by johnnymarin | Dec 5, 2017 | Pigeon Patrol's Services
An injured pigeon has been nursed back to health by staff at the Atlantic Vet College Wildlife Service after it was found in downtown Charlottetown in July covered in a thick, sticky substance.
The vet college is now warning about the dangers of glue traps and other sticky products.
AVC wildlife technician Fiep de Bie says a glue trap is likely the cause of the bird’s misfortune but she said it’s also possible it got into glue from a glue gun.
She hopes people will consider other ways to keep pests away so something like this doesn’t happen again.
Use other traps
“You can think about prevention…closing off areas, not having food around,” said de Bie. “But of course if you have a pest control problem, I would talk to a professional and there are more sophisticated snap traps there that kill animals instantly, instead of having them suffer.”
A pigeon that was found covered in what appeared to be glue has been saved by staff at the Atlantic Vet College. (Submitted by Fiep de Bie)
The bird was treated with oils and soap and its wings were trimmed back to get rid of the parts that were stuck together.
“Obviously being completely covered in glue and not being able to move was very stressful to him.”
The vet college had to wait for the pigeon to grow back the new feathers before it could be released.
De Bie said the bird was released back into the wild last week and is doing well.
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 | Dec 3, 2017 | Pigeon Patrol's Services
The Shiv Sena claimed that the structure, which was being constructed by local BJP MLA Mangalprabhat Lodha, was illegal. Upping its ante against the BJP, the Shiv Sena urged the BMC to demolish a ‘kabutarkhana’ (feeding place for pigeons) at Girgaum Chowpatty on Wednesday. “That was an illegal construction and we complained to the BMC leading to its demolition,” said a local Shiv Sena vibhag pramukh Pandurang Sakpal. He added that a new, bigger kabutarkhana was being constructed at Chowpatty Bandstand since Wednesday morning in place of the one that was in existence. When contacted, Lodha said he did not want to comment on this “sensitive issue” and added that he was unaware of the action by the BMC.
Upping its ante against the BJP, the Shiv Sena urged the BMC to demolish a ‘kabutarkhana’ (feeding place for pigeons) at Girgaum Chowpatty on Wednesday. The Shiv Sena claimed that the structure, which was being constructed by local BJP MLA Mangalprabhat Lodha, was illegal. “That was an illegal construction and we complained to the BMC leading to its demolition,” said a local Shiv Sena vibhag pramukh Pandurang Sakpal. He added that a new, bigger kabutarkhana was being constructed at Chowpatty Bandstand since Wednesday morning in place of the one that was in existence. “When it comes to Chowpatty, there is a high-power committee, CRZ rules, and no construction can be done there in an arbitrary manner,” said Sakpal, adding that Rajya Sabha MP Anil Desai, Lok Sabha MP from South Mumbai Arvind Sawant, MLA Sunil Shinde and former BEST committee Arun Dudhwadkar were present during the demolition on Wednesday evening. When contacted, Lodha said he did not want to comment on this “sensitive issue” and added that he was unaware of the action by the BMC. The BMC assistant commissioner Vishwas Mote confirmed that the BMC had demolished the kabutarkhana and added that the issue had been brought to their notice by locals, and that the action had not been taken under the influence of any political party.
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 | Dec 1, 2017 | Pigeon Patrol's Services
A pensioner who fatally shot a pigeon as it perched in a neighbour’s tree has been fined £1,300.
Peter Lister used his air rifle to shoot the bird in its wing, Oxford Magistrates’ Court heard last week.
The RSPCA was called after a member of the public discovered the injured wood pigeon, which was taken to a vet and put down due to the extent of its injuries.
The 70-year-old Oxford artist pleaded not guilty, insisting he had nothing to do with the pigeon’s death.
The bird was wounded on January 30 in Southmoor Road, Jericho in a garden neighbouring Lister’s home.
Lister refused the RSPCA’s request to interview him and was described by the charity as ‘uncooperative’.
He denied shooting the bird, despite the pellet dislodged from the pigeon matching one of two air rifles owned by Lister and seized by the police.
At Friday’s court appearance Lister received a £500 fine and was told to pay £750 costs and a £50 victim surcharge.
Magistrates also issued a forfeiture order on the air rifle used to shoot the pigeon.
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 | Nov 30, 2017 | Pigeon Patrol's Services
Starting on May 7, 2016, every weekend evening through midsummer saw the artist Duke Riley setting fly two thousand pigeons from atop an old battleship in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Fitted with tiny LED lights, they traced graceful illuminated meanders in the gathering night, before a bell rang them back to their coops. Fly by Night was one of Riley’s typically ambitious interventions, this one completely legal — a commission by Creative Time — as opposed to, say, the time in 2007 when he immersed a homemade spherical submarine of Revolutionary War–era design in New York Harbor and piloted it within yards of the Queen Mary before an armada of law enforcement fished him out. “The FBI didn’t think it was so funny,” he remembers of that episode. “They still have some kind of open file on me.” He was eventually able to get the sub back.
Riley, 45, is known for spectacular ventures with elements of poetry and provocation, usually staged in liminal zones where city meets water and sky: a chaotic naval joust between improvised vessels in a reflecting pool in Flushing Meadows Park; a temporary tavern full of drunk revelers built on swampland off the Belt Parkway. These enterprises tend to make news, as did, for instance, the time in 2012 when Riley set homing pigeons with Cuban cigars in tiny harnesses to fly from Havana back to their home in Key West.
Riley traces both his maritime and his avian interests back to his childhood, which he spent around Boston and on Cape Cod. He remembers hanging around a pigeon club in the Dorchester area: “It looked like a sports bar, but instead of pictures of athletes on the wall it was just pictures of pigeons,” he says. When he moved to Providence to attend the Rhode Island School of Design, he lived in a house with pigeons. He became a tattoo artist there as well, a practice he continues on occasion. But his formal subject at RISD was painting, and he later earned a master’s in sculpture from the Pratt Institute, setting up a studio art practice that is just as integral to his work.
Riley’s current exhibition at Magnan Metz is a two-parter: A large temporary space across the street from the gallery displays new work, made in the wake of Fly by Night; and in the gallery itself is a mini-retrospective of past pieces and project artifacts, including his original submarine. The show lends aesthetic grounding and context to the performance-style works, and tinges Riley’s rapscallion energy with introspection and melancholy. “The studio practice is extremely important to me functioning as a human and artist,” Riley says. Wearing his trademark fedora, he’s made it back to the gallery despite a hangover from the show’s opening party the night before. “Starting with a blank piece of paper and creating another world — even when the projects are happening, it’s an important part because I’m thinking.”
In the past year, those thoughts have turned brooding, related to the presidential campaign and outcome. “A lot of the work has to do with the political climate in the months following Fly by Night, when I was dismantling the show, then moved my birds back onto my roof in Red Hook,” he says. The connection was a feeling of threat. Late fall and early winter is when pigeons are most vulnerable to raptors, after migratory birds are gone and small animals have entered hibernation, Riley explains. “And the time when all these hawks were around was just after the election.” In more ways than one, predation was in the air.
Riley processed his feelings in a series of elegant paintings, presented in the manner of a naturalist’s almanac, of the raptors that threaten pigeons in New York City: goshawk, peregrine falcon, red-tailed hawk, and Cooper’s hawk. He made tile mosaics that depict raptors clutching pigeons as they swoop skyward. “Everyone in the pigeon community respects the course of nature, but even so, when you work with these birds you realize that they’re sentient beings that have feelings,” he says. “They establish relationships with other birds. They’re these beings that are terrified of the hawk. I was thinking of that stuff, and the feeling of trying to protect the people, and protect your loved ones.”
One of Riley’s signature large-scale drawings, which abound in references and riotous detail, presents the Navy Yard battleship with its upper strata rendered as a kind of Tower of Babel, featuring, amid much else, different varieties of pigeon coop architecture used around the world. The ship was a refuge, he says: self-contained and moored at the Navy Yard, itself a secluded space, all within New York City, which for all its faults remains an open-minded place. “It has always been a place of greater tolerance, as most port cities throughout history have been,” Riley says. In one area of the drawing, amid the mermaids and fish and assorted flotsam found in New York’s waterways, hammerhead sharks are attacking robed Ku Klux Klansmen, an allegory of resistance and revenge.
The exhibition’s centerpiece is a series of nearly one thousand portraits in profile of pigeons, each identified by name, breed, and their flock or owner from among the city’s die-hard subculture of pigeon fliers. The portraits are made of fabric embroidered via a computerized process, then stretched over canvas and hand-painted, so they are precise likenesses of members of Riley’s flying armada. (An album of photographs of all two thousand pigeons, yearbook-style, is on hand for those wishing to verify.) A few of the pigeons were veterans of Riley’s 2012 Key West project. Most were borrowed from other fliers and returned afterward. Riley retains around two hundred birds near Red Hook. He flies them in the late afternoon, for a work break with his assistants. “We call it pigeon o’clock,” he says.
Riley titled this show Now Those Days Are Gone, and while the reference is kept vague, the elegiac feeling is impossible to miss. It can apply to the national climate, and just as well, Riley hints, to a mid-career taking of stock. “I wouldn’t call it activism, but most of the work I’ve done has a sense of optimism about what is possible, of empowerment,” he says. “After [Fly by Night] I needed time to think about how I was looking at things, and whether some of the methods I’ve used in the past even make sense.”
It can apply, as well, to New York City and the piers, marshes, and estuaries that Riley has explored for years, semi-wilderness zones that invigorate a city’s culture, not just its ecology. In 2012, Riley’s stained-glass pieces commissioned by the MTA went up at a Rockaway subway station just before the Sandy storm; one panel depicted bungalows swept out to sea. Since then, waterfront development continues unabated around the city, squeezing out the remaining cruising sites, artist’s squats, and assorted ungoverned areas. For Riley, this is a loss. “I think it’s intrinsic human instinct that people are drawn to the sorts of spaces where water meets land, these abandoned urban areas where you can operate outside the constraints of society,” he says. “A city needs to breathe.”
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 | Nov 26, 2017 | Pigeon Patrol's Services
FROM changes to aerodrome laws to questions about city water pressure, the Toowoomba Regional Council’s Tuesday committee meeting was filled with vital updates for residents.
The Planning and Development, Water and Waste and Infrastructure Committees were run at the council chambers this morning, with the final three portfolios held tomorrow.
All items will then be reviewed at the ordinary meeting next week.
1. Aerodrome law changes
Unusual incidents at aerodromes in the region, including homing pigeons and abandoned aircraft, have pushed the council’s infrastructure committee to rip up its previous local laws around the spaces.
Aerodrome operations manager Barry Wicks introduced the new legislation to the council, which he said were brought on to plug gaps in the previous laws that had been exposed over the past six years.
“The new draft Local Law No.6 (Aerodromes) 2017 has been prepared to better align with the current operating environment and management practices of the aerodromes controlled by the Toowoomba Regional Council, and to provide greater clarity about these practices than is contained in the current local law,” he said in the report.
The councillors were informed that various events since 2011 had exposed the limitations of the previous local law, No. 39 (Public Aerodromes).
“For example, in 2012/13 difficulties were encountered in dealing with homing pigeons released for daily exercising directly beneath the approach to Runway 11, and removal of an abandoned aircraft which had sat on the airfield for over 15 years,” the report said.
Cr James O’Shea said while the council always used education and negotiating as a first point of call, the new laws allowed people to be penalised if their activities infringed on an airspace.
2. New water pressure minimums
THE issue of “minimum water pressure” to new developments was a strong discussion point in the committee meeting this morning.
The council voted to amend the Planning Scheme Policy No.3 to include updated minimum water pressure levels for new property developments, increasing from 22ml to 30ml for residential proposals and from 25ml to 35ml for commercial land.
This however was revealed to be merely a recommendation that the TRC will suggest to developers, with the state-mandated minimums remaining the same (22ml and 25ml).
Cr Nancy Sommerfield, who has received complaints from residents about Toowoomba’s water pressure, said the council had no power to force developers to follow the new minimum water pressure guidelines.
“It’s our desire that they go with these minimums, but we’ve got no teeth in it,” she said.
“If they want to hook and set up this new development, if the capacity is not there to deliver these new minimums, they have to pay the council to upgrade the infrastructure.”
3. New housing lot numbers plummet
THE number of new and sealed lots approved by the Toowoomba Regional Council fell to 12-month lows, according to the latest report on development approvals.
Just seven new lots were approved and 18 sealed in August, compared with eight and 213 in July, while house and unit applications also dropped off.
“During the same period 108 new houses were constructed, indicating a higher lot consumption compared to new lots released,” Planning and Development general manager Stewart Somers said in the report.
In other news, the value of building approvals has steadily increased since September last year, and now sits just over $50 million.
4. Boost for farmers moving large ag equipment
LANDHOLDERS who need to use council roads to transport over-sized agricultural equipment like harvesters received a leg-up thanks to a new council framework.
The infrastructure committee approved the changes this morning, which would make it easier for farmers to apply for permits to move vehicles short distances on council roads.
The need for new laws was flagged back in 2015.
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 | Nov 24, 2017 | Pigeon Patrol's Services
A HEADLESS pigeon found in Salisbury city centre has been blamed on a “cruel idiot” after youngsters were seen kicking its head around in “a barbaric act”.
Wildlife rescue volunteers say they were disgusted to receive a report of the decapitated bird in the Market Place on Thursday.
They said the bird’s head had been kicked about by youths for fun, with “no respect whatsoever” for the animal.
The gruesome discovery was reported by a member of the public to Wiltshire Wildlife Hospital, based in Newton Tony.
Police are treating the case as one of animal cruelty.
Wildlife care supervisor Marilyn Korkis said in a post on Facebook: “I can’t tell you in words how disgusted I was receiving a call from a clearly upset gentleman who came across a feral pigeon in Salisbury Market Place with its head detached from its body.
“I can only surmise it was deliberate, done by some cruel idiot for fun.”
The incident was reported to the police in the hope of finding CCTV evidence.
A photograph of bird’s headless corpse was posted on the Wiltshire Wildlife Hospital Facebook page.
Readers were quick to condemn the “sick” act.
Kimberley Louise Crew posted: “What a sorry, revolting, state the human race is becoming.
“Poor creature.”
Eleanor Campion wrote: “Shame on whoever mutilated this bird and those who thought kicking it about was a game.”
Nina Griffin posted: “Let’s hope CCTV can be revealed and if it was youths their parents can see what a awful thing they have done and hopefully teach them the right way of how to respect animals!”
Other Facebook users suggested it could have been the work of a fox or a cat.
Michael Growcott said: “A person would have to be pretty nimble to nab a pigeon.”
But Ms Korkis responded: “It was broad daylight in the city centre, I don’t think so! Town pigeons are very slow as they rely on humans dropping morsels for them to eat.”
A Wiltshire Police spokesman said: “We are investigating an incident of animal cruelty involving a pigeon outside the Guildhall in Salisbury on 5 October at approximately 6pm.
“Officers will be analysing CCTV in the area and carrying out enquiries.
“Anyone with information should call police on 101.”
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)
