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Poisoned pigeons used to kill wild buzzards

Pigeon in New York City (file / credit: STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images)

EOGHAN MacCONNELL

HAND-REARED live pigeons were coated in poison, tethered to the ground and used to kill two wild buzzards near the Tipperary-Offaly border, according to BirdWatch Ireland.

BirdWatch volunteers were horrified to discover the two dead buzzard chicks beside three poisonous tethered pigeons near Roscrea.

BirdWatch Ireland Development Officer Niall Hatch said the banned insecticide Carbofuran used to kill the buzzards is so toxic “a quarter of a teaspoonful is enough to kill a fully grown adult”.

“There is a really serious public safety issue here as well,” he said, “whoever is responsible for planting the poison took a real risk themselves”. Had the pigeons been found by children who attempted to rescue them, “you could be reporting on an even worse story today,” he added.

No motive has yet been established. Buzzards eat rabbits, crows, magpies, rats and mice. They will occasionally feed on a dead lamb, but are incapable of killing a lamb, said Mr Hatch.

An indigenous bird, the buzzard was absent in Ireland from the late 19th century until 1933, when a pair bred in Co Antrim. The species has spread slowly down from the north through the 20th century and is now established in almost every county in Ireland.

BirdWatch Ireland say this was a particularly abhorrent incident.

The live hand-reared pigeons were tethered to the ground as bait, their bodies coated with poison and their wings clipped to prevent any chance of escape.

A day after the dead buzzards were found last month, another live, poison-coated pigeon was discovered tethered in the same area.

The buzzards’ nest in Roscrea was being monitored by two young volunteers from BirdWatch Ireland’s Raptor Conservation Project since early spring. They had been charting the progress of the three young buzzard chicks.

One volunteer said: “we had been watching them all summer and it was sickening to see them killed like that for no reason”.

The farmer on whose land the birds were nesting said: “they have not caused me or any of the other farmers in the area any problems whatsoever. I gave nobody permission to come on my land and lay down poison, and whoever did so was trespassing,” he said.

In October 2010, laws were passed making it illegal to use poison to kill birds or animals, with the exception of rats and mice.

An investigation has been launched and anyone with information is urged to contact the National Parks and Wildlife Service on 057 91 37811 or Birr Garda station on 057 91 69710.

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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.

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Bird Bling: the pigeon with a bread necklace

Pigeon with a bread necklace. A new symbol of wealth among pigeon flocks.

Bird Bling. A new symbol of wealth among pigeon flocks.

The pigeon with a bread necklace: How bird got more than he bargained for after searching for food

A peckish pigeon got more than he bargained for when he swooped down to eat a piece of bread – and found himself wearing it instead.

The pigeon couldn’t believe his luck when he spotted the large piece of bread in a park in Poland.

The bird swooped down, grabbed the piece of bread and tossed it up in the air, only for it to land around its neck and out of reach from its beak.

Photographer Jaroslaw Porzezinski, 42, spotted the bird while walking in a park near to his home in Szczecin, Poland.

He said he spotted the bird looking rather sorry for itself as it tried to eat – or at best shake off – its latest accessory.

Jaroslaw said: ‘The poor bird was in a right flap.

‘At first I thought to myself that bird has an unusual collar, he looked really funny.

‘It’s remarkable how he actually ended up wearing the bread, I’m sure its not normal behaviour for a pigeon.’

‘The poor bird must have been hungry so I gave him some food, but I couldn’t get close enough to take the bread off from around his neck.

‘So when I went home this pigeon was still wearing the bread but was pecking away at the food I gave him.’

Though it is a sick chain, were not sure whether they will be featured in any rap videos anytime soon!

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Revealed: the mechanism that allows birds of a feather to flock together

Revealed: the mechanism that allows birds of a feather to flock together

Pigeons loaded with GPS backpacks show the secrets of co-ordinated flight control

Anyone interested in the democratic process could do worse than study the group decisions made by pigeons in mid-flight. Scientists have discovered that pigeon flocks are governed by a kind of “democratic hierarchy” that makes sure everyone flies in the same direction.

With the help of tiny GPS backpacks carried by each member of a loft of pigeons, researchers have discovered how large numbers of animals are able to instantly co-ordinate their movements to ensure that they do things as a group rather than as anarchic individuals.

Although the principle has so far only been demonstrated with a smallish flock of Hungarian pigeons, the scientists believe it could also operate on much bigger groups of animals, such as schools of fish and herds of wild buffalo, and might even explain how close-knit groups of people, such as juries, manage to reach a single decision.

“Anyone who has seen flocks of birds or schools of fish is familiar with this phenomenon of large numbers of individuals in a fast-moving group appearing to move in a co-ordinated way, and it’s not immediately clear how they coordinate themselves,” said Dora Biro, a zoologist at Oxford University.

“Our question was, how do groups like flocks of pigeons make decisions about what to do and where to go?” Dr Biro said.

The GPS backpacks carried by the pigeons enabled the scientists to precisely monitor the birds’ movements, relative to each other, every 0.2 seconds of their journey from the point where the scientists released them to their home loft in Budapest, 15km away.

“Previously, people had assumed democratic decisions, where every bird’s preferences are somehow averaged out, and that’s what the group ends up doing. Or there might be a single leader or a small number of leaders that everyone follows,” Dr Biro said.

“But what we were able to do by tracking these birds with individual GPS units was to resolve the leader-follower relationship within the flock. What we found was a more sophisticated and refined mechanism for how the decisions are made,” she said.

“There wasn’t a single leader, nor was there a kind of egalitarian decision-making where everyone had an equal vote. Instead, each bird did have a vote, but the weight that each vote carried differed between birds.

“It represented a kind of hierarchy where the decisions of some birds near the top of the hierarchy carried more weight in terms of what the birds did than the birds lower down the hierarchy, who were still influential but to a lesser degree,” said Dr Biro, who carried out the study with Tamás Vicsek of Eötvös University in Budapest.

“Whether such effects come from some individuals being more motivated to lead, or being inherently better navigators perhaps with greater navigational knowledge, is an intriguing question we don’t yet have an answer to,” Dr Biro said.

The loft of pigeons in the study consisted of 10 birds whose every movement was recorded as they flew in a flock from one location to another. The analysis, published in the journal Nature, described how each bird moved in relation to its neighbours, with some individuals leading more than others.

“It’s neither a completely democratic system, where everybody gets the vote, nor [one with] a single leader or a few leaders responsible for the decisions. But in fact every individual gets a kind of input into what the group as a whole should do,” Dr Biro said.

“If this was honed by evolution, if there was a selective advantage for individuals in the group to make decisions in this way, then it might represent a particularly efficient form of group decision making… It is possible that the mechanism we saw in these pigeons generalises to other species and to other group decision-making contexts, even in humans,” Dr Biro said.

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“Dirtiest Hotel in America” Looks to Clean Up

Dirtiest Hotel in America” Looks to Clean Up

A day after being dubbed the filthiest in America, a Tennessee hotel is pledging to clean up.

The Grand Resort Hotel & Convention Center was ranked the filthiest hotel in America, according to ratings compiled and released by the travel review site TripAdvisor.

The historic Smoky Mountains hotel in Pigeon Forge, Tenn., was graded “terrible” by 161 of 224 reviewers on the site. Twenty-six called it “poor” and 15 gave it an “average” grade.

But CEO and General Manager Nicky Darrell Chaney said he has already fired one manager, hired a new maintenance manager and new head of housekeeping, and is in the process of using a new sanitizer to clean the rooms, reports CBS affiliate WVLT in Knoxville.

“We knew we had some problems, and we’ve started to work on these problems,” said Nicky Chaney, President and CEO of the company that runs the hotel. Chaney took over operations in December and vows to restore their public image.

“I fired one of the managers, I hired new maintenance, and new housekeeper,” he said. “We’re proud of what we’re doing now, and were excited about where we’re going to be in the next few weeks.

Chaney took over just last month as president and CEO of KMS Enterprises, which runs the Grand and several nearby properties owned by hotel magnate Kenneth M. Seaton.

“This is an issue the company is taking very seriously,” Chaney said a statement Tuesday.

Seaton also is a defendant in a civil lawsuit alleging sexual harassment of two former housekeepers hired to work in KMS hotels, the Sentinel reports.

Meanwhile, the Grand will have to keep making changes to stay ahead of negative reviews – and the unwanted spotlight following the TripAdvisor “award.”

“This is a nasty place, would not let my dog sleep there,” reviewer LaFolettePat wrote last week under the headline “health inspector please.”

JordynC’s assessment: “If you are looking for a hotel with: pubic hair stuck to the bathroom floor in some unidentifiable, gelatinous liquid; chewing tobacco spit oozing down the halls and corridors; spiders actively making webs in every corner of your room; carpeting so greasy and dirty you wouldn’t want to sit your luggage down – let alone walk around barefoot; dingy bedsheets and towels as rough and thin as sandpaper; and a room so putrid and smelly it causes a gag-reflex when you walk in… by all means, stay at The Grand Resort.”

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£2,000 court bill for woman who overfed pigeons and gulls

A Trowbridge woman has been ordered to pay £2,000 in court fees and fines for overfeeding pigeons and gulls in her back garden over a period of two years.

Maureen Francis of Langford Road in the town breached a community protection order which restricted the amount of food she left out for the birds to a single bird feeder.

She was convicted in her absence at Salisbury magistrates and fined £500 and ordered to pay £1,600 in costs. Don’t let this happen to you!

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.

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Inside the fascinating and sometimes brutal world of pigeon racing in China

Pigeon racer holds prized bird

By Karoline Kan, CNN • 6th April 2019

Every day during the racing season, 55-year-old Zhang Yajun wakes at 4 a.m. and carefully loads bamboo cages containing his 76 cherished racing pigeons into a van. Then he drives up to 200 kilometers (124 miles) from his Beijing apartment to release them. They are in training for the October and November racing season, during which time millions of dollars can be won in total prize money across races.

Zhang is just one of some 100,000 pigeon breeders living in Beijing, according to Sun Yan, the deputy general-secretary of the Beijing Changping District Racing Pigeons Association.

“Pigeon racing is a culture, but it’s also a sport,” Sun says.

On a crisp fall morning, Zhang opens the cages in a cornfield at Niutuo in Hebei province, 80 km (50 miles) south of Beijing. Forty minutes later, he uses his phone connection to a rooftop camera to watch the birds arriving home. He’s happy with their speed.

Zhang, who was a state-owned beverage factory manager before retiring in the early 2000s, says he spends about 100,000 yuan ($14,900) a year on his pigeons. That covers food, medicine, race entry fees and transport costs for training sessions — as well as equipment such as his rooftop camera gear.

Each spring, Zhang says, some 100 pigeons are born on his roof but by fall only about 20 are left. The rest have either succumbed to illness or died of injuries suffered from hitting telegraph poles or other obstacles. Or else they just got lost on the way home.

But pigeon racing also has a darker side.

Zhang says “bird-napping” — when pigeons are baited and netted during training sessions before being sold off — is a common problem.

And then there is the cheating.

In April last year, two men hid their birds in milk cartons and caught a bullet train in Henan before releasing them in Shanghai, 750 km (466 miles) away. But the birds’ unusually fast speed aroused suspicion, and the men were fined and given suspended three-year prison sentences for fraudulently obtaining prize money totaling about $147,000.

However; Beijing is becoming less and less friendly to bird fanciers.

In the spring of 2017, under a city beautification campaign targeting two-story buildings in the lanes known as hutongs, many rooftop pigeon lofts were subsequently demolished.

The government classified them as illegal buildings.

Breeder Zhang Jian says four large pigeon cages on his roof were demolished, although he still surreptitiously keeps four other cages housing about 100 pigeons. Most of his neighbors have known Zhang Jian since he was a boy and he says they understand his passion for the birds.

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Windsor city issues warning to clean up rooftop swamp

The stagnant rooftop swamp on top of a vacant commercial building on Ouellette Avenue continues to fester, attracting wildlife and emitting a wicked stench that has frustrated neighbours who’ve put up with the growing mess for months.

A pond of water pooled on the roof of the empty property at 747-755 Ouellette Ave. long enough for a large patch of reeds and cattails to flourish, providing an attractive destination for the pigeons and seagulls that arrive almost every morning.

Malette says nothing has been done since she highlighted the issue. But help may be on the way, according to Lee Ann Doyle, the city’s chief building official. Inspectors have visited the site several times and issued a final warning to the owner to clean up the property.

“If the work isn’t done, we’ll do it and charge it against the property taxes,” Doyle said.

Building inspectors issued a work order after visiting the site in July. When nothing was done, the city sent out the warning letter on Aug. 11, giving the owner until Sept. 10 to clean up the mess.

Doyle said, if nothing is done, the city will call in contractors on Sept. 11 to do the work.

The building is listed to Entertaining Assests Inc., but company representative Mike Soleski previously told The Windsor Star he hasn’t owned the property for several months. All records on file with the city indicate there has been no change in ownership.

Malette barely goes out onto her 13th floor balcony anymore because of the smell and the mosquitoes.

“I’m not a person to make complaints, but this is just ridiculous,” she said.

Discarded patio chairs, empty pizza boxes and beer cans demonstrate the amount of human traffic on the rooftop as well. The commercial building has been boarded up for years, but at least 10 times, Malette said, she has watched people on the roof, smoking drugs and drinking. They’ve even gone as far as setting small fires.

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Uptown Alderman to Make Feed Pigeons Criminal

Feeding pigeons swarm to pick up chips outside Wilson transit stop

CHICAGO (CBS) — Pigeons; they’re tolerated at best, hated at worst. Now, one Chicago alderman wants to make it a crime to feed pigeons.

CBS 2’s Dana Kozlov reports some people are calling the proposal by Ald. James Cappleman (46th) a bird-brained idea.

Uptown, downtown – pigeons are everywhere in Chicago.

Thursday morning, Barb Wambach was visiting the Christkindlmarket at Daley Plaza – where dozens of pigeons gather every day, keeping warm by the eternal flame – when she got an unpleasant surprise dropped on the boot-shaped mug she was holding.

“I moved my cup, and it felt like something plopped in it,” Wambach said. After a group of pigeons flew overhead, she found a splattering of bird droppings on her mug.

It’s that threat to everyday living, that fear of walking under a viaduct, the scourge of flying birds that Cappleman wants to eradicate.

He has introduced an ordinance that would significantly increase the penalties for feeding pigeons – making it a crime punishable by up to six months in jail and a fine of up to $1,000.

Cappleman wasn’t available Thursday to discuss his proposal, but he told other aldermen he’s tired of encountering a scene from a Hitchcock movie every time he walks to the Wilson station on the CTA Red Line.

Scores – if not hundreds – of the birds perch at the station, just waiting to be fed. A huge flock of them swarmed down to the sidewalk Thursday afternoon to descend on some potato chip crumbs like hunters on prey.

“They’re a nuisance. They’re everywhere. You know, you could stand there waiting on the bus and they’re all over your feet,” Bobby Williams said outside the Wilson stop. “I think it should be illegal to feed them.”

It’s already a city code violation to feed pigeons – as signs at the Wilson stop indicate – punishable by a fine of up to $500. Cappleman’s proposal would double the maximum fine and add the possibility of up to six months in jail.

“They’re gonna arrest someone for feeding a bird?” Lily Norton said. “That’s kind of ridiculous.”

“It’s silly. He should be focusing on other problems,” Oliver Guyton said. “Like the budget and all that type of stuff that aldermen do.”

In May, Cappleman was assaulted by a woman in Uptown, after he started sweeping away the breadcrumbs she had spread on the ground for pigeons near Broadway and Wilson Avenue.

At the time, the alderman said the area is littered with breadcrumbs every day and has a serious pigeon problem. He has also said the breadcrumbs people leave for the birds could attract rats, too, so his staff regularly cleans up breadcrumbs left on the streets.

Orignal by – DANA KOZLOV (CBS)

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CTA Orders Cleaning of Garage Covered in Pigeon Poop

CTA’s Kiss ‘n Ride parking garage at the Cumberland Blue Line station is covered in pigeon droppings. The CTA has ordered the company that runs the garage to clean it up and install devices to keep pigeons away. (Credit: CBS)

CHICAGO (CBS) — The CTA has ordered the company that runs the “Kiss n’ Ride” parking garage at the Cumberland Blue Line stop to clean the place up. The place is overrun by pigeons and some fear it may become a health hazard.

CBS2’s Mike Parker reports, pigeons are everywhere at the parking garage for the Cumberland stop – lurking on every floor of the huge garage. They’re birds of a feather, all right, and wreaking havoc with some pretty fancy car exteriors.

“There are pigeon droppings, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were bats up there as well,” said garage user Mark Gelula.

CBS 2 found no bats at the garage, only pigeons and mounds of droppings all over – some of them two to three inches deep.

Professional bird chaser Joe Seid toured the garage and said, “Maybe it’s cleaned occasionally, but it appears it’s not cleaned very frequently.”

Seid said he’s concerned about the health danger, not the paint jobs of the cars.

“If the droppings get airborne and you breathe it in, it could take a long time to take effect but it can be deadly,” he said.

Late Tuesday, after CBS 2 called to report what we found, the CTA ordered Central Parking Services to take action.

The company, which manages and maintains the garage was told to install measures designed to prevent roosting. The transit agency also ordered that the “area be thoroughly cleaned”, and that “efforts will be monitored and evaluated for effectiveness.”

According to the CTA, “the safety, security and well being of our customers and employees” is a top priority. Looks like a job for the experts!

Original by CBS 2 Producer Ed Marshall.

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Pigeons Huddle for Warmth At “L” Stops

Dozens of Pigeons crowding the L station

Dozens of birds crowding the station

CHICAGO (CBS) — Commuters are calling it everything from cute to disgusting – dozens of pigeons warming themselves under the heating lamps at Loop ‘L’ stops.

As WBBM Newsradio’s Steve Miller reports, pigeons have crowded into the heat lamp stalls on the platforms to the point where there is no place for humans left to stand.

“It’s like we’re being supplanted by the pigeons,” one woman said.

Most people politely let the pigeons have the space, but that may have something to do with all the pigeon poop on the platform under the heaters.

“It’s kind of funny,” the commuter said. “It’s also so dirty that people don’t even dare, trying to make their own way and get some space for themselves.”

The commuter was giving the pigeons a wide berth, noting the smell.

“I think it’s cute and disgusting at the same time.”

The Chicago Transit Authority says it has only gotten two complaints about pigeons this winter. But one man waiting for an ‘L’ train was quite unhappy.

“It’s disgusting that these birds are and the city is not doing anything about it,” he said. Pigeon droppings are known to carry a host of viruses and cause health problems.

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Birds & Wildlife not welcome at Windsor Airport

Bird control being used to keep airways free of obstruction

Phil Mailloux fires a noise maker in the air at the Windsor Airport in Windsor on Friday, September 21, 2012. Mailoux is part of the team that keeps the airport free of potentially deadly pests. (TYLER BROWNBRIDGE / The Windsor Star)

To discover a vast varmint-free oasis in this city, go no further than the Windsor International Airport. It’s legal to hunt, trap, chase, haze and harass any bird or animal that shows its unwanted face within YQG’s 2,000 acres of fenced-off territory.

Trap cages containing pigeons as live lures are just one of the devices deployed to keep down the numbers of raptors, including American kestrels, red-tailed and Cooper’s hawks, snowy and great-horned owls and even peregrine falcons. Such birds are kept in cages for 24 hours and then transported elsewhere, including Holiday Beach.

Chicken wire edging and even glued-on golf tees keep birds off landing lights and other runway fixtures. Airfield directional signs are now encased in gravel piles to keep skunks from digging down and creating nesting burrows.

“We use the biology of the critter to let them know this is not a safe place to be,” said Roberts. Wildlife control trucks that can be quickly deployed come equipped with noise-making sirens and distress callers, and staff have firearms and an array of “pyrotech” devices at the ready, including bangers and screamers and screeching “wizards.”

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Chicago: Pigeon Hitches A Ride On The Brown Line

View image on Twitter

CHICAGO (CBS) — Sometimes it’s faster to take the train than fly to where you’re going, even if you’re a bird.

A pigeon perched on a seat on the Brown Line during the morning rush on Monday.

Other commuters seemed to be unflappable, appearing to not even notice as the bird enjoyed its ride.

There was a brief delay on the Brown Line as the pigeon was escorted off the train at Armitage.

The CTA said it could not confirm if the bird paid its fare, but officials were checking its account.

Tired of Pigeons hitching a ride?

Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol 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 eight years in a row.

‘Attack of the pigeon!’: Video shows man throwing dead bird during street fight

A dead pigeon is shown after it was thrown in a fight in Liverpool, U.K.

No rest for the dead!

By Josh K. Elliott – Viral/Trends Global News

Video of a late-night fistfight in the United Kingdom shows one combatant flipping the other the bird – then throwing an actual dead bird at him.

Onlookers burst into laughter after realizing that the man had scooped a dead pigeon off the sidewalk and hurled it at the other man at the end of an otherwise tense confrontation.

“Can’t believe he threw a dead pigeon!” user Kwasi Mensah wrote in a Facebook post along with the video, which has been watched more than 180,000 times. Mensah told U.K. tabloids that he recorded the footage while working as a doorman at a nearby bar.

The video clip, which was first posted online Aug. 15, shows the two men fighting outside a McDonald’s restaurant on the street in Liverpool late at night. The footage starts with a man in a jacket shouting and posturing in front of three other men, including a man in a green T-shirt.

“Come on, then!” the man in the jacket says. “Let’s have it!” he settles into a fighting stance and the other man reluctantly starts to defend himself. The man in the jacket takes several jabs while the man in green tries to swat the attacks away.

Onlookers encourage the man in green to walk away rather than engage the other man.

“I’m walking away. It’s useless,” the man says. “You’re a waste of my time,” he tells his attacker.

But he had other ideas. The man in the jacket suddenly lunges in and the two start trading blows.

Lou Bega’s Mambo Number 5 can be heard blaring from a nearby speaker as the fight gets underway. The two men trade blows as the man in green tries to avoid a fight.

Approximately 90 seconds into the encounter, the man in green can be seen giving the other man the middle finger, then kneeling down to pick up a dead pigeon on the sidewalk. In one swift motion he flings the dead bird at his attacker.

The camera pans away from the two fighters to show the pigeon’s body on the sidewalk. Two voices can be heard cackling.

“Attack of the pigeon!” one man says through his laughter. “The f**king poor pigeon.”

The video pans back to where the two men were fighting. The man in the green shirt can be seen walking away. The man in the jacket starts running after him just as the video ends.

Fighting is for the birds, anyway.

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Scientists have recruited pigeons to help stop climate change

Pigeons have become the latest recruits in helping researchers gather data on climate change. Scientists at the University of Birmingham in the U.K. have developed a tiny set of sensors resembling a small backpack that can be strapped onto the back of pigeons. These little sensors help researchers collect data on urban microclimates ??? the fluctuations in temperature, humidity, and winds that can have major effects on living in major cities. So where do the pigeons come from? The group works with local volunteers who raise homing pigeons. Known for their abilities to return to their nest, homing pigeons have been used as far back as Ghengis Khan to carry messages across long distances. Using homing pigeons means that the researchers are sure to get their instruments back and can download the information before sending the birds on their way to collect more data. The design of the backpack conceived to keep the safety and comfort of the birds in mind. Each weighs less than 3 percent of the pigeon???s body weight, which is the standard for bird tracking devices. Thomas???s wife sewed each backpack, going through several versions until they found the perfect fit. ???If [the pigeon owners] are not happy with any aspect of putting the sensors on their back, then they don???t have to fly their birds,??? explains Rick Thomas, the research fellow who leads the study. ???The welfare of the birds is utterly paramount.??? Thomas also pointed out several good reasons to use birds rather than something like drone technology. For one, drones are not allowed to fly freely in any area, particularly after the trouble a drone caused at Gatwick airport in December. Secondly, different technology would not be as cost effective as what???s possible with the pigeons. Thus far, the group???s band of pigeons have logged over 620 miles with their backpacks over the course of 41 flights. The hopes are that the climate data can be used by scientists to help them predict how pollution

Pigeons are helping researchers gather data on climate change. (University of Birmingham/Cover Images)

Jeff Parsons – Monday 25 Mar 2019 2:15 pm

Pigeons have become the latest recruits in helping researchers gather data on climate change.

Scientists at the University of Birmingham have developed a tiny set of sensors resembling a small backpack that can be strapped onto the back of homing pigeons. These little sensors help researchers collect data on urban microclimates, including fluctuations in temperature, humidity, and winds that can have major effects on living in major cities.

The pigeons themselves come from local volunteers that raise them and who agree to work with the scientists. Pigeons are helping researchers gather data on climate change.

Known for their abilities to return to their nest, homing pigeons have been used as far back as Ghengis Khan to carry messages across long distances. Using homing pigeons means that the researchers are sure to get their instruments back and can download the information before sending the birds on their way to collect more data.

The design of the backpack conceived to keep the safety and comfort of the birds in mind. Each weighs less than 3% of the pigeon’s body weight, which is the standard for bird tracking devices. Sensors in the backpacks help researchers collect data on urban microclimates (University of Birmingham/Cover Images)

‘If [the pigeon owners] are not happy with any aspect of putting the sensors on their back, then they don’t have to fly their birds,’ explains Rick Thomas, the research fellow who leads the study. The welfare of the birds is utterly paramount and, they’re not likely to cause the same issues as drones, explained Thomas.

The pigeons all come from local volunteer groups.

Drones are not allowed to fly freely in any area, particularly after the trouble a drone caused at Gatwick airport in December. What’s more, drone technology would not be as cost effective as what’s possible with the pigeons.

Thus far, the group’s band of pigeons have logged over 620 miles with their backpacks over the course of 41 flights. Impressive!

Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2019/03/25/scientists-recruited-pigeons-help-stop-climate-change-9008203

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Mum fined £150 for feeding sausage roll to pigeon

Woman fined Â£150 by Bath officer for feeding pigeon sausage roll

Elisa Menendez – Wednesday 19 Jun 2019 9:56 PM

A woman has been fined £150 by her local council for feeding a piece of sausage roll to a pigeon. Sally-Ann Fricker fed the bird while shopping with her three children in Bath.

Her daughter, Toni Bradley, said they were approached ‘seconds later’ by an officer for littering, despite the pigeon flying away with the food.

Toni said: ‘If she’d chucked the wrapper down then that would have been fair enough, but this was absolutely ridiculous, we were very upset and very shocked.’

According to Bath and North East Somerset Council, those caught littering face a £150 fine, reduced to £100 if paid within 14 days.

Councillor Dave Wood, cabinet member for climate change and the environment, said the authority would review whether the fine was appropriate in this incident.

However, he added that there are notices on many streets asking the public not to feed pigeons as they are a ‘public nuisance’.

Daughter Toni was outraged at the fine, adding that her mum is a carer and the fine was worth more than her weekly earnings.

She said: ‘When I got home my three-year-old asked me to take down the bird feeder from the garden “because nanny got into trouble” for feeding them.’

Wood added that councils and their contractors should use ‘common sense’ with situations like Sally-Ann’s.

‘I have asked officers to urgently look into this matter and review the action taken with the contractor, to determine whether it was proportionate,’ he said.

He added: ‘As a general point, pigeons and gulls cause a public nuisance and are part of the problem the council has to manage when dealing with litter on the streets. ‘There are notices all over the city asking people not to feed birds.’

Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2019/06/19/mum-fined-150-feeding-sausage-roll-pigeon-10016074

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Passenger got £28,000 payout because they ‘possibly’ slipped on pigeon poo

Front view of the face of Rock Pigeon face to face.Rock Pigeons crowd streets and public squares, living on discarded food and offerings of birdseed.; Shutterstock ID 1069354133; Purchase Order: -

By Richard Hartley-Parkinson – Friday 9 Aug 2019 6:40 am

Network Rail paid out £28,000 after a passenger ‘possibly slipped’ on pigeon poo at Paddington station. Details of the incident at the west London station – in which the victim hurt their leg – were revealed in response to a Freedom of Information request by the BBC.

A total of more than £950,000 was paid out by Network Rail for 290 claims over the past five years for slips, trips and falls resulting in compensation claims at the 20 stations it manages in England and Scotland.

In some instances this included money towards claimants’ legal costs.

The largest single payout was £40,000 after a passenger ‘slipped on some liquid and landed heavily on their right hip’ at London Charing Cross.

Network Rail’s head of claims and insurance, Philip Thrower, said: ‘We’re a big company that takes our responsibilities seriously. With tens of millions of people using our stations every day; only a tiny fraction of a percent experience a mishap. Horse waits for train on South Shields metro platform

‘If we are at fault for causing damage or injury to anyone, we rightly compensate them for those accidents and put in place new ways of working to stop them from happening again.’

Other accidents which led to successful compensation claims include:

A passenger slipped on an uneven surface while walking towards a train at Euston (£17,000);
A large puddle of water caused a passenger to slip while crossing a bridge at Leeds station (£10,000);
A passenger slipped on ‘discarded tomato sauce’ on the concourse at London Liverpool Street, hurting their wrist and both knees (£6,000).

Victoria station in London was the location for the most successful claims, with 44. This was followed by London Waterloo and Leeds (both 32), Euston (27) and Liverpool Street (24). The lowest amount paid was £10 after a passenger suffered ‘personal injury and damage/messing to suit’ when they slipped on ice at an entrance to Victoria.

Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2019/08/09/paddington-station-passenger-gets-payout-slipping-pigeon-poo-10543253/

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Pigeons In Tiny Backpacks Are Measuring Air Pollution In London

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Pigeon backpacks measure air pollution in London.

Air pollution caused by diesel vehicles in London is bad – so bad that it is blamed for 9,500 premature deaths a year and has prompted Britain’s Supreme Court to order the government to make a plan for cleaning up the skies.

Now what is commonly seen as another scourge of the city, the pigeon, is helping in the fight against smog. On Monday, 10 birds outfitted in miniature backpacks carrying pollution sensors and GPS trackers took to the air, and they started tweeting – via beak, perhaps, but definitely via Twitter – their devices’ readings of nitrogen dioxide and ozone. Londoners who tweet at the Pigeon Air Patrol’s Twitter handle, @PigeonAir, are getting responses from the birds about air pollution in their area, and a live map of the pigeons’ location can be viewed online.

The patrol is, by the admission of the technology and marketing companies that created it, a publicity stunt meant to raise awareness about the city’s harmful air. Birds, it should be noted, are also subject to all sorts of nefarious ailments caused by air pollution, including lung damage and low body weight.

“There’s something about taking what is seen as a flying rat and reversing that into something quite positive,” Pierre Duquesnoy, creative director at marketing agency DigitasLBI and the brains behind the pigeon pollution monitors, told the Guardian.

Plume Labs, the tech firm, gave assurance that a veterinarian was involved in the project to ensure the safety of the pigeons, whose names include Coco, Julius and Norbert.

The London pigeons are not the first birds to don backpacks for an environmental cause.

Vultures in Lima, Peru, have been adorned with GPS trackers and GoPro cameras to hunt down illegal garbage dumping sites.

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Pigeons Swarm Chennai Airport, Nomads Roped In To Shoo Them Away

CHENNAI: A number of pigeons are swarming the Chennai airport premises for the last three days. Authorities were forced to hire a nomadic community to shoo them away.

Efforts by the airport personnel to shoo them away have failed; as the birds come back again and again, giving anxious moments to the authorities.

Many birds were spotted around the runway today, authorities requisitioned the services of Narikorava community, who are well versed in shooing them away using traditional techniques.

The gypsies were on the job to shoo the birds away, and have been very successful.

As part of the State Safety Programme, preventing wildlife (bird/animal) strikes to aircraft was identified by Directorate General of Civil Aviation as one of the most important safety priorities.

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Flying High No More: Drug-Smuggling Pigeon Caught In Kuwait

It’s 2017 and we have clearly come a long way from the days pigeons were used to deliver letters.

Case in point, this pigeon in Kuwait that was caught with a little bag full of drugs out for delivery. According to Al Arabiya, Kuwait custom officials caught the pigeon as it was crossing over from Iraq to Kuwait. Upon searching the little grey bag strapped to its back, they discovered 178 narcotic pills. What a comedown for the little birdie.

This is not the first time that drug smugglers have used pigeons for delivery. In 2016, a pigeon was caught trying to smuggle drugs into a Costa Rica prison. The bird will not be charged for this offence.

Pigeons Aren’t Bird-Brained, Can Understand Concepts Of Space, Time

A new study finds that pigeons can discriminate the abstract concepts of space and time but they seem to use a different region of the brain than humans and primates to do so.

WASHINGTON: Not only human beings but even pigeons can discriminate the abstract concepts of space and time, according to a study. However, they seem to use a different region of the brain than humans and primates to do so.

The finding, published in the journal Current Biology, adds to growing recognition in the scientific community that lower-order animal species such as birds, reptiles, and fish are capable of high-level, abstract decision-making.

“Indeed, the cognitive prowess of birds is now deemed to be ever closer to that of both human and non-human primates,” said Edward Wasserman, from the University of Iowa in the US.

“Those avian nervous systems are capable of far greater achievements than the pejorative term ‘bird brain’ would suggest,” he said.

Humans are able to perceive space and time, even without the aid of inventions such as a watch or a ruler. The region of the brain that helps humans make those abstract concepts more tangible is the parietal cortex, part of the cerebral cortex and the outermost layer of the brain. The cerebral cortex is known to be a locus of higher thought processes, including speech and decision-making.

However, the pigeon brain does not have a parietal cortex, or at least one developed enough to be distinct. So, the birds must employ another area of the brain to discriminate between space and time.

Pigeons were put through a series of tasks called the “common magnitude” test.

The birds were shown on a computer screen a horizontal line either 6 cm or 24 cm long for either 2 seconds or 8 seconds.

The researchers said the results show pigeons process space and time in ways similar to humans and other primates.

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