by Ryan Ponto | Jan 29, 2017 | Pigeons in the News
MOSUL, Iraq – For the first time in over two years, flocks of white and grey pigeons can be seen circling Mosul’s rooftops.
Among the many rules imposed by the Islamic State group when it seized the northern Iraqi city was a ban on breeding or flying the birds, which many Iraqis keep as pets or raise for food. The extremists feared young men practicing the hobby would neglect their religious studies or spy on female neighbors from the rooftops.
Many Mosul residents slaughtered their flocks or confined them to cages, fearing detention or death if they were found out — but 17-year-old Mustafa Othman couldn’t bring himself to do it.
“I couldn’t bear locking them up, my heart wouldn’t allow me to do it,” he said. “They were created to fly.”
Othman would sneak upstairs to feed his birds. He couldn’t clap or yell to fly them in formation, but he left the hatches open so they could come and go.
“Every time he came up here, he risked his life,” said his brother, Afan. “It’s crazy, but he loves them.”
Othman’s father gave him his first birds when he was just 11 years old. He always loved animals, and the pigeons were one of the few pets his family allowed him to have in their small home.
Their rooftop and the balconies betrayed other secrets kept from Islamic State militants, who overran Mosul in the summer of 2014 and imposed their harsh version of Islamic law.
The Othmans threw a blanket over a satellite dish near the pigeon coop, so they could keep up with the news. They hung thick curtains across balconies so that women in the family could water plants and hang laundry without wearing the all-encompassing veils mandated by the extremist group.
When Iraqi forces at last drove IS from the neighborhood earlier this month, Othman celebrated their liberation by releasing his birds into the smoke-filled sky. “All I felt was happiness,” he said.
Today, the birds share the skies with U.S.-led warplanes and Iraqi helicopters, as Iraqi forces work to drive IS out of the remainder of the city. Over the last three months, they have fought their way from the east to the Tigris River, which divides the city in two, but IS still rules western Mosul.
“Sometimes, birds we don’t know land on our roof and they have cigarettes tied to their ankles,” said Younis Fathi, Othman’s uncle. He assumes the birds are used by smugglers to reach IS-ruled neighborhoods, where smoking is forbidden.
The streets below Othman’s rooftop betray the heavy toll the war has taken on the city. Buildings are flattened, walls are pockmarked and bridges destroyed. Just across the street, the bodies of two IS militants have been left to rot in a building destroyed by an airstrike.
But Othman mostly looks upward where the birds wheel overhead in formation.
“I would have died for them,” he says. “But we survived.”
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 Ryan Ponto | Jan 18, 2017 | Pigeons in the News
As night-time approaches in Sanliurfa, southeastern Turkey, most of the alleyways of the city’s old bazaar are emptying out, except for one.
The bustle of daytime trading has died down, but on this little street, a stream of men carry cardboard boxes filled with pigeons to a cluster of three teahouses.
Here, they sell the birds at Sanliurfa’s famed auctions to a dedicated band of pigeon keepers and breeders, a pastime that has been thriving for hundreds of years across the region and over the nearby border into war-torn Syria.
In a country where the minimum wage is about 1 400 Liras ($367) a month, enthusiasts regularly easily spend hundreds of dollars for one bird.
“I once sold a pair of pigeons for 35 000 Turkish Lira,” says auctioneer İmam Dildas. “This is a passion, a hobby you cannot quit. I’ve been known to sell the fridge and my wife’s gold bracelets to pay for pigeons.”
Sanliurfa sits just 50km (30 miles) from Syria, in a southeastern region rocked by its own clashes between government troops and Kurdish insurgents. But the trade has taken the turmoil in its stride and carried on.
In the early days of the conflict next door, there was a glut of birds on the market as enthusiasts from northern Syria fled into Turkey with their pigeons.
“Prices fell due to oversupply but as the conflict escalated and there were no more pigeons coming from Syria, prices rose again,” says 23-year-old breeder İsmail Ozbek.
He keeps about 200 pigeons – together worth about 50 000 lira – in lofts fitted with alarms and closed circuit TV cameras.
At the auction, men sip tea and smoke cigarettes as Dildas picks up a bird and shows it to the crowd. He gives a starting bid price and buyers shout out their offers.
Prices vary from 30 to 3 500 Lira. Some birds wear silver adornments on their feathers or feet to boost their value.
At the end of the night, Dildas has sold around 13 000 Lira worth of birds. His commission is 10 percent.
When they are not trading, most of the city’s pigeon fanciers head to the rooftops at sunset and let their birds stretch their wings. Hundreds fill the sky – a familiar sight in the city – before following their training and heading home.
“The birds are my friends. They give me peace,” says 55-year-old enthusiast Resit Guzel.
He gives his 70 birds quality feed and regular vitamins.
“Upkeep … costs 5 Lira a day, which is not much. Even if it cost me more, I wouldn’t mind,” he says.
“They have been my hobby for the last 40 years … You can only understand if you keep pigeons.”
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 Ryan Ponto | Jan 6, 2017 | Pigeons in the News
PIGEONS have become the talk of Caldicot town centre with local councillors aiming to crack down on the public feeding them.
Councillors Jim Higginson and Frank Rowberry are calling for firmer backing from Monmouthshire County Council to control the pigeon population.
In recent years the local authority’s environmental health department have installed posters around the town centre dissuading people.
Head of public protection David Jones said: “Monmouthshire’s Environmental Health team has liaised with the town council and local shop owners to raise awareness of the difficulties caused by the increased number of pigeons in Caldicot’s shopping centre and give advice on appropriate measures to control the problem.
“Posters have been placed on local notice boards asking visitors and residents not to feed the pigeons.
“Our environmental health officers will approach any persons who are seen feeding the pigeons on a regular basis and will advise them of their responsibilities under littering laws.”
But Cllr Frank Rowberry believes that more permanent measures need to be taken to combat a “serious health and safety risk”.
“We’ve called for culls and a by-law to be put in place by the county council but we just keep getting knocked back.
“There were concerns about a hawk attacking pigeons in front of people.
He added: “We haven’t got a problem with them doing it in the wild, why shouldn’t we here?”
An image of members of the public feeding birds in the town centre posted on a Facebook page last week attracted more than 100 comments and interactions.
The post on the Caldicot Community Page has since been closed by the page’s administration.
According to Cllr Higginson, the council are aware members of the public continue to feed the birds.
The county council chairman has also claimed that he was threatened outside one of the village’s eateries when the attempted to stop someone from feeding the pigeons.
He said: “It’s a nuisance, especially to youngsters in particularly who frequent the town centre who can get scared by the birds flying quite close to them.
“At the end of the day, feeding these pigeons is littering and in my opinion it is completely indefensible.”
A spokeswoman for London & Cambridge Properties (LCP), the property developer who own the majority of buildings in the town centre, said: “We are aware of the issue with pigeons, and we will be working with the town council and local authority to address the problem going forward.”
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 Ryan Ponto | Dec 22, 2016 | Pigeons in the News
In the waning hours of 2016, Donald Trump issued a statement that sensitive and classified information should not be transmitted using computers. To back up his claim, he cited the expertise of his ten-year old son.
“It’s very important, if you have something really important, write it out and have it delivered by courier, the old-fashioned way because I’ll tell you what, no computer is safe. I don’t care what they say, no computer is safe. I have a boy who’s 10 years old. He can do anything with a computer. You want something to really go without detection, write it out and have it sent by courier.”
As Trump is due to be sworn in as the next President of the United States in January of 2017, it is important that scientists look toward a way of implementing his preferred standard.
Thankfully, the Internet Engineering Task Force, the organization that sets the standards for the Internet has already released such a protocol, and they did it back in 1990.
RFC 1149, or A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers, was the first draft of a protocol that addressed the reliability and speed of carrying data traffic via avian carriers, or homing pigeons. The protocol demonstrates that high delay, low throughput, and low altitude service can be accomplished with a point to point topology. Even though there is individual low throughput with individual carriers, multiple carriers can be used because they operate in a three-dimensional space, as opposed to the one-dimensional space used by current internet standards.
Other benefits of RFC 1149 are that the packet carriers are self-regenerating (albeit at a very slow rate), and that they self-generate auditing trails, usually found on logs, cars, and the occasional unfortunate person underwing. Unfortunately, transmissions made via RFC 1149 are subject to dropped packets, and the transmissions are extremely vulnerable to storms. When used in tactical environments, the packets should also be encrypted to avoid data interception.
Because nothing in the world of communication is ever static, the RFC was revisited and a new experimental protocol was issued. RFC 2549, or IP over Avian Carriers with Quality of Service, was issued in 1999 and served to amend RFC 1149.
RFC 2549 introduces new service levels for Internet Protocol over Avian Carrier (IPoAC). The levels in decreasing order of speed and reliability are Concorde, First, Business, and Coach. Using this network allows the user to also gain frequent flyer miles as well as bonus miles if Concorde or First classes are chosen. An alternate carrier that has a greater bulk capacity was also introduced, but ostrich delivery is slower and requires bridges between domains.
The protocol stresses the advantages of IPoAC, as they will avoid standard tunneling or bridging, enabling them to avoid long queues. However, when they deal with web traffic, spiders are often absorbed into the packet carrier and ejected in a more compact form. If data encapsulation is required or requested, standard saran wrap can be used. Alternately, encapsulation of the data carrier in a hawk has been known to occur, but the data is often mangled and irretrievable.
The protocol has been tried in numerous real world applications. The first test occurred in 2001, when the Bergen Linux user group tested out the Carrier Pigeon Internet Protocol (CPIP) over a three-mile test distance. There were 9 packets transmitted but only 4 packets received, resulting in a 55 percent packet loss. The ping was an atrocious 5222806.6 ms, however.
Another test occurred in 2009, when CPIP was used with a data carrier named “Winston” raced against a Telkom SA ASDL line. The test was to send 4 GB of data over 60 km. The CPIP beat the ADSL transfer handily, completing transmission in 2 hours, 6 minutes, 57 seconds. The ASDL line had only completed 4 percent of the required data transmission at that point.
While some may lambast President-elect Donald Trump for not being computer savvy, his awareness of this little-used Internet Protocol actually shows great awareness of the evolving conditions of technology. Here’s hoping that President Trump is able to find a way to fund RFC 1149 and 2549 so that American state secrets can remain even more secure in the future.
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 Ryan Ponto | Dec 9, 2016 | Pigeons in the News
IS IT TRUE that tempers flared in George Street on Wednesday and Cabinet on Thursday over Minister of Commerce Donville Inniss’ call for somebody to be held responsible for the environmental issues currently affecting several businesses on the South Coast?
Is it true that some ministers expressed frustration with the manner in which Inniss continually speaks out on issues in a manner that could be interpreted as him distancing himself from them?
Can someone break the silence that characterises the Government’s handling of most issues and state if it is true or not that many in Cabinet are concerned that by his statements Inniss is seeking to promote his leadership credentials over and above Prime Minister Freundel Stuart and Richard Sealy?
Can someone in the Democratic Labour Party’s hierarchy confirm or deny that there is a general consensus in the party and Cabinet that Inniss’ statements tend to hurt the image of both as effective institutions and moves have been quietly discussed on what can be done to muzzle him?
Cou Cou awaits word on each of these with bated breath.
Holding noses over Boyce
A POLITICAL STINK is brewing on the South Coast even worse than the overflowing sewage seeping through the manholes and on to the road.
It involves the support businesses and residents will give to incumbent Christ Church South representative John Boyce when the time comes after he was a no-show at a town hall meeting to discuss the impact the sewage problem was having on them.
Cou Cou was told some business people and residents at the meeting were overheard saying among themselves that if Boyce could not be there to hear them in their time of need, then he better think again about coming to ask for their support in the forthcoming general election.
We are not sure what they meant by “their support”, so we can’t say if they were talking political or financial support. What we can say for sure is that the minister seems to be in “doo doo” over his non-attendance.
A container of worms
AN EMBARRASSING incident over the repossession of a newly renovated container is causing a bumpy ride in a certain ministry.
According to usually reliable sources, the rented container was renovated for $60 000 to house an outpost of a Government department. It had all the creature comforts – a roof, air conditioning and electrical fittings – and only needed tenants to move in.
But it appears someone in the ministry dropped the ball. Or there was no money to pay for the lease.
Whichever is the case, the fact is that the office which is supposed to house Government employees whose job it is to help the public prepare for a major exercise in the coming months now sits closed up, the new roof off and no one knows if it will be removed from the site or not.
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 Ryan Ponto | Nov 28, 2016 | Pigeons in the News
ORLANDO, Fla. (WOFL FOX 35) – When you look up at the Orange County Courthouse, you may spot vultures in the sky or on a top floor.
“There was a circle of about 50 or 60 of them when I saw them,” said Michael Deen, who works at the courthouse. “I guess it’s kind of ominous.”
But experts say the birds of prey just like how the building is laid out with places to perch and rising air currents.
“You’ve got to have the right structure and they apparently have the perfect structure for vultures,” said Dianna Flynt with the Audubon Center for Birds of Prey in Maitland.
Orange County officials say the vultures haven’t been around the courthouse for a while because a hawk moved in. They’ve returned over the last few weeks with the predator now gone.
Flynt says the birds aren’t dangerous but they can cause some problems.
“They’re nosy and they’re curious and they have a tendency to be very destructive to some things,” she explained.
Damage to the building and bird droppings is why the county is working to get the vultures to move out. We’re told a bird deterrent system is in the works. That could include wires so the birds don’t perch there. County officials say they don’t know how much the plan will cost 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.
Contact Info: 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD (www.pigeonpatrol.ca)
