I’m surrounded by people who root for underdogs. Iran winning the World Cup? My cousins can dream. A career in engineering? I’d bet money that my mother still holds out hope I’ll have one. Deciding 2016 is the time for a protest vote? We need to have a talk, buddy.
But just about no one is with me on pigeons.
When I look at them, I see curious birds that choose to bumble around with missing toes instead of fly and yet, still manage to survive almost exclusively on the vast human waste we brought them to. When others spot them, they’re shooed away with a fierce glare or avoided altogether with a longer route.
The more I’ve observed this attitude in a city setting, the more I find myself as the Resident Pigeon Defender. Almost no one agrees. (To my simultaneous appreciation and horror, Mike Tyson — whose first fight reportedly began over a pigeon — is one of the few.) Because ultimately, these birds are misunderstood, resilient creatures who elicit a tellingly similar reaction as people facing street homelessness — and we should really think hard about why.
To be fair, it’s likely that I don’t instantly recoil at the sight of pigeons because, well, they were my pets at some point in elementary school. Along with a handful of chickens, my family had four show pigeons that we fed, kept in good health, let fly around the suburbs of Orange County, and watched as the respective alphas got into compulsory fights on the daily.
City pigeons, on the other hand, are a bit rough around the edges. They get flak for being dirty, leaving feces everywhere, clustering in open spaces, and just generally being a nuisance.
As Nathanael Johnson concluded in a chapter dedicated to “the majesty of pigeons” in Unseen City, what he first saw as filth and pestilence was really societal failings that produce poverty and waste. That obviously applies first and foremost to humans, who sometimes develop a connection to birds out of emotional survival.
“Perhaps we’d feel differently about pigeons if we were better at dealing with our own species,” Johnson wrote. “It is our own filth that has created the conditions that enable pigeon populations to swell to slum densities.”
A flock of pigeons gathers near some people sitting in a corner at the 16th and Mission Street BART plaza on Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2018. Benches were removed during a recent remodel of the plaza. (Kevin N. Hume)
In fact, we can draw a pretty direct line from human actions to the pigeons we know today. Pigeons were even once signs of wealth and touted around by aristocrats, Johnson wrote. After Samuel de Champlain, the French colonial governor of Quebec, brought them to North America, the New World’s increasing density proved to be a successful habitat for once-wild pigeons who became commonplace.
When food became abundant after agriculture boomed, pigeons picked up the crumbs and multiplied in numbers to a fault. We now see them aggressively fight for those crumbs, sometimes thrown by well-meaning or lonely folks, while diseases spread in crowded nests.
To dispel some of that disgust, we ought to at least know a little more about them before we write them off. If pigeons seem like they’re in their own world, it’s probably because they can see in ultraviolet, sense the Earth’s magnetic field, and pick up atmospheric changes far beyond humans in elevators.
Pigeons are also quite skilled at hiding their young — if you’ve ever seen a baby pigeon, consider it a deep honor. Squabs, as they’re known, stick their heads in their parents’ throats and thrust around for nutritious milk for the first two months of their lives. You can recognize a juvenile pigeon if you look for an oversized beak and brown eyes, rather than the gleaming, reddish-orange eyes seen in adults.
Better yet, take a moment to notice the green and purple on their necks. Though most pigeons are gray and black, others are white. This begs the question: What makes them so different from doves, that symbol of peace that people release at weddings? Not much besides color and location, as they’re all in the same Columbidae family of birds.
As I repeat these unsolicited points to friends and family, this pigeon advocacy of mine has had some small victories. My years-long housemate — who absolutely hated all birds when I first met her — began to feel wistful about no longer hearing the coos of pigeons that took refuge in the backyard stairway of our former Parkside home.
Another listened in horror as our landlord casually told us he crushed a bunch of their eggs, as if they were parasites. But many people remain unable to see the same majesty I do, and that’s their loss.
At the very least, it’s one less thing to spend energy hating in a stressful world. At most, it’s a chance to observe another species in all its glory while we’re occupied with fear and disgust for the downtrodden.
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 US bird rescue organisation is searching for the owner of a very fashionable bird, after it was found wearing a tiny vest covered in rhinestones.
Workers at the Fallen Feathers shelter in Arizona say the bird was brought to them complete with it’s delicately made bejeweled vest.
It posted a picture of the bird and its outfit to its Facebook page, saying the bird clearly had an owner out there looking for it.
“Looking for the owner of a lost pigeon that was turned in today,” a spokesperson said.
“The bird was wearing the flight suit with rhinestones. If you know the owner we have your friend here waiting.”
Commenters were amused by the bird’s outfit and many commented to praise it.
“Looks like it maybe El Chapo’s pigeon with that fancy gold encrusted vest,” one said.
“Oh my goodness! Too cute. I literally never heard of this but love it! All critters deserve love and care,” another wrote.
Fallen Feathers owner Judy Kieran told Arizona Family the bird was very friendly and quite domesticated, but the shelter hasn’t managed to find its owner yet.
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.
If you are missing a pet pigeon, it might be at a Northwest Valley animal shelter.
The pigeon is sporting a rhinestone vest, a sign that it belongs to someone.
A woman found the pigeon in Glendale, near 61st Avenue and Bell Road, over the weekend. It was wearing a bedazzled flight suit, and the woman turned it over to the Fallen Feathers Bird Rescue in Peoria.
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This bedazzled bird has since captured the hearts of hundreds on social media.
“She had it in a box with a towel thrown over the top of it, and I opened it up, and we took him out, and there he is with all of his bling,” said Fallen Feathers director Jody Kieran.
Kieran said she does not know if the bird is a male or female, but she does think the bird is less than six months old, and is clearly a house pet.
“A wild bird naturally flies to light, and this guy kind of hangs on your shoulder,” said Kieran. “He’s not looking to get out of here. So, he’s definitely used to being in someone’s home.”
The pigeon even likes to watch TV, and does seem to love all the attention.
“He watched a Western the other day with my daughter, so he does like Westerns, if that’s a clue to who the owner is,” said Kieran, “So, maybe he’s a Rhinestone Cowboy! haha! I don’t know.”
If no one claims the pigeon, Kieran said there are other options.
“We would try to get him wild and see if we can get him to join a flock,” said Kieran. “Chances are he’s missed the boat on that one, and we will have to try and find him a home, and if I can’t, I guess I’m going to have to get matching outfits!”
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 search is on for the owner of a pigeon decked out in a bedazzled vest.
“They’re rhinestones, so is he Liberace or the Rhinestone Cowboy? I haven’t figured that one out yet,” said Jody Kieran, who runs a nonprofit bird rescue.
A woman found the pigeon on her patio Sunday and turned him over to Kieran, who’s never seen a bird like him before.
“After doing this for 20 years, this is the first time that I’ve had one come in that was actually wearing an outfit,” she said. “It was more hysterical than anything.”
The pigeon is missing a few rhinestones, but judging by his calm behavior, Kieran is sure he’s someone’s missing pet.
Another clue is in the vest itself, which serves the practical purpose of catching and holding bird droppings.
“We have a label. So, somebody purchased this for him and put it on. He didn’t put it on himself,” Kieran said.
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.
Animals are expected to minimize time and effort to reinforcement. Thus, not pecking should be preferred over pecking. However, even if time is held constant, pigeons often peck when it is allowed but not required (e.g., fixed time schedules), but with such schedules pecking may be adventitiously reinforced. In the present experiment, to better compare a schedule of reinforcement that requires pecking with one that requires the absence of pecking, we compared a modified fixed-interval (FI) schedule in which reinforcement follows the first peck after the interval has elapsed and a differential-reinforcement-of-other behavior (DRO) schedule, which requires pigeons to abstain from pecking for a similar interval. The delay to reinforcement was matched on a trial-by-trial basis by yoking the duration of the FI to match the DRO schedule that preceded it. Of 12 pigeons, six preferred the DRO schedule over the FI schedule and six did not show a schedule preference. Those that were indifferent between the schedules apparently had a stronger spatial preference than their schedule preference. Individual differences in the preference of the pigeons may have been related to their behavior during the DRO schedule.
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.
Twenty-one white doves emerged from white wicker baskets on a recent afternoon in downtown Detroit and launched themselves into the air, drawing applause from people gathered below.
The birds, which are actually selectively bred homing pigeons, initially began heading south. Then their inborn navigational systems kicked in — call it Mother Nature’s GPS — and the birds turned around and flew north, back toward their home 100 miles away in Saginaw.
It wasn’t long after that Phyllis Stevens, co-owner of Saginaw-based Dreamers White Dove Release, got into her car and started the same return journey. But she relied on I-75 and her smartphone’s GPS. By the time Stevens arrived home two hours after the release, 10 of her 21 birds were already there, waiting on the roof of their pigeon loft in her backyard.
“Every time I see it, it always amazes me how they know to get home,” Stevens said.
The white dove release business is reaching new heights of popularity in Michigan.
Bird handlers and business owners are doing multiple releases every week from spring to fall for weddings, funerals, public events and special ceremonies — even high school proms. The latest trend is “gender reveals,” where partygoers look for a blue or a pink-painted dove to find out whether the expected baby is a boy or girl. (Handlers say the special paint is safe and soon washes off.)
The most common bird release in Michigan is for funerals, these owners said, and this service is particularly popular among black families.
“That lasting image of a dove taking off is far nicer I think than a shovel full of dirt,” said Joan Luther, owner of Winged Occasions dove release in Flat Rock.
There are roughly a dozen small and large dove release operations in Michigan. The price for a dove release starts about $150 and varies based on the number of birds, weather conditions and the event’s distance from their home. The further the distance, the higher the risk that not all pigeons will return.
For well-trained birds, the greatest danger isn’t getting lost but being attacked by a hawk. That is why some handlers have already stopped flying their birds over long distances for the remainder of 2018.
“The hawks come out and they are very vicious because they are looking for food. They want to get fat for the winter,” Stevens said.
Come spring, there is a heightened risk that some birds — especially the males — will get sidetracked on their flights by short-term love interests, shacking up for days or weeks with what Stevens calls the “bum pigeons that hang out on the overpasses.”
But even those waylaid birds often return home.
“They’re kind of like children. If you put a roof over their head and you feed them, they usually come back,” said Michael Phillips, owner of West Michigan White Dove Release in Hudsonville.
Pigeon release?
Bird handlers say they can legitimately call their service white dove releases because homing pigeons descended from rock doves.
“We call them doves because would you like to have some ‘pigeons’ released at your wedding?” said Luther of Winged Occasions.
Where there is controversy, it often concerns the dove releases that use real doves. Those birds, known as white ringneck doves, lack the survival and navigational instincts of homing pigeons and therefore won’t fly home and will likely die.
Handlers who raise and train white homing pigeons consider it unethical to release ringneck doves. It is thought that only a handful of outfits in Michigan use these throwaway doves.
“If you use doves, doves don’t come home. Those birds are just going to die,” Phillips said. “And after a funeral, you don’t want that thought in your head, ‘My nephew died, and they threw some birds up in the air, and they all died.’ ”
Still, some activists including People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals consider any type of bird release problematic because the events can be stressful and life-threatening, even for homing pigeons that safely make it home.
“Is this their preference? To be caged, released and forced to do this repeatedly? Certainly not,” said Stephanie Bell, a director in PETA’s cruelty investigations unit.
A YouTube video surfaced last year of a white dove release during a funeral near a highway in which one of the birds flew directly into the path of a tractor-trailer, eliciting gasps from the gathered mourners. It is unclear where that incident occurred.
High return rate
Bird handlers interviewed for this article said the return rates for their birds are 90 percent or higher.
All 21 birds released last month in downtown Detroit made it back to Saginaw. There was one straggler, Stevens said, who eventually showed up four days later.
The Oct. 26 release was the finale for the Detroit Police Department’s “Stop Domestic Violence” event marking Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
Police Sgt. Kyla Williams said the department had ended the event in previous years with a balloon release and decided to try something different this year.
“Doves symbolize love, hope and peace, and love, hope and peace have meaning for domestic violence survivors,” said Williams, who found the visual spectacle of the release to be deeply moving.
“I thought it was beautiful and just amazing to see one of God’s creatures soar,” she said.
Intensive training
Release birds don’t naturally know to return to their coop; they must be trained.
Stevens said it generally takes 16 weeks to train a bird before it is ready to fly all the way from Detroit. The training regimen involves placing the birds into a travel cage, loading the cage into her car, then driving out every day and releasing the birds from steadily increasingly distances.
A 50-mile maximum radius is common for release businesses. Stevens said that her flock can handle 100-mile radius flights because they inherited genes from her late uncle’s racing pigeons for strong navigational sense. The longest her birds have ever flown was 120 miles, she said.
Because proper training is a major time commitment, handlers and business owners such as Stevens are often in retirement or nearing retirement and just working part-time.
“You have to keep them in shape — they’re like little athletes,” said Stevens, who has 150 birds in her release flock.
How not to hold
Birds can be released by hand as well as by basket. But one must hold them properly.
There was once a bride who held her pigeon way too close to her wedding dress.
“And it pooed on her,” Stevens recalled. “But the wedding planner handled it beautifully — ‘Oh, you’re so blessed. This bird blessed you.’ And the whole crowd clapped, and she let the bird go.”
Peaceful closure
The number of birds per release is generally up to customers. For West Michigan White Dove Release, the standard funeral service has four birds.
“Three for the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. One more for the deceased,” Phillips explained.
Winged Occasions, in business since 1990, has released as many as 100 birds at high school graduations and once let go 50 during a wedding.
The most Stevens ever released was 30 birds. That occasion was a remembrance service in Detroit this year for a 30-year-old man who was the victim of a violent crime. The release took place at the side of a street in desolate part of the city where the man’s body had been discovered.
“A big reason that someone will call is they feel that this gives a peaceful closure at the end of the funeral and brings a sense of comfort to the family,” she said.
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.
