by johnnymarin | Feb 27, 2018 | Pigeons in the News
During the last few weeks many homing pigeons have been shot by farmers and others who have mistaken them for wood pigeons, and in view of the serious results of the destruction of trained birds employed by the Government, whose homing pigeons are at work in all parts of the country, it has been found necessary to repeat the warning given some time ago against careless shooting, which may lead to the loss of birds engaged on service of the highest importance. It is pointed out, in fact, that the work of the Government pigeons is sometimes literally a matter of life and death to our fighting men, many of whom owe their lives to the speed of the birds. A notable case is that of Skipper Thomas Crisp, VC, who died at the wheel under fire from a German submarine, but lived long enough to send a message by pigeon. The bird flew away with his appeal for help for the crew, and, thanks to the timely arrival of the messenger, they were saved. On another occasion a flying boat and a hydroplane got into difficulties in stormy weather, and it was feared that all lives would be lost. A pigeon was sent out with a message calling for help, and in the face of a fierce wind the bird managed to make its way home. It died from exhaustion on arrival, but its message had been delivered, help was sent to the crews, and the lives of all were saved. The official warning to the thoughtless to avoid shooting homing birds is backed up by a reminder that heavy penalties may be, and in some cases have been, inflicted by the magistrates on offenders.
• News in brief
While flying near Rugby Second Lieutenant Harold Griffith Nelson was killed through falling from his machine at a height of 3,000ft. The aeroplane continued its flight and came down a few fields away.
At a police court in a Kentish raid area James Kendall was charged with selling adulterated milk. He urged in defence that the milk was sold exactly as it came from the cows, which were suffering from shell shock. A fine of £8 3s, with costs, was imposed.
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.
Contact Info: 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD (www.pigeonpatrol.ca)
by johnnymarin | Feb 20, 2018 | Pigeons in the News
Hyderabad: Having remained stuck in a time warp for long, the hands of four clocks located on towers in the city will start ticking soon with the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) working towards restoration and renovation of clocks in the historical towers at Mozamjahi Market, Shah Ali Banda, Monda Market and Sultan Bazaar.
The clocks in these towers had remained defunct for last several years and with complaints pouring in from different sections, the municipal corporation is now gearing up to repair and get them functional.
Among all the clock towers in the city, the municipal corporation has decided to repair and restore the clocks at Mozamjahi Market, Shah Ali Banda, Monda Market and Sultan Bazaar first. The repairs will be confined only to clocks and no civil works will be taken up the towers are heritage structures.
In the past, a couple of firms were entrusted with the task of maintaining the clocks but due to different issues, including non-payment of monthly charges etc, the repair works were pending since long.The municipal corporation is roping in private firms involved in maintenance of the clocks as maintenance has been a major challenge for the civic body all these years.
However, learning lessons from the past, the municipal corporation this time is making the installation and maintenance of the clocks for a period of two years. The works will be taken up with a cost of about Rs.15 lakhs, said an official from GHMC.
Apart from technical aspects, pigeons have also made the maintenance of the clocks a task for the municipal corporation.
At places like Mozzam Jahi Market and Shah Ali Banda, the pigeons flock the hands of the clocks. As a result, the hands either got damaged or stopped functioning. To fix the issue, this time efforts are being made to wrap pigeons net to obstruct the birds from entering the towers, he said.
On the repairs of clock towers at other places, he informed that measures were being taken up by Heritage Cell. While, the Charminar clock repair will be taken up under Charminar Pedestrianisation Project, the one at Fateh Maidan Club is also due for repairs, he added.
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.
Contact Info: 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD (www.pigeonpatrol.ca)
by johnnymarin | Feb 19, 2018 | Pigeons in the News
The special pigeon that delivered top secret messages during the Second World War was bestowed a mark of recognition usually reserved for people and places that have significantly shaped Britain’s history.
Last week, Mary the pigeon became the first animal to be given an English Heritage blue plaque to commemorate where she lived.
The prized pigeon lived in West Street in Exeter, Devon, where the blue plaque was placed on Saturday.
Mary was dropped behind enemy lines where she was repeatedly attacked by gunfire.
She then delivered secret messages across the English Channel to her home.
Her time with the National Pigeon Service saw Mary awarded the Dickin Medal in 1945 — an honour bestowed on hard-working animals during war time.
Mary escaped her loft in Exeter uninjured despite being bombed on three occasions.
The tenacious pigeon was attacked by German hawks stationed in Pas-de-Calais but escaped — returning home with wounds to her neck and right breast.
She recovered and was put back in service two months later.
Mary returned with the tip of one wing shot off and three pellets were removed from her body on a second flight — but recovered and returned to service.
During her final trip, her neck muscles were damaged by shrapnel.
Mary’s owner, pigeon breeder Cecil “Charlie” Brewer, made her a leather collar and took her out of service.
Exeter Civic Society unveiled the blue plaque at at Brewer’s home and shoemaker shop of 63 years.
It is the civic society’s first blue plaque to commemorate a heroic animal and its owner.
In 1922, the year of his marriage, Brewer and his wife Ena moved to the road and set up a workshop to breed and train homing pigeons.
He was made a special constable in 1941 with responsibility for general control of war pigeons in the area and decorated in 1945 for war services.
Mary of Exeter died in 1950 and is buried with other animal heroes in the PDSA Pet Cemetery in Ilford, Essex.
She is commemorated in Northernhay Gardens, Exeter, as well as in the mosaic under the Exeter St Thomas railway bridge and on the animals war memorial in Hyde Park.
Charlie Brewer died in 1985, aged 90.
To be awarded an official English Heritage plaque, the proposed recipient must have died at least 20 years ago.
This is to help ensure that the decision about whether or not to shortlist a candidate is made with a sufficient degree of hindsight.
According to English Heritage, plaques are as much about the buildings in which people — and animals — lived and worked as about the subjects being commemorated.
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.
Contact Info: 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD (www.pigeonpatrol.ca)
by johnnymarin | Feb 6, 2018 | Pigeons in the News
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.
Contact Info: 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD (www.pigeonpatrol.ca)
by johnnymarin | Feb 2, 2018 | Pigeons in the News
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.
Contact Info: 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD (www.pigeonpatrol.ca)
by johnnymarin | Jan 31, 2018 | Pigeons in the News
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 evidence and 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.
Contact Info: 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD (www.pigeonpatrol.ca)
