by Pigeon Patrol | Sep 10, 2015 | Bird Deterrent Products, Bird Netting, Pigeon Patrol's Services, Pigeon Spikes, Pigeons in the News
Hammad desert is the most sought-after location for falcon hunters in the Kingdom and Gulf countries. The hunters make a beeline for the desert located 100 km west of Arar city in the Northern Border province during the month of September every year when the hunting season opens. The month is marked with the arrival of large numbers of falcons including highly-priced varieties.
Falcons have been a passion for the people of the Arabian Peninsula since time immemorial. It is during the month of September that falcon lovers make their trips to the virgin desert looking for the rare varieties of the bird that make a stop over in the deep desert in the middle of their annual migratory journey. The Hammad desert is close to Hazm Al-Galameed town in the northern part of the Kingdom.
The price of a single bird of the rare varieties which are called by names such as Safi (Pure), Ashaal (Fiery), Fatih (light), Abyad (White), Farisi (Persian), and Sinjari have a starting price of SR315,000, according to the Saudi Press Agency. The falcon hunters strike up their tents deep in the desert where it is extremely cold during the night. They carry water and other rations to to sustain them in the desert for several days. They also have with them the latest positioning devices so as not to lose their way.
They sit around a fire close to the tents in the biting cold and narrate their past exploits in falcon hunting while sipping the simmering coffee. Arab passion for falcons is so deep-seated that some poets compose elegies to commemorate their lost bird. Poet Muhammad Al-Lamee recited a sad poem about the grief and anguish he has been suffering since he lost his bird Arqat on a nocturnal gathering of falconers in the desert. Falconers take special care to only go to locations where hunting is permitted.
They never resort to the indiscriminate killing of wild fauna or enter wild life sanctuaries to hunt down the animals for fear of the extinction of any kind of animal or bird. A veteran falconer in the Northern Border Province, Daham Al-Anazi, said the hunting season of the migratory bird starts on Sept. 1 and lasts until the beginning of the winter. He added that falconers come to Hammad to hunt several varieties of the bird including the Harr, a breed that is in high demand because of its beautiful feathers that can grow up to a span of 17 inches. Falconers require intense training before they can hunt. A hunting team has been known to have hunted six falcons in a single day.
Regarding the hunting techniques adopted by the hunters, falconer Tayyeb Hamoud said a traditional method is to fit a net to the back of a pigeon as bait and keep it ready for the falcons passing by early in the morning. Quails with similar nets and tied to some heavy objects are also used to catch the prized birds, he said.
Another method used to catch falcons that refuse to fall into the traps of pigeons or quails is to offer pigeons directly to the falcon without any net. Then the hunter follows the bird until it is tired and catches it while it rests in the shadows of a shrub. Some people hunt them at night using a metal net in the form of a cylinder-shaped basket after blinding the bird by aiming a strong beam into its eyes.
Another experienced hunter said most of the falcons pass out shortly after being hunted but a little sprinkle of water revives them.
The price of a falcon is determined by its speed, ability to hunt bustards, shortness of shanks, symmetry of the beaks, and fast flutter of wings. Even falcons with a lifespan of 20 years can become weak after a period of only 12 years, according to an expert.
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 Pigeon Patrol | Sep 9, 2015 | 4-S Gel Bird repellent, Bird Deterrent Products, Bird Netting, Pigeon Patrol's Services, Pigeon Spikes, UltraSonic Bird Control
Feathered diners at a McDonald’s restaurant in Wellington have driven a customer to lay complaints with the city council.
Wellington man Vinod Mistry is a fan of the fast-food franchise, but does not want to share his table and fries with a pigeon.
The Lambton Quay McDonald’s was a haven for hungry pigeons and the Wellington City Council needed to force the fast-food giant to keep them out of the indoor dining area, Mistry said. The birds make their way to the second floor via an internal escalator.
However, the council said it was up to the company to deal with the pigeons and it has repeatedly asked for the issue to be dealt with for six years.
McDonald’s said it was working with the council to fix the problem.
Mistry said he made two separate complaints last week about the pigeons in the restaurant.
The council appeared to swoop on a small business if there was a squeak of a mouse, rat or spider in their premises, he said.
But it appeared that, when it came to the feathered vermin, the council was turning a blind eye.
“Pigeons are just as much of a health risk as other animals. You never know when one flying around the restaurant or sitting on table could put droppings in your food.”
Council’s public health operations team leader Andrew Taylor confirmed there was a health risk, but only if diners inadvertently ate pigeon poo with their meal.
“Bird poo can contain bacteria such as salmonella, so it is not safe. But the person would have to ingest some of the bacteria through direct contamination or hand contact,” Taylor said.
The council had been trying to get McDonald’s to keep pigeons out of the premises since 2008, he said. “Every time we’ve spoken to them about the pigeon issue, we have been told by management that they will address the issue.”
The restaurant had tried different methods, such as a distress-call speaker at the entrance and lowering the entry-space height to the food premises, but none had proven to be effective, Taylor said.
Council staff would be contacting McDonald’s this week to discuss how they proposed to rectify the matter so “these ongoing complaints cease”.
McDonald’s spokesman Kim Bartlett said pigeons were a widespread issue in the Wellington CBD and the Lambton Quay McDonald’s had taken a number of measures to address the problem, including “working with an external company on effectively managing the presence of the birds”.
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 Pigeon Patrol | Sep 7, 2015 | Animal Deterrent Products, Bird Deterrent Products, Bird Netting, Pigeon Patrol's Services, Pigeons in the News, UltraSonic Bird Control
They tried almost everything to shoo away the pigeons that had taken over the entire apartment complex. They laid nets along the building, employed a worker to drive away the roosting pigeons and got iron grills for their windows.
But none of these devices deterred the adaptive “blue rock” pigeons which had made Spartan Apartments on Richmond Road their abode here.
The residents have now found a way to keep the rock pigeons at bay. Some residents were aggravating the situation by feeding the pigeons which proved to be a force multiplier for avian.
Finally, the apartment owners, with the help of bird experts, tried something unique.
They fixed an acoustic box emitting sounds of different birds and it worked. When sounds like pigeons in distress, or predator birds like falcons started coming out of the box, the pigeons flew away, scared by the alien sounds.
The box emits the sounds for one minute; then there’s a gap of three minutes before it starts blaring out once again.
The residents’ association in this apartment building have now launched a massive awareness drive, asking people not to feed the pigeons, which would encourage them to nest in the shafts.
“The acoustic boxes have helped somewhat but some of the birds try to come back, knowing that the box will not harm them. Now the developers of the box are trying different sounds so that the birds are kept at bay,” they 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.
Contact Info: 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD (www.pigeonpatrol.ca)
by Pigeon Patrol | Sep 6, 2015 | 4-S Gel Bird repellent, Bird Deterrent Products, Bird Netting, Pigeon Patrol's Services, Pigeons in the News
Residents in a coastal Moray town are terrified of losing their bank because more than 100 pigeons have been left to run the “dilapidated” building into the ground.
The Bank of Scotland branch on Grant Street in Burghead is only open for two hours a week, but for an ageing Burghead community, who are not technologically savvy, those two hours are critical.
However, the windows on one side of the building were broken and boarded up, and more than eight inches of pigeon waste covers the attic floors.
Burghead Community Council chairman, Bill Davidson, said that the building had been a problem for a long time and he couldn’t understand why the owners and Moray Council let it go to “rack and ruin”.
Council secretary John Gordon said it was sad to see the “dilapidated state” of the bank and labelled it a health hazard.
Mr Gordon added that environmental health contacted the owner to arrange for a local tradesman to board up the windows so that the pigeons could no longer enter the bank.
Janet Glendinning and her husband, Patrick, who have voluntarily cleaned the entire outer area of the bank since 1991, said they hope the owners will step up to the crease and get professionals in.
Mrs Glendinning said: “We sincerely hope to see this beautiful building restored to its former glory, and cleanliness returned to this area of Burghead.
“I personally know how important this branch is to elderly people in Burghead.”
Heldon and Laich councillor Chris Tuke said: “It is one of the nicest architectural buildings in the town, and everybody would like to see it cleaned up, but it’s really down to the owners. Unless environmental health identify a serious health problem, it’s hard to tell any owner of a vacant property what to do with it.”
Co-owner of the building, Donald Gormley, said he felt the concerns of the local community and hoped to sell the property in the near future.
Mr Gormley said: “The co-owners of the property empathise with the discontentment of the Burghead residents at the dilapidated condition of the property and the colonisation of same by the feral rock pigeons.
“Councillor Tuke expressed his gratitude to the owners for the recent steps taken to address any potential environmental health/safety concerns and for their continued monitoring of the situation.
“Imminently, the property will be advertised on the open market for sale which will hopefully secure a buyer to develop the property for residential or alternate use.”
A Bank of Scotland spokeswoman said: “Bank of Scotland does not own the section of the property which is being renovated and therefore has no control over how it is maintained. We understand the frustration of residents and can only apologise to customers for any inconvenience caused.”
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 Pigeon Patrol | Sep 5, 2015 | Bird Deterrent Products, Bird Netting, Pigeon Patrol's Services, Pigeon Spikes, Pigeons in the News
The proliferation of rock pigeons (Columba livia) on high-rise buildings all over the world seems to coincide strangely with the disappearance of house sparrows. Both are synanthropic birds that crave to be around human dwellings, the sparrows indoors and the pigeons outdoors. But the patterns of human habitats and lifestyles seem to influence urban wildlife profoundly.
There are three types of rock pigeons: the ancestral rock pigeon in the wild, the domesticated ones, and the feral ones. They can interbreed; they are all but one species. Doves are different from pigeons. The wild rock pigeons live on rocky mountain cliffs and the seashore. They are said to have originated 5,000 to 10,000 years ago in the eastern Mediterranean region.
The Sumerians of Mesopotamia (what is southern Iraq today) seem to have started domesticating them from about 3000 B.C., breeding an amazingly wide diversity of fancy breeds. The Mughal emperors (who ruled from 1526 to 1858), particularly Akbar, fancied them. Akbar’s keepers reared for him about 20,000 pigeons. Of these, they used to carry along about 500 fantails, his favourites, on his camps.
Charles Darwin had a dovecote (pigeon house) in the garden of his country estate at Down House in Kent during 1850-1856. This was no hobby. He conducted breeding experiments to produce bewildering varieties (breeds) to study artificial selection and natural selection in survival and evolution. Some of the domesticated ones might have escaped as runaways back into the wild, as ferals in search of cliffs. But they seem to be returning to our cities, which are providing them ‘concrete cliffs’ on high-rises.
Air-conditioned apartments in these ‘cliffs’, with closed doors and windows, windows with broad ledge-like bases outside, window sills above to ward off rain and shine, provide excellent niches for these feral pigeons for courting, roosting, and even nesting and breeding. Unfortunately, changed urban architectural designs and lifestyles have deprived our conservative sparrows of their humble habitats of tiled houses, driving them away far from cities. Flocks of these feral pigeons comb every bit of grain and seed off the ground, as if in a feeding competition. They leave none for sparrows.
Right now, feral pigeons on apartments, heritage buildings and architectural showpieces are detested as pests or vermin. In some advanced countries they are contemptuously referred to as ‘rats with wings’. Their droppings cause defacement and stench, and many consider their constant cooing, moaning and flapping of wings a nuisance. Feeding pigeons in the open is forbidden by law in some countries.
Changes in architectural features on the exterior of high-rise buildings that often do not leave any flat ridges, and also running cables over possible perching sites keep feral pigeons away. Community dovecotes may be constructed in protected public places such as parks and playfields. Feral pigeons, unlike sparrows, are largely unaffected by pesticides, because they feed their squabs (young ones) with ‘pigeon milk’ or ‘crop milk’, not pesticide-contaminated insects as sparrows give their nestlings. Unlike long-distance homing pigeons or passenger pigeons, feral pigeons do not seem to be affected by electromagnetic radiation from cellphone towers.
Rock pigeons have incredible cognitive capacity. This, coupled with their amazing navigational skills, enable them during aerial sorties to scout for suitable cliff-like structures in cities. Pigeons can fly at speeds of 75 to 100 km an hour for distances of 800 to 1,000 km at a stretch. They are known to recognise the residents of their block by their facial features, voices and calls. They can recognise them by their photographs! That was how carrier pigeons delivered messages to soldiers on the warfront during World Wars.
If the pigeons too, like house sparrows earlier, are chased away from our habitats back into the wild, the next invaders on to our habitats in India may be the common crow or the squirrel. The choice is ours.
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 Pigeon Patrol | Sep 4, 2015 | Animal Deterrent Products, Bird Deterrent Products, Bird Netting, Pigeon Patrol's Services, Pigeon Spikes
EAST HAVEN, Conn. (WTNH)– An East Haven man says his neighbor is feeding pigeons, but it’s getting out of hand, leaving behind a gross mess. In fact, the bird food is attracting so many pigeons the health department has gotten involved.
Bill Parker says three years ago his neighbor started feeding the pigeons, but his love for birds has gotten out of control.
“Probably a half a bag of bird feed on the ground and he is actually on town property over here so it’s not even his own property,” said Bill Parker.
The birds are being fed at a tree directly next to Parker’s neighbor’s property. It’s an empty lot that is now turning into a pigeon sanctuary, leaving behind feathers, feces, and food. Parker estimates that there could be two or three hundreds birds on a given day.
“I know there is a lot of disease in the pigeon droppings and he is not really cleaning up,” said Parker. “He is just feeding them and more and more are coming.”
Parker says he has been trying to get the health department to do something to make the man stop because the bird feces, food, and feathers are disgusting.
Friday, we tried to talk to his neighbor, nobody came to the door. However, we did notice a card from the health department in the doorway. We then stopped by the health department. They told News 8 they are investigating, but that there is no law against feeding the pigeons, unless, like in this case, it’s getting out of hand.
We also brought a doughnut as bait to see if we could get the birds to come down from their perch so we could see first-hand the feeding frenzy that neighbors say happens. None of the birds took the bait. Instead, they all stay perched on the power lines above his Parker’s neighbor’s home, where they know there will always be meal waiting.
Bill Parker says he is moving.
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)
