A Syrian soldier serving in Aleppo has an unusual way of spending his downtime – breeding pigeons on the rooftop of a partially-destroyed building.
Bassil, who asked to be identified by his first name only, is a 29-year-old soldier from the eastern Syrian city of Deir el-Zour.
He has been serving as a soldier with the government forces in Aleppo in the north of the country for eight years, and has not seen his parents or siblings in all that time.
In 2016, Bassil witnessed some of the most intense fighting of the civil war as rebel fighters took control of parts of government-held western Aleppo.
In December 2016, the city came under full control of the government after a crushing offensive that forced remaining insurgents to evacuate to the northwestern province of Idlib.
But in the past two years, a scaling down of the fighting in Aleppo has given him the chance to explore his hobby of breeding pigeons.
In a residential area known as Ramouseh, which used to house a major bus station, almost all the buildings have been destroyed.
It was the target of a lightning rebel offensive in August 2016, and was captured from government forces for several days.
On the roof of one building, where the staircase is only partially intact, Bassil keeps his pigeons in a cage.
When he’s not required for duty, Bassil climbs up the damaged stairs, squeezes himself through the rubble and metal joists and comes out onto the roof where he spends time with his birds.
He feeds them and admires them as they fly over the destruction down below – buildings riddled with bullet holes or partially collapsed from airstrikes and shelling.
“I climb here to relax and have some good time with the pigeons,” he says.
“I am far away from my parents so I spend my spare time with these birds after I finish my shift. I watch them and make them fly.”
Almost none of the buildings left in the area are fit for habitation, but Bassil says he is hopeful for the future.
“All parts of Syria should be built. God willing, all this destruction will be rebuilt.”
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.
WHEN he is not being kept busy in an active political schedule, Raymond Schenk spends a lot of his free time with his hobby of many years – pigeon racing.
A well-known local personality, Schenk is the leader of the Democratic Alliance in Ndlambe.
Born and raised in the Transkei near Umtata, Schenk and his brothers were always interested in pigeons, but it was only after he left school and began working that he started taking a keen interest in this sport.
He spent most of his working career with the SABC in Johannesburg, ending up as head of advertising and production with 32 years’ service. It was during this time that he really became serious about pigeon racing and joined the Horizon Pigeon Club in Roodepoort, eventually serving this as chairman for four years. After building his loft, he obviously needed stock birds.
“Pigeon fanciers are generally generous people and will always help and encourage a beginner with birds. But they don’t let out too many of their trade secrets and competition was tough among the 32 members,” he said.
Read Bob Ford’s full story in this week’s Talk of the Town.
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.
“I love photography,” says Franca Marazia. “It is my great escape.”
She focuses on the world she knows best.
“I photograph everyday objects, daily life activities, the environment that surrounds us, and the people and pets I meet along the way,” she tells me.
Marazia, 59, who lives in Hamilton, taught elementary school for 30 years. She says she is self-taught when it comes to photography, but she has had many years in which to sharpen her skills.
“I have always been photographing something, usually at family functions,” she says. “I seem to be the keeper of memories. I used photography in my classroom as well.”
Camera in hand, she usually sets out with a destination and a plan. But she welcomes the photograph that presents itself when she is not expecting it.
“Knowing the right scene is hard to explain,” she says. “It’s something I feel.”
Marazia is a regular contributor to Art in the Workplace at McMaster Innovation Park, located at 175 Longwood Rd. S. One of her offerings in the current show is “Sunset Boulevard,” taken at Pier 8 in the West Harbour.
She found a scene with a variety of shapes and textures, some of them unexpected.
Three figures sit at a table silhouetted in front of a landscape lying beyond a fence. The regular verticals of the fence contrast with the humans’ irregular shapes. A sparkling body of water leads to a horizontal strip of wooded land in the distance. This darkened land mass complements the dark human shapes in the foreground.
The sky, which fills the upper two-thirds of the composition, contributes a different combination of colours and textures, including an emphatic circle of sun.
“I had been photographing activity on the water and on the pathways,” she recalls. “Just happened to stay long enough to capture a breathtaking summer sunset. In trying to shoot its reflection on the water, one of my images included a family sitting at a picnic table. I didn’t realize what I had until I uploaded the images onto my computer.”
Marazia is never without her camera when she travels. In Viseu, Portugal, she was sitting at an outdoor café when she saw a man feeding pigeons, a familiar sight that inspired a sepia photograph.
A spacious foreground leads to six pigeons, each one attentively facing the man seated on a bench. He’s leaning toward them, looking at the food in his hand. He is as attentive as they are. Cars are lined up behind him, a background of modern urban clutter that contrasts with the timelessness and spaciousness of the event in the foreground.
In Amsterdam, Marazia found bicycles.
“It was bicycle heaven for me,” she says. “I captured hundreds of them. Such variety in design and functionality.”
In “Sunshine Yellow” she comes up close to bicycles wet with rain. In cropping the scene, Marazia draws our attention to the many circles and lines that crowd and overlap one another.
Red paving bricks and green moss add more geometric shapes and bright hues.
“I have a large collection of bicycle images. I’ve thought about why I feel the need to capture these images,” she explains. “On the one hand, I am reminded of earlier days, my teen years, when I practically lived on my bright blue ten-speed. It was my method of transportation for getting to my part-time job and for meeting up with friends. On the other hand, I am drawn in by the colour and design — the wheels of freedom.”
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.
WATERLOO — Joy Huggins and her daughter were walking through a park when they discovered a baby squirrel with a broken leg.
Huggins packed up the tiny critter and took it to a wildlife rehabilitator.
That was nearly 15 years ago.
For the past 10 years Huggins has been operating a provincially-authorized wildlife rehab centre out of her home in Waterloo.
“It just changed my life,” the 50-year-old said. “I really felt like I was meant to do this; I love animals.”
Huggins receives animal intakes from across the province. Her name is listed on the Ministry of Natural Resources’ website so she is constantly called by people finding injured or abandoned baby animals.
“Spring and summer is crazy, crazy because of the babies,” said Huggins. “The babies need constant feeding.”
Most of the six squirrels she has in her care now were babies that were abandoned in the fall and would not have been able to survive the winter on their own.
“(With) baby squirrels, the mom gets hit or killed somehow and these babies … fall out of the nest looking for mom because they’re hungry,” she said.
“If their eyes are open they actually seek out people — they’ll come up to people, they’ll climb up their leg, I’ve even had people say, ‘he was scratching at the door.'”
Three of the tinier squirrels Huggins has are kept indoors in enclosures where they enjoy swinging from their hammocks or doing back flips off the sides of their cages.
The heartier and fluffier ones are in a large wooden enclosure in the backyard.
The Wildlife Haven is operated entirely on donations and with the help of volunteers.
And there’s never a dull day at the house. At any moment Huggins could be doing an intake, releasing an animal back to the wild, feeding the animals their specialty diets, tending to injuries, or just keeping all the indoor and outdoor enclosures tidy.
And she always has an animal story to tell. Some are happy and some are heartbreaking.
She has two pigeons that fell in love while in her care. Romeo and Juliette sit side-by-side in separate enclosures taking turns sitting on an egg.
She also has a mallard duck healing after it was found frozen to the ground near RIM Park a few weeks ago.
Then there’s Roo, the grouchy groundhog she has had for five years. The Ministry of Natural Resources has permitted Huggins to keep Roo as an education animal as he is unable to be released back to the wild.
Huggins takes him to a senior’s residence in Kitchener from time to time.
She also gets the occasional possum.
“These guys sleep with their eyes open; it’s creepy,” she said with a laugh. “I didn’t know that when I first got one.”
Huggins is also caring for a quail, crows, goldfinches, a barn swallow, a cedar wax wing, pigeons and a number of finches.
Finches come in with eye infections commonly caused by dirty bird feeders, she said adding that most people don’t realize they have to clean them out regularly.
While the work is rewarding, it’s also challenging.
Huggins has seen many animals die due to severe injuries. These stories are hard to forget.
But it can also be heartbreaking to release animals that have recovered under her care.
“It’s very bittersweet,” she said. “You’ve got your goal, you’re going to release them, but then I can’t watch over them anymore … I struggle with that (but) that’s where they belong.”
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.
Mary was part of the National Pigeon Service and was seriously injured three times by enemy falcons and gunfire.
She would deliver messages to the pigeon loft of her owner Cecil “Charlie” Brewer, which was behind his boot-making workshop in Exeter, Devon.
Mary was awarded the Dickin medal, the highest award for animal bravery.
The blue plaque from the Exeter Civic Society is its first to honour a partnership between an animal and its owner.
It will be sited at the former home of Mr Brewer on West Street in the city.
Mr Brewer trained homing pigeons and in 1940 placed his prized bird, Mary, at the disposal of the service.
Mary was dropped behind enemy lines and despite being wounded three times and once going missing for 10 days, she always completed her missions.
Upon her return, Mr Brewer would then nurse her back to health and at the end of the war they both received medals.
Mary won the Dickin Medal for her gallantry and outstanding endurance and Mr Brewer was decorated for his war services as Special Constable with responsibility for control of war pigeons in the area.
John Monks, Exeter Civic Society’s blue plaque coordinator, said: “It’s a remarkable story of dedication to duty worthy of a blue plaque but it is also a record of the roles humans have required animals to play in bad times.”
Mr Brewer raised money for charity by giving talks about Mary for many years before he died in 1985 aged 90.
The story of Charlie and Mary is also being turned into an animated film and is due to be completed next year.
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.
The parents of Amarillo hobbyist Charles Hanna’s winning Hessian Pouter pigeons originated in Germany, but the birds bred in Amarillo are now national breed champions.
Hannah’s pigeons are among 4,589 being shown through Saturday at the National Pigeon Association Grand National championships at the Amarillo Civic Center Complex. The show is free and open to the public.
“I bought the parents from Germany and raised these here,” Hannah said of his blue Hessian Pouter that won the top cock award and hen that won in its category. “They’re about a year old.
“My blue pouter won the breed because it had better features and color and fuller feathers.”
Pigeon enthusiasts from the United States, Europe, Canada and Mexico are in Amarillo for the NPA’s annual national show and seem pleased with the accommodations of the first-time host city.
“This is wonderful,” said Rick Barker of Temecula, Calif. “I’ve been to 40 national conventions and the facilities are beautiful. This is our first time in Amarillo and it’s one of the best facilities ever.”
While the NPA show boosts the local economy, it wasn’t just the facilities and Embassy Suites hotel across Buchanan Street that impressed Barker.
“I can’t believe how friendly the people of Amarillo are,” he said. “We asked for directions to a restaurant and the lady said, ‘Come on, it’s close, I’ll take you,’ and she walked us there.”
Larry Warnecke of Highland, Ill., who is in the city with his American King pigeons, echoed Barker in praise for Amarillo.
“The facilities have lots of room and the hotel just across the street is fantastic,” Warnecke said.
Barker said the attraction to raising pigeons often has its roots in raising chickens.
“Many of us grew up with chickens and moved to the city,” Barker said. “For city people, this is as close farming as a city person can get. It (also) gets the kids off their phones texting.”
One of those teens at the show, Vincent Pizzuto, 14, of Prescott, Ariz., has been involved in raising pigeons since age 3.
“I’m not showing here, but friends brought me,” Pizzuto said. “I love a lot of things about raising pigeons — the colors, you meet a lot of people, the competition, the awards.”
The participants come from all walks of life.
“We have doctors, dentists, attorney and all kinds of people showing,” he said. “This is a show, but racing pigeons have million dollar championships and you can make more money racing pigeons that racing horses, and I’ve done both.”
The showing of champions will be the show’s feature at 1 p.m. Saturday.
The top pouter — known for their blowing of their bills that makes them look like they are “pouting” — of 30 breeds will be in Saturday’s final lineup, and Hannah hopes his birds among the finalists.
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.
Maintenance work will cause disruption for bus station users.
Wrexham Council is undertaking improvements at the town’s bus station in King Street over the weekend.
Workers will be putting up some netting to prevent the pigeons from causing a mess and also installing new LED lights in the near future.
All buses will run as normal and access from Lord Street to the retail arcade during opening hours will be unaffected.
People using the station between 6pm on Saturday and 6am on Monday will be affected.
Anyone waiting for a bus will have to wait outside the concourse which will be closed for the works to take place.
A Wrexham Council spokesman said: “We’re sorry if this causes inconvenience but this work has to be carried out before the end of the financial year.
Cllr David A Bithell, lead member for the environment and transport, said: “We do have a scheduled improvement programme for the bus station that will take place over the coming months and this is the first phase which will see improved lighting and an end to the problems caused by pigeons in the roofspace.”
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 voluntary ambulance service for pigeons has taken off in Aberdeen.
Kevin Newell and Flo Blackbourn run Wiggy and Friends Animal Rescue and go to the aid of injured pigeons across the city.
They are appealing for help to map colonies so the pigeon patrol can target the most appropriate areas.
The couple – who describe themselves as rapid responders – take the injured pigeons home for rehabilitation before setting them free.
Mr Newell told BBC Scotland that many pigeons get trapped because of netting on buildings aimed at deterring them.
He told BBC Scotland: “These pigeons have no-one to help them.
“We want to bring awareness that pigeons are dying horrible deaths.”
Flying into windows and being hit by cars are other causes of pigeon injury.
Ms Blackbourn explained: “A couple of years ago Kevin brought home a pigeon that he found lying on its back.
“We posted about it, we just thought we’d take him in as everyone else was stepping over him and didn’t really care.
“Ever since then people kind of knew us as the people to bring pigeons to.”
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.
Every day, at sun rise, A. Prasanna heads to the terrace to feed a flock of pigeons. He scatters millets from a bowl, held in his left hand. “Every week, I spend nearly 50 kilos of millets for feeding the pigeons.” Prasanna, a resident of Sathasivam Nagar in Madipakkam, says, “Every day, around 6.30 a.m., I feed the pigeons. If I am unwell or out of station, my wife and son and daughter — A. P. Priyadarshini, P. Anirudh and P. Harini — feed the pigeons.” On an average, more than 200 pigeons gather every day at our terrace. He began feeding the pigeons two years ago. Besides pigeons, a good number of squirrels have also started visiting Prasanna’s terrace.
“I started this practice after I watched a video that was circulated on WhatApp. It showed a resident of Royapettah feeding parakeets on his terrace every day,” he says, adding, “ I also feed cows and stray dogs with bananas, sesbania grandiflora (Agathi Keerai) and biscuits and help poor people by buying them food.”
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.
John Wilson Foster’s Pilgrims of the Air starts in the realm of magical realism and ends in horror. From miles of passenger pigeons blocking out the sun, to vast massacres of the bird and deforestation by humans, to a solitary last bird dying in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914, the story is all too easy to allegorize.
Allegories have long surrounded the passenger pigeon, so astonishing to many of its witnesses that only figures of speech could convey their wonder. They were called clouds — or, more threateningly, tempests, streams or floods, troops and regiments — and compared to the “coils of a gigantic serpent,” in John James Audubon’s recounting. Attempts at literal depictions conveyed the flocks’ grand scale — ornithologist Alexander Wilson estimated 240 miles and more than two billion pigeons in one grouping — but lacked the splendor of figurative language.
The comparisons at times suggested an uncertainty about the birds — were they good or evil? Early European explorers in the New World saw a prelapsarian Eden, yet, Foster writes, nature’s “abundance was her abandon” in the Puritan Protestant response. The passenger pigeons, again serving as symbols, were either augurs of disaster or signs of God’s pleasure, presaging sickness (because they stayed longer during mild weather) or promising bounty. Either way, they were chaotic, not orderly — and “this new world cried out for order, discipline and overmastery through agriculture,” Foster writes. “The New World was to be a spiritual and material enterprise: colonisation obliged conversion. Native abundance, at first marvelled at, was to be harnessed and pruned; Nature was to be appropriated, exploited and marketed.”
Our knowledge of what happened to the species does not diminish the magnitude of its tragedy. The vastness of the passenger pigeon flocks shifts, horrifyingly, to the scope of their massacre, a “slaughter of the innocents, as one market gunner admitted.” The birds had long been consumed — the Potawatomi people, for instance, were among its hunters — but in the mid-19th century, harvests turned into “carnivalesque org[ies] of destruction,” and eventually the killings were “dispassionate, organised, ruthless and of an industrial scale.” Pigeoners, aided increasingly by the expansion of the railroad and information networks that let them know where to go, descended on nesting sites and mass-executed the birds using sledgehammers, fire, clubs, and guns. No destructive force seemed taboo. “As many birds as possible were killed or captured, irrespective of demand or need,” Foster writes. Milliners and taxidermists were among the beneficiaries of the killings.
Foster, a literary critic, presents this American tragedy as one of anthropocentric ego. He writes acutely and, perhaps appropriately for the subject, often in dense columns of winding prose. Even as he cites historical facts and ornithological details, there is an underlying poetry to his descriptions; the story he is telling is, ultimately, a eulogy. Most hauntingly, a subtextual question pervades Pilgrims of the Air: As temperatures rise, which species must we eulogize next?
One of the book’s most powerful poetic devices is the metaphor in its title. The birds were pilgrims and explorers; Foster writes that Ectopistes migratorius, the passenger pigeon’s scientific name, translates to “wandering wanderer.” Passenger pigeons “might embody American wilderness in which they exercised the unfenced freedom of nomads or rootless pioneers,” Foster writes, although “their nesting sites were nevertheless called cities.” As industry and pigeoners encroached, “the pilgrims of the forest became fugitives,” and within mere decades, the wandering, and the wonder, were over.
As Anne Schmauss discussed in The Santa FeNew Mexican earlier this week, 2018 has been named the Year of the Bird by the National Audubon Society, National Geographic, and other institutions. This year marks the centennial of the protective Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which arrived too late for the passenger pigeon but did save the snowy egret and other species. “The Year of the Bird might be just the wake-up call we all need to protect our birds and ourselves from the mounting threats against our world,” Schmauss writes.
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 PODGY pigeon will be flying high again thanks to a little girl’s rescue mission – and a much needed pedicure.
When seven-year-old Daisy first met Pat the Pigeon she thought the bedraggled bird had donned a pair of shoes for the occasion.
In fact, the overweight pigeon had fallen from her nest into frosty mud that clamped around her claws and formed hard balls.
The kind-hearted Darlington schoolgirl spotted the young bird struggling to fly and stepped in, sparking a rescue that ended in a pedicure for the podgy pigeon, courtesy of the RSPCA.
Animal lover Daisy found Pat on West Auckland Road in early December and begged her grandparents to call in the charity.
Thanks to her actions, the pigeon is now receiving treatment and is expected to be released into the wild upon her return to full health.
RSPCA inspector Kristina Raine collected Pat after a call from Daisy’s grandparents.
She said: “We don’t often see young pigeons like this at this time of year and in these colder conditions.
“It’s very unlikely she would have survived on her own. I took her to the vets and they gave her a much needed pedicure.
“She is now being looked after at the vets until she can lose her Christmas weight and learn to fly.”
She added: “We are so grateful for kind members of the public who see an animal in need and decide to act.
“We receive a call to our cruelty line every 27 seconds alerting us to animals in distress and without this we wouldn’t be able to continue to rescue, rehabilitate and rehome all the animals that we do.”
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.
The blaze broke out at a site off King Oswy Drive in the town shortly after 2pm. Crews from Stranton station rushed to the scene, where they put out the fire a short time after. A total 24 pigeons died in the fire, although officers were able to rescue several pigeons and chickens. Andy Hardy, watch manager at Stranton station, said: “The three sheds which were involved have been pretty much destroyed. “The two owners were there and of course they are unhappy about what has happened. “It looks like there was some kind of heating on inside one of the sheds and that may have been a factor, but we can’t say for definite at this stage. “There is certainly no sign of it being malicious ignition.”
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.
Partners Kevin Newell, 35, and Flo Blackbourn, 21, run Wiggy & Friends Animal Rescue and are embarking on a mission to help the Aberdeen’s injured doos.
They are asking people to help them map the city’s colonies so their Pigeon Patrol can check up on the birds’ welfare.
The idea was inspired by the New Arc animal rescue centre in Ellon.
And it is hoped the project will help alleviate some of the pressure on New Arc by dealing with pigeons in the city.
Kevin said: “They do an amazing job with the thousands of animals they get through the door.
“They don’t always have time to get out and pick up animals.
“We’ve taken quite a few injured pigeons in during the summer.
“There’s large populations of pigeons all over the city.
“We’re calling on people to let us know where they are.
“We’ve created a rapid response first aid kit for pigeons. If a pigeon is ill we’ll catch it and treat it.
“The idea is we’ll go out and try and help these pigeons.”
Kevin, who has his own business Humane Wildlife Solutions, and Flo, a zoology student, run the rescue centre from their home in Old Aberdeen.
He added: “We just work out of our home. We’ve got a little outhouse in the back that’s been converted into a wildlife hut.
“We play pigeon noises to them so they feel like they have contact with other pigeons and not just us.
“The biggest problem with pigeons is their feet when they get string or bits of hair wrapped around their toes.
“If that doesn’t get treated or cut off their toes can eventually drop off.
“A lot of the cases we’ve had the birds have either flown into cars or windows and they suffer from concussion.
“They can recover from concussion but it’s usually a slow process.”
The centre is named after Wiggy the pigeon who the couple treated when he had an injured wing.
The public is being asked to help map pigeon colonies
Kevin said: “Wiggy had damaged his wing.
“He eventually ended up losing half a wing.
“He stayed with us for two months and we managed to rehabilitate him and get his wing treated.
“He also had string around his foot which we treated.
“We got him to a point he was fit, healthy and strong and he went to the New Arc.”
“A lot of people absolutely hate pigeons but once you get to know them they’re all little people with their own characters and traits.
“We’re not a long-term facility.
“We’re like the ambulance service.”
So far around a dozen colonies have been mapped, including George Street, the railway station, Denburn underpass, Woolmanhill Hospital and St Nicholas Street.
Kevin added: “There’s a lot of pigeon colonies in the city.
“Each colony is usually quite small.
“On average from the ones we’ve found so far there’s probably eight to 15 pigeons in a colony.
“We’re doing patrols of all these different sites and we see if there’s any ill or injured pigeons or babies fallen out of the roost.”
Keith Marley of the New Arc said: “I think it’s an excellent idea.
“It’s a big task, but Kevin’s got the experience to know where the most likely spots are.
“They’re doing all the hard work in going out and getting them.
“They’ve only got limited facilities but they’re doing a great job.”
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.
During one my visits to my uncle’s house, I saw a number of crows on an electric wire at 6:30 am. There must have been at least 25 crows waiting for something. When they saw my uncle, all of them started creating a symphony with their cawing. He slowly went near the gate and dropped bird feed on the ground. There were flocks of pigeons, sparrows, and crows feeding on the food without any fear of my uncle. Mesmerised, I took a step forward. To my surprise, the pigeons and the sparrows continued on their feed but the crows just flew away with fear. I’m not an ornithologist or even a birdwatcher, but crows have always intrigued me. When I asked my uncle why the crows flew away, he told me:
“Crows don’t trust humans! It took a good three months effort and a clear planned strategy to gain their trust”
You must be wondering what the connection between a crow and a technology-spooked customer is!
Many customers, like crows, are still afraid of new technologies and computer-based aids, such as shopping website, a driverless car, cloud storage, cryptocurrencies, blockchain, etc., which use AI and ML extensively to benefit the end customer.
This is because of three primary reasons:
Security– This is mainly because of reports of fraud, identity theft, data loss and other security breaches regularly making the news. However, the fact is that online shopping is safer than ever before, and new and emerging security technologies, methods and standards are being implemented every day to safeguard the customer.
Privacy concerns: This is mainly because of extensive usage of collecting user data, sometimes not required to enhance customer experience.
Safety: New technologies are not time-tested so when integrated to products, safety is one thing which drives users away from the product/service.
Fear of the unknown: What I don’t know, I don’t trust syndrome. No benefit of doubt to new technologies is mainly due to lack of knowledge or information about the new technology.
For the customer to move in their decision-making journey to buy your product or service, you need to identify and remedy the friction points in the purchase path. You need to engage and provide appropriate inputs at the make or break relationship building points. This moment of truth is the promise that a customer can relate to your brand; it is the assurance that you will “show up” or “come over” to address their needs or manage their issues/complaints and not risk disappointment with the outcome.
Let’s look at the characteristics of a crow, a bird from the family of Songbirds, to which other birds such as Jays, Magpies, Parrots, and Ravens belong.
Crows are so intelligent that they have unique capacities that only humans share among all animals on earth. They have similar advanced vocal learning abilities too. Crows have reasoning derived from causes, flexibility, thinking ahead and imagination. Crows are able to use these to plan ahead in great detail.
Crows use advanced abstract concepts and extreme personal awareness. They use analogies which help them solve higher-order, relational matching tasks spontaneously.
Crows remember people and cars for years and have metacognition and counting.
Crows have object permanence; which is the ability to remember the existence of an object when it cannot be observed by sight, sound, touch, smell, or any other way.
Crows have been found to understand mental time travel and have very complex inner mental life. The characteristics used are content, structure, and flexibility. They have complex memories of experiences including a description of what happened and the time and place.i. Experiments show that crows remember where and when they hide different types of food. They are aware that some of the food is still edible and some has been hidden for too long, and they go only for the edible food. This means they remember how long ago they buried it and how long the food is good. They are able to tell the difference between similar occurrences at other times and locations.
ii. Crows are able to plan for breakfast the next day despite many different circumstances. They prepare food for tomorrow when they know they will not be given breakfast without any past training. These are spontaneous and instant mental events.
Another advanced behaviour of crows involves gaze and gesture. Crows have extremely accurate vision and gesture through positions and gaze. They respond to human gaze and gestures if they aren’t threatening. These cues from human gaze to find food are much faster if the bird knows the human.
Crows are quite sophisticated in protecting their hidden supplies but they do not hide from their close family and mates.
These characteristics and behaviour are very similar to an intelligent customer on the internet who is hesitant to adopt newer technologies. What works to gain the trust of the crow might be applicable to the technology-spooked customer. So, let’s look at these techniques:
The best way to get on a crow’s good side is through the stomach!Find some food that the crow seems to like.
Food for the customer is useful data to make him/her feel comfortable about the technology.
Referrals, recommendations, technology know-hows including some potential threats and benefits should be fed to the new target customer. Providing tips on security to consumers who visit your site can help them understand how much of their online security is in their own hands. It can also create a sense of goodwill. Customers will be happy to learn these tips, and may be inclined to spend more time with you.
Put out the peanuts consistently and don’t look directly at the bird when you do so initially
When you are providing data to the customer, though you are collecting lot of personal information and his learning behaviour, ensure you don’t make it obvious to him as his biggest concern is solution compromising his privacy.
Crows might take their own sweet time to come and take the food you have served. But be patient.
When you provide added services to the customer, he might not acknowledge in the beginning. Have patience and give him enough time to feel comfortable to adopt the new technology or solution.
Crows watch other birds (such as sparrows, mynahs, etc.) feed on the food before they start to eat
The zero moment of trust (ZMOT) of the new customer gets largely influenced by ultimate moment of truth (UMOT) of other customers shared experience. Ensure you have demonstrated right references and recommendations.
Stock the food and ensure you don’t run out to feed the crows
Once you start the engagement with the customer, ensure you have enough data points to keep him engaged. Frequent push of information is key to sustain the customer.
Establish a regular feeding schedule and over time crows will get more comfortable with you and start to expect food from you, and from there, you can build a bond of trust
When he starts adopting new technology and solution, start engagement very slowly, build the trust and then have a different customer experience solution to keep him engaged on the new platform/technology. Also give consumers more confidence to work with a provider that researches the security of websites and issues certifications of authenticity like VeriSign
Once the trust is formed, you can look at the crows in their eyes and build a bond but don’t try to get too close.
Once the bond is built with the customer, use data analytics and machine learning to give him more data to customise your service to his personal needs and usage behaviour. Make it more private for him. This will make him addictive. Always be dependable, steadfast, and observant. Ensure you use smarter predictive technology but be sensitive when it becomes pervasive. Avoid intrusion into your customer life in areas, which are not related to your product or service.
The most common concern among potential online shoppers is data loss, which the customer refers to the exposure of credit card numbers, names, addresses, and other data that online merchants routinely collect from shoppers. New technologies, such as end-to-end encryption, do help ensure the safety of consumer information as it travels over the network, and businesses are increasingly investing in such technologies. If customers do not know about these technologies, no investment in the world will encourage e-commerce-shy customers to shun their inhibitions. So, it is very important to let consumers know what kind of security measures are being taken to protect their personal data.
Neighbour crows may get wind of what you are doing and challenge the family that normally occupies your yard
Once the customer gets addicted, there are his other trusted peer group who might influence him to get away from the newfound love of your solution/product. Ensure you engage with his peer group earlier in the cycle to build a better trust circle around your target customer.
Too much food to the crows can get out of control and your house might become a communal site
Ensure you keep your service/product exclusive and controlled. Once it becomes a commodity, both early adopters and late adopters might be repelled with everyone using the service. Ensure value and brand doesn’t get diluted.
So next time before you introduce a new product or a service in an area which is new to the customer, sharpen your customer engagement skills by studying the behaviour of a crow and first gain its trust!
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.
When pigeons see Avro the peregrine falcon, they flee.
It’s a smart move: not only are peregrine falcons the fastest animal on earth, capable of reaching speeds of 390 km per hour in a dive, but pigeons are a staple food source for peregrines in downtown Vancouver.
That’s the kind of predator-prey relationship TransLink hopes to tap into to keep SkyTrain stations free of pigeons, which caused 142 train delays in 2017.
As part of a new six-week Translink pilot project Avro has been riding the SkyTrain everyday with his handler, Kim Kamstra, scaring pigeons away from the tracks and stations by simply looking at them.
On any given morning in December, Kamstra says there would be more than 70 pigeons at 22nd Station in New Westminster. Three weeks into the pilot project, there are none.
“Instinctually it’s a predator-prey relationship,” he said.
“But it’s humane because [Avro] is tethered to my fist. He’s not flying off to kill any animals. The smart pigeons exit really quickly.”
It’s the first method that has worked, according to Vivienne King, president of SkyTrain.
“We’ve tried nets, we’ve tried spikes, we’ve even tried mimicking the sounds of the falcons … and the pigeons keep coming back.”
But so far, the fear of a real falcon has kept them away, said Kamstra.
The pair start their day at 22nd station, then ride the train to VCC-Clark, Burrard, Renfrew, Rupert, and Holdom. At each stop, Kamstra walks around the station with Avro perched on his fist.
“We start travelling to each station randomly because that’s very upsetting to the pigeons, knowing this predator shows up randomly,” he said.
But the pigeons will eventually realize Avro is not actively hunting any of them, said Kamstra.
“Surprise,” he said. “I’ll change birds.”
Kamstra co-owns Raptors Ridge Birds of Prey Inc. and has 20 working birds in his roost. He brought another falcon to various SkyTrain stations on Tuesday to keep the pigeons “on their toes,” he explained.
He says he has more than enough raptors and handlers to patrol the entire SkyTrain network, but it will be up to TransLink whether to expand or even continuing funding the program.
Three visits to each station every day for six weeks is costing Translink $18,000, according to King.
When the project ends on January 28, staff will then analyze the resulting data and bring it to the board, who will decide whether the project is worth continuing.
But no matter what the decision is, there is one thing both animal welfare advocates and SkyTrain are asking people to do – stop feeding the pigeons.
“The problem is we deal with all of this, the pigeons move on, and then people feed the birds,” said King.
A sign at Burrard Station warns people that feeding birds is against the law. Not only does it attract pigeons back to the site, but it is also bad for pigeons’ health, and the health of bigger animals that eat pigeons, said Kamstra.
“Please, please, don’t feed the birds,” said King.
“We’re trying to make the system a little safer for everyone.”
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.
The Alexandria City Attorney’s Office has filed criminal charges against Bio Corporation, whose workers were shown drowning fully conscious pigeons and injecting live crayfish with chemicals in a PETA video exposé of the classroom dissection supplier.
Based on PETA’s evidenceand following an investigation by Alexandria police, Bio Corporation has been charged with 25 counts of cruelty to animals under a Minnesota statute that makes it a crime to “willfully instigate or in any way further any act of cruelty to any animal or animals.” The first hearing in the case is scheduled for January 31 at the Douglas County Courthouse
“These criminal charges send a strong message to the cruel, secretive animal-dissection industry that it’s not above the law,” says PETA Senior Vice President of Cruelty Investigations Daphna Nachminovitch. “The only sure way for caring educators and students to guarantee that they’re not supporting cruelty is by opting for superior virtual-dissection methods.”
PETA’s exposé also showed workers discussing how frozen turtles shipped to the facility sometimes came “back to life” and were refrozen. Workers without respirators injected dead animals with buffered formaldehyde, a known human carcinogen, and faulty formaldehyde lines sprayed them in the face. In response, PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—filed complaints with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Minnesota Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
TeachKind, PETA’s humane education division, has sent letters urging the dozens of school districts nationwide that have purchased dead animals from Bio Corporation to eliminate dissection from their schools. PETA offers free dissection software through its educational grants program. Non-animal educational tools have been shown to teach anatomy as well as—and, in many cases, better than—dissection.
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.
Every day, come rain, come shine, come London fog, three pigeons start their mooing-cooing morning song on the fire escape outside my bedroom window. I used to hate it, this dawn sing-along. Doves on a balcony have romance; Bayswater pigeons none. But I’ve grown fond of them: my private dawn chorus up in the chimneystacks. They start before it’s light, following the seasons, earlier and earlier towards high summer. (By June, when they’re at it before 4am, I do, I admit, fantasise about a cap gun.)
My grubby pigeons may not have been quite what King’s College researchers had in mind when they published a study showing how even a short burst of birdsong – or a glimpse of blue sky, or lunch under a tree – improves mood and mental well-being among city dwellers. Perhaps something more picturesque: a jay, a chaffinch, a chatter of Cockney sparrows.
We’re supposed to deplore monk parakeets, exotic invaders of our city parks, but I love their tropical call. You hear them before you see their flash of emerald feathers – and for a moment you might be on the Equator.
I’m partial to the grumble of Tube trains beneath the stalls in West End theatres…also, the clank-and-smash of recycling paladins tipped into lorries, wine bottles breaking as they go
If the pigeons get me up, the bells of St James’s Paddington mark my hours. Six chimes for breakfast, seven for a walk, twelve for lunch, five for pens down and saucepans out. On Sundays, when they ring long and loudly for High Mass at ten, I get a guilty feeling if I’m still in my dressing gown. Church bells are a comfort, too, to the insomniac. Companionable to lie there counting the small hours together.
In the list of city noise complaints – horns, car alarms, drills, revving engines, and the bleating of ‘This Vehicle is Reversing’ – you rarely hear anyone say: “I wish that church would put a sock in it”. John Betjeman captured the shyly welcoming tone in Summoned By Bellswhen he wrote of the ‘bearded rector’ of St Ervan’s ‘holding in one hand/ A gong-stick, in the other hand a book,/ Struck, while he read, a heavy-sounding bell,/ Hung from an elm bough by the churchyard gate./ “Better come in. It’s time for Evensong.”’
Do others feel mournful at the news that the twelve bells of St Paul’s northwest tower have fallen silent for the first time since the Second World War? They will be taken away for restoration and won’t peal again until November. No bongs from Big Ben, hushed bells at St Paul’s. The capital is strangely muffled.
Birds and bells are crowd-pleasers, but there are other, more niche noises that make up a city. I’m partial to the grumble of Tube trains beneath the stalls in West End theatres. There you are on the battlements of Elsinore, Hamlet’s father’s ghost flapping his bed-sheets… and a Piccadilly Line train thunders underfoot. Also, the clank-and-smash of recycling paladins tipped into lorries, wine bottles breaking as they go. If silence is golden, then familiar, reassuring sounds are a silver second-best.
I’m in Paris this week, in a borrowed flat above a school playground. At playtime, games, laughter, shouts echo up the lightwell. When the lesson bell rings, I think, with a lurch of stomach: ‘Double maths.’ It’s wonderful to realise each time that the bells aren’t summoning me.
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 company that provides dead animals for study and dissection is facing 25 charges of animal cruelty due to the way they allegedly killed the animals. If found guilty, the owners could face up to $25,000 in fines and/or up to six years in jail.
AsNewsweek reported in November, the biological supply company Bio Corporation was the subject of hidden video and an investigation into their practices. The video, shown above, wassecretly recorded by an undercover representative from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA. The footage showed workers at the company’s Alexandria, Minnesota, facility apparently drowning fully-conscious pigeons, injecting live crayfish with latex and claiming that they sometimes would freeze turtles to death. The complaint, The State of Minnesota vs. Bio Company BDA Bio Corporation, claims that these methods are inhumane and illegal.
The company says that most of the animals they acquire are brought to them already dead. But according to the undercover video, the company was obtaining some live animals and killing them at the facility in ways that the US Department of Agriculture consider illegal.
In a statement sent to Newsweek, Bill Wadd, co-owner of Bio-Corporation, said,“We understand that we were the subject of an undercover sting-type investigation,” he wrote. “Unfortunately, the animals observed in that investigation, including the pigeons and the crayfish, put our operation in a bad light.”
PETA took the video to the local police department, and then to a district judge, who insisted that the Alexandria police investigate. Newsweek published the footage on November 21, 2017, and the following day the Alexandria Police Department sent a detective to interview the owners of Bio Corporation and investigate the facility. The Alexandria Police Department did not immediately respond to an interview request for this article.
Officials reviewed the complaint, the affidavit from the undercover witness of the alleged abuse, the video and testimony from the detective who visited the facility. On December 29, 2017, they filed 25 misdemeanor charges of animal cruelty, specifically regarding treatment of the crayfish and pigeons, against the company.
Wadd said the company obtains pigeons ethically and euthanizes them humanely. Situated in an agricultural area, Bio Corporation collects pigeons from people who legally kill or capture them in order to protect their avian livestock, like turkeys, chickens, ducks and geese from diseases that pigeons can spread. The pigeons are usually dead when they get there, but sometimes the workers kill them, according to Wadd.
“We have a policy to euthanize these birds with gas but actually water submersion is a better and arguably more humane method because of the short time necessary to complete the process,” Wadd wrote.
Wadd said that the birds die after only 10 to 20 seconds. But drowning is not considered an acceptable form of euthanasia, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), because it causes unnesseary suffering. The AVMA has standards of humane euthanasia that legally must be followed by certain USDA-certified companies such as Bio Corporation.
“That said, we are using the gas now because of the complaint,” Wadd added. He also wrote that they intend to order only dead crayfish from now on.
Representatives for the company are due in court on January 31, 2018. They continue to sell pigeons online for between $9.85 and $12.15 each.
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.
Wattle seeds, along with those of gorse and broom, are popular with bronzewing pigeons, which will often be seen on the ground underneath these plants in late summer.
Pigeons are able to break down the extremely hard outer shell of the seeds to make use of the nutrients inside.
Currawongs, on the other hand, regurgitate wattle seeds and other indigestible matter in the form of pellets.
The pigeons have a digestive system that uses small stones in the gizzard to grind the seeds.
These perform a similar function to teeth.
A currawong’s digestive system is not able to crush such seeds.
As far as wattle seeds are concerned, the currawongs seem to eat only blackwoods, which apparently contain some nutrient in the red outer “funicle” surrounding the hard black seed that the birds seek out.
The blackwood seeds are thus spread by currawongs, but not by pigeons.
Most wattles, like the blackwood, form their seeds three or four months after spring flowering, but there are a few that take twelve months.
The wirilda and the lightwood are two others producing mature seeds twelve months after flowering.
These three wattle species produce their flowers later in the season than most others.
The bronzewings will feed underneath the wattles, gorse and broom for several months.
Because of their hard casing, wattle seeds can be viable for 20 years or more after falling.
LEADEN FLYCATCHER
A scarce and irregular small bird visitor to the Ballarat region is the leaden flycatcher, named for the lead-grey colour of the male.
A pair nesting at Brown Hill have attracted a lot of interest.
In appearance both the male and the female leaden flycatcher are very similar to the male and female satin flycatchers. At Brown Hill the two species are living close together, so the differences between the two can be more clearly appreciated.
The status of the leaden flycatcher in the Ballarat region is not clear.
It has visited and nested a few times, but perhaps it is a regular but un-noticed visitor here in small numbers, missed because of its similarity to the more common satin flycatcher.
The habitats of the two are usually different, with the leaden flycatcher preferring drier sites than the gully-loving satin.
Fortunately, the Brown Hill birds are nesting at about 10 metres high, and are relatively unperturbed by the photographers and observers.
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.
ECHUCA’S pigeon problem seems to be worsening with the Campaspe College of Adult Education now undertaking drastic action to restore their building and rid themselves of the bothersome birds.
General manager Karen Hagan has resulted to installing spikes to the entire heritage building at the cost of approximately $4000 and admits that it is only the beginning of the College’s attempts to rid themselves of the fowls.
‘‘We tried other things that haven’t worked,’’ she said.
‘‘We’ve tried a few spikes before, an eagle which was meant to scare the pigeons and a drone.
‘‘Now it’s time to take some permanent action.’’
The feathered frenemy fiasco is creating a huge number of issues for the college and the surrounding buildings with roof damage leading to water leakages, paint on the buildings and cars needing to be fixed and the guttering has been significantly affected. In total, Ms Hagan estimates that the costs will continue to climb.
‘‘It could literally be another $25,000 just to restore the building back to what it was,’’ she said.
‘‘We’ve tried to claim it on insurance but nothing has gone through.
‘‘We will need a new verandah and our walls fixed.
‘‘The damage is extensive.’’
By the end of next week Ms Hagan hopes the many thousands of spikes across the building will be installed and the gutters will be cleared – but this work is only the beginning of the damage control.
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.
