by Pigeon Patrol | Feb 16, 2020 | Animal Deterrent Products, Bird Deterrent Products, Bird Spike, Pigeon Control, Pigeon Droppings, Pigeon Patrol's Services, Pigeon Spikes, Pigeons in the News
Neighbors said they’ve done everything they can think of to get this pigeon problems to stop in their Rhawnhurst neighborhood.
They’ve signed petitions. They’ve helped the City of Philadelphia take the case to court.
And still, every day, to put it bluntly, they’re pooped on by pigeons that flock there daily. That’s why they called the NBC 10 Investigators.
They wait on the wire.
“It’s disgusting,” said neighbor Eleanor Hennessy.
To neighbors, it feels like a nightmare scene right out of the old Alfred Hitchcock movie, “The Birds”,but Pigeon.
One look at the deposits left on an NBC 10 News car gives an idea what all of the screaming is about.
“It’s a crime against us,” said Hennessy’s husband, Francis.
And it has been going on for years.
“We’re out there every day washing our cars. Our dogs are getting pooped on, literally,” Cinque said.
“We couldn’t eat in our yard all summer. Kids next door couldn’t swim in their pool. You can’t hang laundry,” Francis Hennessy said.
“I’m working on a story about the pigeons,” said NBC 10’s Lu Ann Cahn as she approached.
“Oh, look, leave me alone. Go away,” said Karen Partain.
Partain owns the Rhawnhurst row home that has become the pigeon palace on Hartel Avenue.
Her husband, Joe Mutoli, wouldn’t answer the door. City health officials said despite six citations, Mutoli has continued to illegally put out a virtual bird buffet.
A seventh citation was delivered while NBC 10 was there.
Cahn said she was told there’s nothing wrong with a bird feeder. But the city said Mutoli has been told numerous times that he’s not allowed to throw feed on the ground and in a public school yard behind his home.
“His response has been that this is something he can do, and also there has been a lot of confrontation with our officers,” said Tara Derby, of the Philadelphia Animal Welfare Society.
“This is illegal, yes. There’s no way it’s legal. It’s in violation of the animal ordinance,” Derby said.
Experts said the food has caused the pigeon population to explode and the droppings are a health hazard.
“The droppings contain bacteria and viruses,” said William Ferraro, of the Philadelphia Health Department.
“I usually clean right after nap time,” said a local day care operator. “See, they’re circling now.”
The woman said she is constantly cleaning a small playground where the pigeon poop sometimes comes down like rain.
“If I would miss like one or two areas of droppings, of course the kids would find them, they would touch it and put it in their mouths,” said the daycare operator.
If it’s illegal, why can’t the city stop this?
“It’s the million dollar question,” said Eleanor Hennessy.
Neighbors said it’s hard to catch Mutoli throwing pigeon feed and show the city how serious this is.
So, the NBC 10 investigators sat in an undercover van and waited. It’s difficult to see because it was pitch-black outside, but sure enough at 11 p.m. one night, an NBC 10 crew caught Mutoli grab bird feed out of his garage and throw it through the fence of the neighboring schoolyard.
On video, he’s a shadowy figure. But Cahn said she and other crewmembers saw him clearly with their own eyes.
“You’ve continued to spread bird feed on the ground, and you know that’s illegal, right?” Cahn asked Mutoli over the phone.
Mutoli admitted on the phone that he shouldn’t be doing that and said he will stop. He claims he’s trying to move the birds away from his home and slowly wean them off food.
Neighbors said they’ve heard that before, but it never stops.
City officials told Cahn that you can’t throw a guy in prison for feeding pigeons. But as a result of this story and community pressure, NBC 10 has learned Mutoli is being ordered to appear in municipal court next month where he could be fined thousands of dollars.
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by Pigeon Patrol | Feb 16, 2020 | Bird Netting, Bird Spike, Pigeon Control, Pigeon Droppings, Pigeon Patrol's Services, Pigeon Spikes
Pigeons Carries harmful bacteria. Sampling of pigeons captured on the streets of Madrid has revealed the bacterial pathogens they carry. Researchers writing in BioMed Central’s open access journal Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica found two bugs that were highly prevalent in the bird population, Chlamydophila psittaci and Campylobacter jejuni, both of which cause illness in humans.
Fernando Esperón from the Animal Health Research Center, Madrid, Spain, worked with a team of researchers to analyse blood and enema samples taken from 118 pigeons caught using gun-propelled nets.
He said, “The present study demonstrates the extremely high prevalence of two zoonotic pathogens in feral pigeons in Madrid. At the same time, infection with these pathogens did not appear to be associated with any harmful clinical signs in the birds themselves. This leads to the hypothesis that pigeons act as asymptomatic reservoirs of and Campylobacter jejuni which are harmful bacteria. These birds may therefore pose a public health risk to the human population.”
Chlamydophila psittaci was found in 52.6% of the pigeons captured, while Campylobacter jejuni was present in 69.1%. Although there have been few reports of disease transmission between pigeons and humans, it can occur by aerosols, direct contact or indirect contact through food and water contamination.
According to Esperón, “Thermophilic Campylobacter species are considered the primary pathogens responsible for acute diarrhea in the world. In fact, in many countries such as England and Wales, Canada, Australia and New Zealand Campylobacter jejuni infection causes more cases of acute diarrhea than infection by Salmonella species.”
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by Pigeon Patrol | Feb 5, 2020 | Animal Deterrent Products, Bird Deterrent Products, Bird Netting, Bird Spike, Bird Spikes, Pigeon Control, Pigeon Droppings, Pigeon Patrol's Services, Pigeon Spikes, UltraSonic Bird Control
Pigeons terrifying child
Bird that scares people, Ornithophobia is the medical term for bird phobias, but many people without a bona fide phobia still fear the creatures. Alfred Hitchcock’s horror film, “The Birds that scares people,” even played into people’s penchant to duck for cover when a bird is around. And of all the bird species, pigeons seem to get the worst rap of them all. Often called “rats of the sky,” pigeons used to be well respected for their homing abilities and were employed during wars to send messages back and forth between troops and base camp. According to HSUS, Hindu and Islamic nations still love these birds, but the tone is different in the United States, where many consider them flying rodents that spread disease and leave bird droppings everywhere they land.
An average pigeon is about 13 inches (32 centimeters) in length and weighs a little less than a pound. This bird is quite adept at living in heavily populated cities and makes its nests in support structures, on building ledges and under bridges. While pigeons and other birds have been known to dive bomb into a person’s head on occasion, you should really only be fearful of flying poop. Pigeon droppings do carry fungi that put humans at risk of contracting diseases, such as histoplasmosis. However, the odds of getting a disease from a pigeon are very low, and the few known cases in which that happened involved pigeon pet owners, not random city slickers.
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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.
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by Pigeon Patrol | Feb 5, 2020 | Animal Deterrent Products, Bird Deterrent Products, Bird Netting, Bird Spikes, Pigeon Control, Pigeon Droppings, Pigeon Patrol's Services, Pigeon Spikes, UltraSonic Bird Control
If you shoo a pigeon, that bird is likely to remember you and know to stay out of your way the next time you cross paths, according to a new study. Researchers found that wild, untrained pigeons can recognize individual people’s faces and are not fooled by a change of clothes.
Previous research in this arena had only focused on the perception abilities of pigeons that were trained in a lab environment, but the new study was conducted on untrained feral pigeons. At a park in Paris, two researchers of similar build and skin color, but wearing different-colored lab coats, fed a group of pigeons.
One researcher ignored the pigeons after feeding them, allowing them to eat the food, while the other was hostile and chased them away. This was followed by a second session when neither researcher chased away the pigeons. [Pretty Bird: Images of a Clever Parrot]
The experiment was repeated several times, with the pigeons continuously recognizing the individuals faces and avoiding the researcher who had first chased them away even when the participant no longer did so. Swapping lab coats during the experiments did not confuse the pigeons, and they continued to stay away from the researcher who had been initially hostile.
“It is very likely that the pigeons recognize the researchers by their faces, since the individuals were both female and of a similar age, build and skin color,” study researcher Dalila Bovet of the University of Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense said in a statement.
“Interestingly, the pigeons, without training, spontaneously used the most relevant characteristics of the individuals (probably facial traits), instead of the lab coats that covered 90 percent of the body,” Bovet added.
The researchers noted that the birds appear to be able to differentiate between humans and are aware that clothing color is not a good way to tell humans apart. They theorize that this recognition ability may have come about over the long period of association with humans, from early domestication to many years of living in cities.
Previous research supports the findings, as the memory and recognition skills of certain bird species have been demonstrated by other studies. In May 2011, Seoul National University researcher Won Young Lee noticed that when he returned to an area where he had previously installed cameras into the nests of magpies, the birds recognized his face and began dive-bombing him.
A 2009 study showed that jackdaws, which are the smaller cousins of crows and ravens, can interpret human eye cues and even follow human gestures such as pointing. University of Oxford researchers noted that hand-raised jackdaws could find food when a familiar person’s eyes looked back and forth from the food to the bird. The birds also responded when the person pointed to the food’s location. However, the jackdaws took longer to approach food when an unfamiliar person was watching.
“I think they can generalize to human eyes somehow, and interpret human eyes as eyes,” said Auguste Bayern, a cognitive biologist at the University of Oxford and lead author of the 2009 study.
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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.
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by Pigeon Patrol | Feb 5, 2020 | Animal Deterrent Products, Bird Deterrent Products, Bird Netting, Pigeon Control, Pigeon Droppings, Pigeon Patrol's Services, Pigeon Spikes, Pigeons in the News, UltraSonic Bird Control
Are Urban Vermin, the Most Disease-Ridden Animals?
Infections carried by animals are a rising threat—and those who work with livestock may have the most to fear
In many cities, pigeons—to take one urban animal—are reviled as flying vermin. They whitewash ledges and pick at filthy crumbs in the gutter. And, yes, these, dubbed by some as “rats with wings,” do carry diseases that humans can catch. But so do innumerable wild creatures outside city limits, the animals we eat—even our beloved pets.
Pigeons are guilty of transmitting fungal and bacterial diseases, primarily via their droppings, which pose the greatest risk to those with weakened immune systems. But cast against the recent spread of infectious zoonotic diseases—such as H5N1 bird flu, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)—experts question the degree of concern over the disease-bearing potential of the birds that have colonized cities the world over.
In principle, any animal can carry a disease that humans could catch. But Marm Kilpatrick, an ecologist at the Consortium for Conservation Medicine in New York City, which studies human-induced environmental change, species health and biodiversity, wrote in an e-mail: “In reality, the vast majority [about 99.999 percent] of pathogens that are carried by animals won’t infect people.”
Even so, zoonotic diseases represent a growing proportion of emerging infectious diseases; two British studies calculated that about 75 percent of emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic. (By comparison, about 60 percent of all human pathogens can infect animals.)
Real rats (the ground-hugging kind) aren’t innocent by any means: Research links them with the reemergence of bubonic plague and typhus. But bats (of whom “winged rats” is more apropos) may be giving the unpopular rodents a run for their infamous reputation. Long associated with rabies, bats gained new notoriety in the 1990s after outbreaks of the Hendra and Nipah viruses killed both humans and livestock in Australia and Southeast Asia, respectively. A few years later SARS terrified the world by taking flight on commercial airlines. The virus left a trail leading back to the live animal markets in China, first to civet cats and subsequently to bats, the latter vector now believed to be the true starting point for the virus.
And, despite increasing urbanization throughout the world, people and wildlife are sharing more infections. In the Hendra and Nipah outbreaks, habitat fragmentation and increased contact between wild bats and domestic animals have been implicated. Bushmeat, particularly that of our close cousins the chimpanzee, has caused Ebola outbreaks in Africa.
In the U.S., prairie dog owners caught monkey pox from their pets. And the reforestation of Northeastern states over the past century has allowed deer populations to boom, spreading Lyme disease.
By comparison, pigeons’ potential for spreading bird flu seems rather minimal. So far most of nearly 220 human deaths caused by the pathogenic H5N1 strain of bird flu have been traced to contact with poultry. And the strain has yet to arrive in North America. If a similar one were to emerge here, the result could be disastrous for industrial farm workers before anyone else, according to Gregory Gray, director of the University of Iowa’s Center for Emerging Diseases.
“Exposure to domestic birds has changed markedly,” he says. In the nation’s confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs)—the industrial operations that have replaced family farms with at minimum 9,000-chicken or 750–large pig facilities—agricultural workers spend much more time in close contact with animals than a farmer would have 50 years ago.
These are potentially the mixing pots for the next flu pandemic, Gray argues. When an outbreak occurs undetected in a facility, viruses can mutate as they cycle through large flocks or herds. Gray and his colleagues have shown farmers, veterinarians and meat processors all had high swine influenza infection rates, and avian veterinarians carry more bird flu.
In 1983 a low-grade bird flu virus, perhaps left by ducks, spread into chicken warehouses in Pennsylvania. There, it mutated from a minor infection to become what Robert Webster, the virologist at the scene, called “Ebola for chickens.”
This outbreak took two years and the destruction of 17 million birds to control. Webster links some of its spread to New York City’s live bird markets, where chickens are packed into cages in close quarters with ducks and geese, natural carriers of bird flu.
Webster believes these markets pose a greater risk than CAFOs in the developed world where so-called “biosecurity” procedures to keep diseases out have been tightened since the emergence of H5N1. “Live bird markets are the breeding place for all pandemic strains in my opinion,” he says, and, despite attempts to purge it, avian influenza continues to show up in American live bird markets.
But for those whose daily animal interaction doesn’t extend beyond shooing squirrels or feeding the dog, the prospect of zoonotic disease shouldn’t keep them awake at night. “Most people should be more afraid to walk into a doctor’s office during flu season,” says Pennsylvania State University avian pathologist Patty Dunn.
As for pigeons: research has shown that even those infected with bird flu actually transmit very little. And they carry so little West Nile virus in their bloodstreams that they are unlikely to infect mosquitoes who could then infect humans, Kilpatrick says, making the birds more likely to slow an epidemic than spread one.
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by Pigeon Patrol | Feb 5, 2020 | Animal Deterrent Products, Bird Spike, Pigeon Control, Pigeon Droppings, Pigeon Patrol's Services, Pigeon Spikes
A rare virus that can be contracted by humans has killed a large number of Victorian pigeons after being detected in Australia for the first time.
A type of avian paramyxovirus has resulted in the deaths of a number of hobby pigeon flocks.
Australian chief veterinary officer Dr Mark Schipp said the birds had died suddenly in large numbers.
The birds had sometimes appeared tired or shown neurological signs such as circling or head flicking before death.
He said human infection was extremely rare and usually occurred after contact with an infected bird.
“The rare virus causes only mild, short-term conjunctivitis or influenza-like symptoms [in humans],’’ Dr Schipp said.
“State veterinary authorities have been asked to review the health of their pigeon and poultry flocks.
“At this stage, there are no reports of this virus causing disease in wild birds, but we have asked the Australian Wildlife Health Network to be alert to this possibility.’’
Dr Schipp said the national Consultative Committee on Emergency Animal Disease had met twice to discuss the outbreak, which is being managed by Victorian chief veterinary officer Dr Hugh Millar and industry and veterinary authorities.
Dr Schipp said the consultative committee has agreed to investigating pigeon and other bird holdings where disease is suspected and to quarantine affected properties.
Anyone concerned about their pigeons or birds should contact an experienced poultry veterinarian, their local department of agriculture, or the Emergency Animal Disease Watch hotline on 1800 675 888.
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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.
Contact us at 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD, (604) 585-9279 or visit our website at www.pigeonpatrol.ca
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