by Ryan Ponto | Jun 5, 2017 | Bird Netting
The 2017 edition of the Wimbledon Championship kicked off on 3rd July in London.
It is the third Grand Slam of the year and the only one to be played on the grass.
The oldest tennis tournament in the world, every tennis player dreams of winning the Wimbledon trophy.
Let us have a look at some unknown facts about the tournament.
The beginning
The Wimbledon Championship was first played in the year 1877, making it the oldest tennis tournament. While only men’s single matches were played then, women’s singles and men’s doubles events were introduced in 1884 and mixed and women’s doubles in 1913.
The Cup and the Dish
The men’s singles champions is handed a silver-gilt cup and has been awarded the same since 1887, while the women’s singles champion is presented the ‘Venus Rosewater Dish’, with figures from mythology inscribed on it.
Winners of the other events are presented with the silver cup.
The trophies are presented to the champions by the ‘Duke of Kent’.
Champions are given replicas; not originals
While the winners are presented the ‘real’ trophies during presentation ceremony, the trophies are taken back from the winners to put on display at the All England Club’s museum. And, the winners take home a three-quarter size replica of the trophies.
Royal Box curtsey
The Wimbledon Championship had a peculiar tradition; it was mandatory for the players to bow to the royal box while entering or leaving the centre court, irrespective of it being occupied by a member of Royal family.
However, the tradition was scrapped in 2003, and the players are now only supposed to bow if Prince of Wales, or the Queen is present.
The rule of whites only
Unlike other Grand Slams, Wimbledon has a pretty strict rule about the dress code.
It is compulsory for a player to wear white from top to bottom, with no leniency towards anyone.
The umpire can ask the players to change if they do not meet the dress code. In 2013, Roger Federer was asked to change his shoes because it had an orange sole.
Being a ball kid is a tough job
While the tournament generally begins by end of June or early July, the ball boys and ball girls have to undergo training from the month of February. After training sessions, 250 boys and girls are selected to be the ball kids.
A rather unusual form of security
With the rather large number of pigeons hovering around the host city London, the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club has employed Rufus, the Hawk to keep the pigeons away from the venue.
He took over from the previous hawk, Hamish, ten years ago and is trained to ward off the pigeons.
Young Harris hawk, Pollux, was hired last year to help Rufus.
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 | Jun 4, 2017 | Bird Netting
Police have arrested a thief after he took flight with 11 expensive racing pigeons from a residential complex and ate them.
The owner of the birds, surnamed Yuan, reported they where missing on June 25 when he went to feed them. And when a CCTV monitor was checked, to see of there whereabouts, it revealed an empty-handed man entering the residential complex at 2pm where Yuan kept his prized birds. He exited the entrance with a bag in his hand 13 minutes later. Further footage revealed the man riding away on a tricycle, used to recycle waste cardboard.
Police eventually arrested the man, surnamed Zi, in his 60s, who admitted to taking the birds. Zi told them he had taken some drink on that day and stole the pigeons after he found that a gate to the pigeonhole was open.
Police informed the thief that the racing pigeons were expensive, with the cheapest among them priced at 3,000 yuan (US$442). Zi, from Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang Province, said he was unaware of their value. He thought they were just ordinary pigeons and boiled them to eat.
Yuan has only three racing pigeons left.
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 | Jun 3, 2017 | Bird Netting
Given recent concerns in China about social unrest or even foreign espionage, it was not surprising that a civic-minded citizen in Nanjing, Jiangsu province called police on Sunday after he found a carrier pigeon at his home with suspicious note tied to its leg, a news website reports.
Carrier pigeons have long been used for communication – legal and clandestine – in China. In the late 1990s, for example, dissidents were known to release pigeons carrying slogans written on ribbons tied to the birds’ feet.
The website of Jstv.com reported that worried policeman took the bird back to the station where they gingerly opened the note to reveal its short but direct message: “Lili, I love you!!! With love from Xiaojun.”
The bird was found to be a champion racing pigeon from Henan province and had an authorised ID band, according to the report.
The Carrier Pigeon Association of Nanjing said the bird might be trapped in recent rainstorms and suggested that the police feed the bird for a few days. After rest, the carrier pigeon would fly back to its host.
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 | Jun 2, 2017 | Bird Netting
“The harmless pigeon still has its use in war as a bearer of dispatches despite the great development of modern means of communication,” The New York Times Mid-Week Pictorial told its readers 100 years ago. “When it is impossible to depend upon the telephone between the front trenches and the rear through wires being cut or broken, a carrier pigeon service becomes extremely valuable.” The photograph showed a pigeon mail carrier leaving a British trench.
“The method of sending a message is to enclose it in a small aluminum tube about one inch long and half an inch in diameter and then fasten the tube to the pigeon’s leg. Now that the United States Army is learning all the latest devices used in modern warfare, the Signal Corps is being trained in the use of carrier pigeons. Three thousand birds have already been called into service at Philadelphia.” (The article did not say whether they had volunteered or been drafted.)
“An occasional hindrance to pigeon-carrier communication is that civilians, unaware that the birds are on active service, shoot them.”
“America Calls — Enlist Today. A photograph of U.S. signal officers wigwagging the above message from the dome of Capitol at Washington at the opening of the recruiting week for the regular Army.” The officers, slightly more than specks, can be discerned at the base of the cupola.
“Here we see why the Red Cross needs all the help it can get. These wounded men, who happen to belong to the British Army, have just been brought in from the firing line by stretcher-bearers, and are waiting for ambulances to take them to base hospitals.” The Times reported that the American Red Cross had just succeeded in raising $114 million (about $2.1 billion today) during a seven-day campaign — or $14 million ($263 million) more than its stated goal.
A motorboat “armed with machine gun and manned by yachtsmen cooperating with the police in harbor patrol work” was photographed off Stamford, Conn. The threat to America did not necessarily come from abroad, The Times said darkly in an accompanying article about domestic defense measures. “In a population so varied in racial origin, traditions and sympathies, including a small element which is influenced by subversive ideas, there must inevitably be some danger of disturbance.”
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 | Jun 1, 2017 | Bird Netting
Wimbledon’s resident hawk Rufus decided tennis was not the life for him and disappeared to the golf course this year, his handler has revealed.
The hawk is used by the All England Club to scare pigeons away so they do not cause a nuisance to players on court.
His handler Imogen Davis said: “He likes to keep me on my toes every year…and generally when somebody is expecting something of me.
“He disappeared to the golf club, and made me go into the pond after him. I was soaked up to here (my knees) and I was like: ‘You didn’t’.”
Rufus starts work at 5am, and not just during the two weeks of the Championships, his year-round job includes making sure pigeons do not nest in the roof of Centre Court.
Ms Davis, from Corby, Northamptonshire, said the Harris Hawk is trained not to attack.
She said: “It’s based on the innate sense of fight or flight, so if a pigeon wants to fight him they can hang around and give it a go but ultimately he is the predator versus prey.”
Ms Davis has to keep a close eye on the bird after he was stolen in 2012 before being returned to the RSPCA.
The 30-year-old handler said: “We were running around frantically. We never did (find out who did it). At the time all I could think about was the well being of Rufus.
“Generally on a day he has one quail or three chicks and the RSPCA had given him 13 chicks. When I went to pick him up his crop was massive.”
Rufus, who has a special Wimbledon pass with the job title ‘bird scarer’ on it, has patrolled the grounds at SW19 for a decade.
The hawk has no special plans to celebrate the anniversary, but will be keeping the grounds pigeon free as usual.
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 | May 31, 2017 | Bird Netting
ALL I WANTED was a quiet place at the end of the road where I could write my memoirs.
About the years of struggling it took to become an overnight excess with a publishing empire stretching from Oil City to Whiskey Flats dedicated to shining the light of freedom on truth, justice and the American way.
If I could just find the time.
Something is always interrupting.
It’s all part of the nightmare we call country living.
It started with the drumming.
It was sort of a Bo Diddley- on-a-bender beat that just kept going and going and wouldn’t stop.
Naturally, I assumed it was just another Sasquatch drum circle heating up.
Sometimes I think that’s all they do.
Maybe I should apologize, but somebody has to work.
Financing the hunt for Bigfoot and baiting them in takes major funding.
Peanut butter and jam sandwiches don’t grow on trees, you know.
I opened the door and stuck my head out, ready to holler into the woods to get them to pipe down for a while, and saw the real reason for my disturbance: a cute little woodpecker.
With a bright red head and a great big beak, the woodpecker was pounding a hole in the side of the house.
Woodpeckers are some of the dumbest creatures on the planet.
Maybe it’s because they spend their lives beating their head against trees.
It only makes sense that an ecological niche that involves brain damage could lead to an evolutionary dead end.
Shooting the woodpecker was not an option.
That would contravene the Geneva Convention of Birdwatching and possibly upset the neighbors.
There are simple rules to get along in the country, such as drive slowly, mind your own business and don’t spray the neighbors with birdshot.
They could shoot back.
And besides, you have a lot better chance of borrowing stuff from the neighbors if you don’t shoot at them first. Enough said.
Not to mention woodpeckers are a protected species.
The birds seem to sense this.
When I tried to scare it away, the woodpecker looked at me like I was impacting his habitat.
I thought we could all just get along.
And we did until the starlings moved into the woodpecker hole.
This is a curse I would not wish on my best enemy.
First, there is the endless process of the starlings building the nest, which means they have to pull the pink fiberglass insulation out of the wall, scatter it over the yard and replace it with a flammable nest made of moss and dry twigs.
Eventually, the babies hatch.
You will know this from their constant shrieking for food from dawn till dark for weeks on end with a distinct aroma wafting through the wall.
It’s a congealing mass of rotting starling nest just waiting to be used again next year.
I sprang into action.
It was going to be too easy.
I grabbed a fish net and beat on the wall.
When the starling flew out of the woodpecker hole, I caught it, then drove it to town to turn it loose.
I could not imagine a crueler fate.
That was until I returned home to find the starling had beaten me back to the house.
The net trick wouldn’t work anymore.
I had to borrow a ladder from the neighbor and nail a board over the woodpecker hole.
For a moment, there was peace.
I’d just sat down to type a really good column for once and heard a woodpecker beating another hole in the wall.
Here we go again.
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)
