by johnnymarin | Aug 27, 2018 | Pigeon Patrol's Services
PIGEONS who have made themselves at home under Clemens Street railway bridge will be flying the nest if campaigners get their way.
The bridge was previously fitted with netting but birds kept becoming trapped and dying after holes were not repaired.
After a public outcry some two years ago, the netting was removed.
But the Green Party says those walking or cycling under the bridge have being dodging pigeon poo ever since.
Now it is calling on Warwick District Council and Network Rail to fix the problem and is campaigning for change.
Amy Evans, who is spearheading the campaign, said: “This has gone on long enough. For over two years we’ve been pushing the council and Network Rail to sort this out, possibly by putting a metal mesh in place, but they’ve failed to take action.
“People should be able to walk up this busy street without risk of pigeon poo.”
A spokeswoman for Network Rail said the company plans to install metal netting next year.
She said: “Wherever possible Network Rail works with local authorities to discourage pigeons from perching or nesting on railway bridges.
“We plan to install netting to the railway bridge in Clemens Street by summer next year. We have to prioritise our work to keep the railway running safely and reliably. We understand the inconvenience to pedestrians and will install the netting as soon as possible.”
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 | Aug 20, 2018 | Pigeon Patrol's Services
SINGAPORE – Residents of Block 390, Bukit Batok West Avenue 5 have raised concerns after some 15 birds were found either dead or dying at their void deck on Thursday (July 19).
Residents told The Straits Times the birds that were still alive were fighting to move and gasping for air. Policemen had arrived and cordoned off the area last night.
The birds included pigeons and other species.
The Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore (AVA) is investigating.
Madam Julie Harichand, 57, a housewife, said she was on her way home at about 3.30 pm when she saw the birds scattered around the void deck. Some were still alive. She said she and a group of 10 residents then carried the birds and placed them together.
She said: “I think someone must have poisoned the birds. Those that were alive kept trying to fly and failing. We gathered the birds together so we could give them water, and while doing so we found what looked like whiterice in their mouths.
“The birds started dying one by one. Only a few left were moving.”
She added that another resident had called the Choa Chu Kang Town Council and AVA for assistance some two hours before. AVA personnel started removing the birds around 7pm, she said.
Mr Manoj Kumar, 47, a businessman who was visiting his parents, said at least eight policemen were at the scene at around 6pm.
“The birds seemed to be fighting for their lives; the small sparrows looked like they were gasping for breath,” he added.
“If the birds were poisoned, how could someone do such a thing? They are so pitiful.”
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 | Aug 14, 2018 | Pigeon Patrol's Services
It was a windy spring day when a small cluster of relatives gathered at the All Saints Cemetery outside Pittsburgh to lay their aunt to rest. The affair was simple — no hulking tombstone, no choir singing “Amazing Grace,” no long sermon. Then came Ken Haselrig’s turn.
Haselrig is tall and built like a retired linebacker, and all eyes were on him as he reached into a dainty wicker basket and retrieved a single white dove. Using his thumb and forefinger to hold the bird, he asked the bereaved if they would like to pet it. Some gave only a cursory stroke, but several lingered on the dove, looking into its eyes and even whispering to it.
When they finished, Haselrig raised the bird and tossed it into the wind. The dove banked left, cleared a row of pines, and with a few flaps of its snow-white wings, disappeared.
But not for good. White doves used in such releases are actually homing pigeons, and this one was on its way home — to Haselrig’s house about a dozen miles away.
From the ancient Greeks to the 5th-century Egyptians, people have for centuries released birds in remembrance, mourning and celebration. Haselrig has been doing it for just eight years.
After 23 years as a science teacher, Haselrig started his bird business, called Dovecote. Rain or shine, winter or summer, weddings and bar mitzvahs and funerals — Haselrig’s birds fly them all. Last year, Haselrig flew his birds at around 70 different events, and 2018 is already looking to outpace that number.
Although such bird-release operations are on the rise, Haselrig said many wedding officiants and funeral directors have never seen a white dove in person. And even more often, he said, the people who watch his releases don’t understand how they work.
“Sometimes I’ll do a release, and after the birds have flown away, the people just stare at me,” Haselrig said. “They’re waiting for me to go collect them.”
But this is the beauty of homing pigeons — they do not need to be collected. They’re already winging their way back to their base.
“They usually beat me home,” Haselrig said.
Two birds of the same feather
Most of the birds we call pigeons and doves are the same species. Some are white; some are mottled gray, black, and green. But they’re all domestic pigeons, or Columba livia domestica, a subspecies of the rock dove or rock pigeon, Columba livia.
“They’re so interchangeable that the American Ornithologists Union committee on nomenclature has actually flip-flopped back and forth in terms of calling our city feral pigeons ‘rock doves’ or ‘rock pigeons’,” said Robert Mulvihill, an ornithologist at the National Aviary in Pittsburgh.
The bird family known as Columbidae includes more than 300 species of pigeons and doves — creatures found all over the world and given evocative names like mourning dove and ruddy quail-dove, white-crowned pigeon and red-billed pigeon.
But the only meaningful difference between the graceful birds released to mark a new marriage and the animals that mark your car with liquid dung is a little bit of breeding.
Not every pigeon is a homing pigeon, however. “Some pigeons can’t find their way across a street,” Haselrig said.
For that, the birds must be trained. Or as Haselrig calls it, “programmed.”
It’s not the kind of regimen that would make a good movie montage set to “Eye of the Tiger.” First, Haselrig waits for a bird to learn to fly, then he takes it a short distance from its loft and lets it try to return home. Once it’s mastered that, he might release it from a half-mile away, then a mile, and on and on until the bird can find its way home from halfway across Pennsylvania.
The trick is to let the birds get a little hungry before flying, he said. This gives them an incentive to go back to the only reliable food source they’ve ever known.
Pigeon GPS
But how do they know where to go?
Scientists are only just starting to understand how this works. It used to be thought that iron cells in the birds’ beaks helped the animals navigate, sort of like a compass pointing to true north. However, newer studies are investigating the role of proteins in the animals’ retinas, which may allow pigeons to see the earth’s magnetic field.
“When I think about orientation and navigation, I think about how we humans fly,” said Atticus Pinzón-Rodríguez, a sensory biologist who studies zebra finches at Lund University in Sweden. “We rely on complex mechanisms and myriad different, and many times redundant, sources of information. If one source fails or is not reliable, the pilot will check others to correct course and take us to our destination. “
Birds, he suspects, do the same thing. They use landmarks or the position of the sun when they can.
“But when the animal doesn’t have access to those sources, the magnetic field is there. And it has been there since the Earth started spinning, so it is unlikely that evolution and biological systems have simply ignored such a rich source of spatial information,” he said.
But even if birds see things we cannot, it doesn’t mean they are infallible. Take the bird Haselrig calls “Big Yellow,” a male dove that one day showed up at his suburban backyard coops out of the blue. Haselrig recognized the yellow tag on the bird’s leg, so he called the animal’s owner and asked him if he wanted his bird back.
The man, Haselrig recalled, said heck no. After all, what good is a homing pigeon that cannot find its way home?
Haselrig eventually reprogrammed Big Yellow to fly for him, which the bird did successfully for a while. He even trusted the convert enough to release him along with several other doves at a wedding near Penn State, a couple of hours’ drive from Haselrig’s suburban Pittsburgh house. But when the flock returned, Big Yellow wasn’t with it.
Then, 30 days later, Big Yellow came spiraling down into the yard. Only now the bird carried a large scar and a few feathers growing weirdly straight out of his chest. Haselrig suspected it was a wound that had been inflicted by a hawk. (For doves, run-ins with raptors can be a hazard of the job.)
Big Yellow’s trials were not over, however. Upon return, this avian Odysseus discovered his mate had taken a new beau. Big Yellow ran the suitor off and the couple was restored.
“He has been officially retired ever since and lives happily with his mate. He flies free around the loft,” Haselrig said. “But I do not take him to release events anymore.”
Home base
Big Yellow and about 70 colleagues reside in backyard lofts, which are sort of crosses between garden sheds and children’s playhouses. Pigeons have an undeserved reputation as filthy-disease spreaders, but Haselrig’s lofts smell better than many a pet-friendly home.
Haselrig admits that helping people see past pigeon-related stigmas is a hard part of his vocation, but he’s also sometimes surprised by how much people seem to care about the birds’ welfare.
“Before I release the dove, I explain that the bird is meant to symbolize your loved one,” he said.
These words are meant to soothe the mourners, but sometimes, particularly in winter or on windy days, it can also produce anxiety. People worry the birds won’t be able to make it on their own in the cold, or that they’ll starve.
So Haselrig elaborates.
“It won’t get lost,” he tells the families. “It won’t be wandering. It’s going home.”
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 | Aug 13, 2018 | Pigeon Patrol's Services
If you look when you enter Pima from the direction of Thatcher, you’ll see streetlights hanging over U.S. Highway 70 courtesy of poles fastened firmly to the sidewalk on the north and south sides of the highway.
If you’re lucky, when you pass the fourth pole from the east, on the north side of the highway, you’ll see as many as 20 or more rock doves (the kind of pigeons I recall growing up in Chicago) sitting quietly on the arm extending out over the street. Sometimes these birds are there, and other times they’re not. But when they’re there, they’re all but always sitting on the fourth light pole from the east on the north side. No kidding; these birds must really be creatures of habit . . . or friends who like spending time together, which is my expectation.
Rarely, they’re on another pole, and even less rarely, there are so many of these pigeons that some have to sit on other poles — even some on the south side of the highway.
The birds, it seems, talk quietly to one another and pay no attention to the cars passing under them.
I’m intrigued by this because I’ve only known one other group that met that regularly and almost always in the same place. Mary Lou’s family introduced me to these retired men as “Daddy’s coffee club.” “Daddy” referring to Jerry, my late father-in-law.
I met the coffee club one winter when Mary Lou and I came to Safford for Christmas break. One morning, Jerry asked me if I’d like to join him for coffee along with the other septa- and octogenarians at Jerry’s Restaurant, where they met each morning and afternoon.
Sounded like a plan to me, and so we headed off.
I don’t recall the names of the six or seven men who were there that morning (the number varied depending on who had what to do that day), but they all smiled broadly when we met, shaking my hand and telling me they’d all heard lies about the kind of person I was but they knew I was really OK. I told them I found that reassuring as they ushered me in to the booth’s seat next to the window and so farthest from the waitress when she appeared. I didn’t yet know why they wanted me in that seat, but I was pleased that I’d relieved myself at home before we left for Jerry’s because that allowed me to miss the ribbing I’d receive if I had to ask everyone on my side of the table to move so I could use the men’s room.
I also learned that the booth they were using was their booth, and the only time they used another is if someone, unaware of their tradition, was using it when they showed up. And then they found another one, vowing to show up earlier next time.
The waitress came and took our orders (mine was the only one she didn’t predict) by calling to each by name and recalling their usual orders. Only one or two orders, if I recall, needed to be revised, and that was because the guy ordering it had changed his mind that day. She took the orders, by the way, by shouting over the men’s conversations. I got the feeling that she’d developed this tactic over time since there was no way they’d quiet down, being, as they were, in multiple conversations simultaneously.
The only one whose name I recall is Doc Harries, then a recently retired Arizona state veterinarian. He’d traveled all over the state examining cattle and pigs to be sold, inspecting chicken-raising facilities and so on. I was intrigued that this meant he’d been issued (what looked to me like) mummy sleeping bags left over from WWII. Subsequently, he gave me two of them, one of which I still use, lovingly.
The high point of the morning arrived when the waitress came with the bill. The men each told her they wanted the bill, and so, using a windup and delivery I’m sure she’d long ago developed, she threw the bill high over the center of the table where all the septa- and octogenarians fought over it as it floated tableward. I noticed that she’d long since turned and left the table by the time one of them snagged the bill.
I also noticed that each of them discouraged me when I offered to leave the tip.
So I decided that the next time I joined the coffee club for coffee, by gory, I’d get the bill. And I did.
On that occasion, and while everyone was munching their sweet rolls and drinking their coffee, I asked to be excused (meaning that the men on my side of the booth had to get out of their seats when I left and again when I returned) from the men’s room. And on the way back, I gave the waitress my credit card and asked her to return it to me along with the receipt to sign, and she agreed.
So when my new friends called for the bill, they were surprised to find it had been paid — tip and all. “Who did it?” they demanded to know, and when the waitress told them, they forgot my name and began calling me “Out of town money” which they all thought was hysterical. I didn’t feel badly, either.
Now, 15-plus years later, all the coffee clubbers are gone, the only thing left behind being the booth at Jerry’s Restaurant where they met, twice daily, for God knows how many years. And I’m left missing them and the joyful low-keyed ruckus they shared twice daily.
I’m reminded of them almost every time I drive under the fourth streetlight from the east on U.S. Highway 70 in Pima. Much of the time, the birds are there, and only rarely are they on a pole other than the fourth — I suspect because their usual pole was already occupied by other birds when the pigeons arrived. The only thing I don’t know about those birds is how they decide who gets the bill.
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 | Aug 9, 2018 | Pigeon Patrol's Services
MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP PENDLETON, California – Whether it’s Genghis Khan using messenger pigeons in 1201 or former Gen. James Mattis using a satellite phone in 2009, one thing remains clear; effective communications play a vital role in the military.
“During my time, I’ve been fortunate enough to see communications go from an analog to digital standpoint,” said Joey Trecartin, a retired chief warrant officer 5 who served in communications for 30 years as a network engineering officer, circuit card repairer, communication security equipment technician, and technical controller. “The evolution of communications has enabled commanders to make more informed decisions than generations past.”
When Trecartin was a private first class almost 30 years ago, he dealt with numerous radios and parts that did the same job of one lightweight, modernized radio today.
“30 years ago, communications was very different,” said Trecartin. “A radio was just a radio for voice communication. Now they are used to send data and have a lot more capabilities in a smaller package.”
Communications play an important role in the Marine Corps; it allows information to be pushed around the battlefield instantaneously so commanders can react to changing situations faster, and provide the warfighter access to information necessary to complete missions.
According to historians, on June 7, 1942, the Battle of Midway ended, in part because United States codebreakers at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, decoded Japanese naval communications. These actions enabled allied forces to predict an impending attack, highlighting the importance of communications on the battlefield.
“You want to have better rifles, better combat aircraft, better communications,” said Trecartin. “Communications allow commanders to have a real-time feel of what’s going on in the battlefield, which can ultimately save lives and win battles.”
Although modern militaries have instant access to real-time information at the snap of a finger, and no longer have to wait for carriers to deliver coded notes to commanders, how do we stay ahead of the enemy?
“More now than ever, we try to leverage commercial technology into our programs,” said Trecartin. “By seeing what is being worked on outside of the Marine Corps, we can take emerging technologies and apply them to a tactical environment.”
According to Trecartin, the mission of Marine Corps communications is to ensure that information is reliably transmitted from one point to another. That mission is achieved not only by having modern equipment, but also by improving the people and processes to make it a reality.
“Force modernization is going to better enable Marines that are forward deployed to connect with coalition and joint forces if need be,” said Trecartin. “If we’re modernizing our equipment it only makes sense to modernize our MOS’s so the Marine Corps can move forward.”
Marine Corps Vision and Strategy 2025 includes continuously innovating the Marine Corps by requiring that we look across the entire institution and identify areas that need improvement and effect positive change. The MOS’s in the communications field such as field wireman and cyber network operator were some of the many changed in support of Marine Corps force modernization. The new MOS’s in place of field wireman and cyber network operator are network administrator and data systems administrator, which play a key role in communications by establishing networks and configuring cyber systems.
The Marine Corps quickly picks up on what we have to do to change and stay ahead of the enemy,” said Staff Sgt. Joshua Causey, transmissions chief, 9th Communications Battalion, I Marine Expeditionary Force. “It’s my job as a leader to train my Marines so they can be the next generation of combat communicators.”
As the Marine Corps continues to prepare for the battles and conflicts to come, the field of communications will continue to improve how we communicate in battle and in garrison.
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)
