by johnnymarin | Aug 6, 2018 | Bird Deterrent Products
The Box Elder County Fair, one of the most celebrated spectacles of summer in Utah, is made possible by the behind-the-scenes work of an army or volunteers.
Over the last 12 years, few have given more time and effort to the cause than Bob Belew.
Belew’s specialty at the fair and throughout the year is small animals, specifically chickens and pigeons. He has served as a mentor to hundreds of youth in the 4-H small animal program, teaching them the finer points of showing the birds and doing all that it takes to win a coveted ribbon at the fair.
While chickens, pigeons and rabbits have been part of the huge livestock show for decades, there was no organized 4-H club for that classification until Belew came along, and at the request of fair organizers, started one.
For three years, he politely declined requests from the USU Extension office for him to start a club, until a grandson of his grew old enough to participate in 4-H. Belew took his grandson to a poultry club event in Farmington, and the boy took a shine to the birds. That was all the motivation he needed to get organized.
“They called again the next year and I said I’ll do it,” he said. “Twelve years later, here we are.”
In the club’s first year, Belew signed up about a dozen kids to participate. That number has grown steadily over more than a decade, and chickens and pigeons have become a mainstay at the fair thanks largely to Belew’s efforts.
“Thursday nights we would hold meetings starting the first week of June up until fair time,” he said. “I taught kids the right way to put a chicken in the pen and take it out, and the judges would ask five or six questions. We would give every kid a medallion with a ribbon to put around their neck. I wanted to see every kid at least get one of those.”
Membership in the chicken club quickly grew from around 12 kids to about 45, and it wasn’t long before the Extension office came knocking again, asking him to start a pigeon club as well.
“I had pigeons as a kid, so I thought I could link them together (with the chickens),” he said. “We don’t do showmanship with them, just put them in pens and the judges pick best of show, best of breed, best pair trophies. But the kids still get their prize money.”
But his contributions to the fair don’t end with birds. Belew has been a tireless fundraiser, forming relationships with local businesses and county officials to raise money for new facilities and building renovations and improvements at the fairgrounds, and for prizes for the annual chicken and pigeon shows. His grassroots efforts have helped build new poultry pens and other structures, and generally help make the fair’s livestock show second to none in the state and the region.
Belew has created long-lasting relationships with local prize sponsors, up to point where the program now receives more than $1,000 in gift cards every time the fair rolls around.
“We make sure they all get a thank you card, and every one of them says ‘see you next year.’”
He gives credit to the generous spirit of the local community for making things happen.
“Box Elder County is the most giving bunch you’ve ever seen,” he said.
He recounted the story of one local business owner who donated as he has done every year, despite being in a life-or-death battle with cancer.
“He’s in the hospital and I didn’t know if I should ask this year, but I went there (to the business) and his daughter said he told her to ask if we wanted gift cards,” Belew said. “He’s fighting that battle, and was still thinking about doing that for the kids. That’s the kind of people you find here.”
He has also become a go-to guy for distributing the annual fair book guide. Every July, Belew enlists the help of 4-H kids to take copies of the book around to local businesses from Brigham City to Snowville and all points in between.
“We deliver to more than 100 businesses and cover about 270 miles by the time we’re done,” he said.
Belew will turn 79 this year, and said he isn’t sure how much longer he will be able to continue his work with the fair. For the last two years he has been mentoring someone to eventually take over the work, but for now he says he continues to be motivated by the spirit of the fair.
“This fair is one of the best in the country, and it’s the biggest thing in Box Elder County,” he said. “I’ve enjoyed every minute of what I do at the fair.”
But the longest-lasting impressions he will take away from the work when he finally decides to call it quits will be the positive impacts he has been able to have on the kids in the program. Making a difference in the lives of youth makes all the hard work worthwhile for him.
“My concern is always teaching them to be responsible for their animals,” he said. It gives them something to do, keeps them off the street.”
He recounted a story of a couple with a son who was very shy, and they couldn’t talk him into to participating in the showmanship portion of the chicken program. They asked Belew to have a talk with the boy, and watched their son come out of his shell before their eyes.
“I sat him down and told him how proud his mom and dad would be if he did this. I told him that he knew the answers to all of the questions, and he could do it,” he said. “He missed one question and got third place, and that mother and dad, just the look on their faces — that’s all that mattered.”
Belew’s long-standing contributions to 4-H and the Box Elder County Fair will be recognized in August when he takes his rightful place as Grand Marshal in this year’s fair parade.
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 | Jul 23, 2018 | Bird Deterrent Products
Here lies Pippa the Pigeon, beloved mother to 28 chicks, scavenger of crisps, befouler of statues, buried here at the age of 63 (in bird years).
If this sounds unfamiliar, it is because there are no pigeon cemeteries in British cities, nor are there any pigeon crematoria, which rather begs the question: where do pigeons go when they die? According to one estimate, there are up to one million pigeons in London alone. With a life expectancy in the city of as little as four years, this suggests that several million dead pigeons should have piled up around us, but where are they all?
An expert in animal physiology has felt moved to provide an answer to the mystery. Steve Portugal, an ecophysiologist at Royal Holloway, University of London, said: “Foxes, rats, gulls, crows and ravens all do a wonderful job of cleaning up any carrion they come across, including deceased pigeons.
“Alongside these native janitors, domestic cats are equally happy to take care of a dead or injured pigeon . . . this network of surreptitious street cleaners will usually whisk away any pigeon corpses long before they’re seen by human eyes.” Dr Portugal added that when pigeons are ill or injured, they often hide. He wrote on The Conversation, a news website: “[They] instinctively retreat to dark, remote places — ventilation systems, attics, building ledges — hoping to remain out of reach and unnoticed by predators. The predators don’t see them but neither do we: often when pigeons expire they are in hiding.”
He added: “Dying of old age is not a luxury afforded to most pigeons. As soon as they shows signs of slowness or sickness, many are snapped up by peregrine falcons, sparrowhawks, or other predators.
“Whether snatched midair by birds of prey, entangled by man-made obstacles or alone in a remote corner of a skyscraper’s roof garden, there are many ways that pigeons pass on from this world. But they all take place within an internal urban ecosystem, that, for the most part, is hidden from our sight.”
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 | Jul 12, 2018 | Bird Deterrent Products
Delhi woke to some good news last week. The city’s stately, two-storeyed Town Hall of 1863 vintage was dying a slow death, due to callous use by municipal officials from Independence up to 2009. Its museum and library too must be in their last throes, if rodents, seepage, white ants and pigeons have left any book or artifact intact at all. Still, and after nine more years of dithering, it’s final — the august building will soon be leased out to bidders for a heritage hotel.
One dismaying thought persists. What if the government “does an Air India” on the Town Hall by retaining a stranglehold through the hobby interior designer-wife of an official or someone else it wants to “favour” with a paid consultancy? Instead of leaving it to professional architects endowed with sense and sensibility — two qualities that no demolition-happy Indian government at any level — national, state or local — has ever displayed about heritage? Don’t buy my cynicism. Drop in on any government office housed in an old building anywhere in the country.
Like the stately Jaisalmer House in New Delhi, where officials of a ministry huddle in tacky Formica cubicles, inside what used to be expansive living quarters. Encircling them like the grim chorus of a Greek tragedy are steel almirahs; above them, a bewildering jungle of electric wires on which colonies of pigeons roost, frequently raining droppings and feathers down upon classified documents. Pan-chewers have left trademark splatter along the wide corridors that encircle an inner courtyard. (So great is the resemblance to a Dickensian warehouse that the ministry recently invited tenders from pest control companies to decimate the ancient building’s other unwelcome residents: swarms of rats.)
Or check out the debate and the mystical secrecy surrounding the design of an undoubtedly-needed war memorial at India Gate. The question on whether the memorial will mar the grand vistas and perfect symmetry of the India Gate hexagon and Rajpath remains unanswered. Or visit the National Museum, which houses some of India’s greatest and most awe-inspiring antiquities but also the surliest and most ignorant front office staff, who make it obvious just how much they hate being bothered by visitors.
“The National Museum is a treasure house of wondrous pieces. Why, then, do I feel such reluctance and depression when I go there?” asks Dastkar chairperson Laila Tyabji. The country’s top crafts activist also holds government ministries with “no eye for its contents, potential or the most basic aesthetics” responsible for its sorry state. “You pass a marvellous, medieval Vishnu used as a dumping ground for backpacks! On your right is a that stunning, towering rath, obscured in a dusty, plexiglass, kennel-like structure,” Ms Tyabji fumes. She also points to an astounding omission on the museum’s website — that there’s no mention of the American architect who was awarded the Padma Bhushan for designing the magnificent building.
To the rest of the country, Delhi is spoilt, Delhi is privileged. And there is some truth to that grumble. Delhi, at least, has plenty of heritage warriors who put frequent and welcome spokes into government wheels the minute they sense impending doom for old monuments. But whether in the capital or elsewhere in India, and depending on the nationality and/or religion of the long-gone patron-builder of a given monument, the chief reasons for neglect are either populist politics or profits.
Earlier this year, dismayed Kolkatans watched the Kenilworth Hotel — or the Purdy Mansion — being brought down. One of Kolkata’s oldest establishments of the British colonial era, the Kenilworth’s spacious suites were legendary and it remained the favourite watering hole of intellectuals and writers for generations. In 2009, the hotel was reportedly listed in the Grade IIA category on the Kolkata Municipal Corporation’s list of heritage buildings. But earlier this year, it was stealthily scaled down to Grade III, that is, the category of old buildings that are allowed to fall. A 35-storey residential behemoth will now arise on the shards of invaluable history.
Reports suggest that there were 823 heritage structures still standing in Bengaluru in 1985. Since then, 469 of them, including the Murphy Town Library (for an “Indira Canteen”) and more recently, Lalbagh’s Krumbiegel Hall have been turned into rubble and venues for restaurants, malls and high-end apartments. The Moore Market was charred in a fire and many other Chennai landmarks were demolished. Still, the heritage-rich southern city scores some points for recently announcing its willingness to restore some of the most remarkable British-era college buildings.
But the more things change, the more they remain the same. Days after the Delhi Town Hall announcement came another, which brought all hopes of reviving both aesthetics and Delhi’s poisonous air crashing to earth again. All illegal street-side stalls, additional floors and makeshift parking lots at some busy Delhi markets (where every inch of pavement space is occupied by hawkers and vehicles) are going to be “regularised”. The municipality is obviously unconcerned by small piffles like air pollution, fire escapes and the space to walk for the city’s residents. Remember: both the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections are up in the next two years. What better time for a few sops?
If there are two things that are definitely NOT on the curriculum of either politicians’ nurseries or the celebrated IAS training institute in Mussoorie, they are city planning and the art of conserving ancient architecture, whether built by the “good guys” or “bad eggs”.
What one architect-writer famously described as Gujarati-Gothic and Punjabi Baroque dominate our city landscapes today. Curlicews and turrets, heat-producing construction material and reflector glass highly unsuited to tropical climates are what we will leave behind. For future generations to gasp at and wonder — is this the same nation and the same people that built Ajanta? Ellora? The Taj Mahal? Or even the iconic Hall of Nations at Pragati Maidan in New Delhi, which even though of 1970s’ vintage and approved by a former PM-patron herself, was not spared the bulldozers’ either?
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 | Jul 3, 2018 | Bird Deterrent Products
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – A pigeon problem in southwest Albuquerque has neighbors frustrated and worried.
Andrea Sutphin says the problem is the result of a vacant house.
“All I can hear when I’m sleeping is ‘boogedy-boo, boogedy-boo,’ which is really annoying,” said Sutphin.
But the noise isn’t the only problem.
“When it’s windy, all the fecal material and the debris fly out into my yard,” said Sutphin.
She says pigeons are nesting under the solar panels and she’s concerned about her health. Sutphin has been a registered nurse for more than 30 years. She says she knows pigeons can carry dangerous diseases. She says she’s already noticed the health impacts on her and her daughter.
“I do feel like both of us get up in the morning, we’re hoarse. She’s always telling me I’m trying to cough that thing that lives in my throat,” said Sutphin.
KOB contacted the Albuquerque Environmental Health Department. They said a crew will be out to investigate the problem. If they determine the pigeons are a nuisance, the owner of the vacant home will be responsible for fixing the issue.
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 | Jun 26, 2018 | Bird Deterrent Products
Breeding high nutritional varieties of chickpea and pigeon pea just got easier. Genomic processes which used to take years are being completed in just a few months with the help of new technology.
This was found by scientists from the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) here, in collaboration with NRGene, Israel who helped create multiple assembly lines of pigeon pea and chickpea genomes. This means scientists can not only understand crop traits, they can also significantly speed up work on improved varieties.
With this technology from NRGene, ICRISAT has chickpea and pigeon pea genomes to a reference level quality that researchers can use. This would help maximise favorable nutritional properties of these high-protein legumes.
“The developing world has long faced the pressures of food security with limited farmland,” says Dr Rajeev K Varshney, Research Program director, Genetic Gains and director of Center of Excellence in Genomics & Systems Biology, ICRISAT.
“For effective use of genomics-assisted breeding, we need reference genomes of several varieties of a given crop. Therefore, new assemblies of chickpea and pigeon pea lines by NRGene and ICRISAT will allow our scientists and partners to better understand plant traits to breed more nutritional varieties.” ICRISAT in partnership with other institutions, has already decoded and documented genomes of pigeon pea and chickpea (Nature Biotechnology 2013, Nature Biotechnology 2012)
Traditional methods would have required years to complete each individual assembly. NRGene’s DeNovoMAGIC 3.0 delivered multiple assemblies in a matter of months. “While DeNovoMAGIC has been successfully deployed by the world’s leading seed companies and academic institutions, implementing this for organisations like ICRISAT enhances our mission of making an impact on the world food supply,” says Dr. Gil Ronen, CEO of NRGene.
“Chickpea, pigeon pea, and other protein-rich legumes will be even more critical crops in the future and we are glad that our technology can be used to improve the nutritional status of the world.”
Chickpea and pigeon pea have 15-22 grams of protein per 100 grams and are a critical food and nutrition source in India, Africa, and the Caribbean. India produces 64% of the world’s total chickpeas and 63% of the world’s pigeon pea. However, protein hunger, an important aspect of malnutrition continues to be a major concern in Asia.
The drylands, covering 55 countries in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa inhabited by 2 billion people, 644 million of whom are poor, is most vulnerable to climate change with very little rainfall, degraded soils and poor social infrastructure. ICRISAT through scientific research aims to find solutions for the nutrition security of people in these regions.
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 | Jun 24, 2018 | Bird Deterrent Products
Virtually every morning, shortly after the sun comes up, I know they’re awake.
Their high pitched ee-ee-ee-ee-ee calls out and, like a stereophonic headphone test, zooms across the sky from one side of my auditory spectrum to the other. And I lie in bed listening.
Often when I stumble out to my car to head off to work, they call from a neighbour’s treetop. And I stop to watch them. One or the other will launch from that dizzying height and voice its stuttering screech across the sky as it heads to the top of another nearby fir tree. One of the tall trees still remaining in my neighbourhood houses their nest.
After some early morning cacophony, they disappear until late afternoon when, presumably done with their day’s peregrinations – pun intended – they return to their neighbourhood and where I believe their nest resides.
All-in-all the merlin couple that inhabits our Willow Point neighbourhood are a pretty noisy duo. Their calls cut through all sounds of wind, distant highway and the noises of human habitation. It’s the type of sound that could be considered annoying given it’s pitch, frequency and frequency (i.e., how often it’s made). But its the call of a pair of wild birds and I love it.
These “small fierce falcons,” as the Cornell Lab of Ornithology describes merlins, have inhabited my Campbell River neighbourhood for years now. I don’t know if it’s the same pair or different ones come and go but they’ve been in the area for at least a decade or more. I even had one pair nest in the tall Douglas fir tree in my backyard. That was before we had it topped to diminish the risk of it being blown down, like one strong wind threatened to do a few years back.
I’ve told this story before but one time my family was out in the backyard enjoying a sunny summer’s day on a picnic blanket when one of the nesting merlins returned from its wanderings. You know when it lands on the tree – and its nest, presumably – because the calls stop after jetting across the sky from afar to over our heads.
We were sitting at the foot of the tree in our yard and after a few minutes, feathers started wafting down from the tree. The merlin had obviously made a kill and was now dismembering it above our heads! Awesome.
Anyway, they used to be called pigeon hawks because they kind of look like them somewhat. Supposedly. I don’t think so but anyway, pigeons are relevant to our story in another way though. That’s because the usual prey of the merlin is tiny songbirds. Which I have no problem with. That’s nature. Get used to it.
Merlin is such a cooler name, of course, but it used to be named the pigeon hawk for its appearance and not because that was its preferred prey. Which is too bad because there’s another denizen of our neighbourhood whose calls have begun to impose themselves on our auditory experience.
They’re recent arrivals and they’re not as welcome.
They are, of course, pigeons and they’re an invasive species and they started showing up a few years ago. Some mornings it’s their coo-cooing – or however you want to describe their vocalization – that we hear. And I don’t like it. They come and they go and they’re not a native inhabitant and I wish they’d stay away.
I’d like to make them go away. I have visions of getting a slingshot and firing at them in the same tree that the merlins nested in my backyard that one summer. But I’d be afraid of where the rock would go if I missed them. I’m sure my neighbours from behind wouldn’t appreciate being binked on the head from a wayward stone.
So, I guess a .22 rifle is out the question too. And definitely a shotgun.
Where did they even come from anyway? They just started showing up one year. Do they migrate? Did somebody keep pigeons and these ones escaped and went feral?
I don’t know but what I do know is I wish the merlins would develop a taste for pigeons. I keep hoping one morning I’ll hear “coo-coo, coo-coo” then “ee-ee-ee-ee”…SQUAWK!
And that’d be the end of the 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)
