the hunting, as just one has fledged so far. In the meantime, though, they’re being fed dead pigeons to give them a taste for pigeon blood.
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Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor or 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 Bird Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products ten years in a row.
Contact us at 1 877-4-NO-BIRD,(604) 585-9279 or visit our website at www.pigeonpatrol.ca
Pigeon/Pigeon Patrol / Pigeons Roosing / Vancouver Pigeon Control / Bird Spikes / Bird Control / Bird Deterrent / PIgeon Deterrent / Surrey Pigeon Control / Pest / Seagull deterrent / Vancouver Pigeon Blog / Birds Inside Home / Pigeons in the cities / Ice Pigeons / What to do about pigeons / sparrows, Damage by Sparrows, How to Keep Raccoons Away, Why Are Raccoons Considered Pests / De-fence / Pigeon Nesting / Bird Droppings / Pigeon Dropping / woodpecker control / Professional Bird Control Company / Keep The Birds Away / Birds/rats/seagull/pigeon/woodpecker/dove/sparrow/pidgeon control/pidgeon problem/pidgeon control/flying rats/pigeon problems/ bird netting/bird gel/bird spray/bird nails/bird guard
