by johnnymarin | Nov 15, 2017 | Animal Deterrent Products
Visitors to Preston bus station have been warned not to be alarmed if the council’s new pest control officers come swooping down from above. In a bid to tackle persistent problems with pesky pigeons, county hall has turned to a trio of Harris Hawks to keep them in check. The birds of prey; named Oslo, Henry and Holly, will be on shift rotation at the station tasked with scaring off the mass of feathered foes. The move has been prompted by years of the pests making their way into buildings and causing a mess with their droppings. And they made a swoop for new territory when glass panels were replaced along one side of the Grade II listed building earlier this year, part of the multi-million pound redevelopment project. Andrew Barrow, the county council’s project manager for the redevelopment, said: “The hawk has been flying in the concourse to scare off the pigeons. We’ve already carried out one successful session and we’ve got other sessions planned. “We know that it’s an unusual sight if you’re not expecting it. “You might see the hawk flying around, under the watch of its falconer, but it shouldn’t cause any problems for people using the bus station. “The pigeons are a nuisance and we need to get them out of the bus station. “This is a widely-used method of dealing with this sort of issue and is used at other large buildings, airports and famously even at Wimbledon.” The hawks, who will be accompanied by experts from SMJ Falconry, will visit at different times of day so the pigeons do not become accustomed to a regular timetable. The £23m revamp of the station includes a new paved courtyard and public space along with the addition of a city Youth Zone at the north end.
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 8, 2017 | Animal Deterrent Products
Claude Craig jokes that the antiquated communications system used by first responders in Whitfield County had nearly reached the point where it might soon have been better to just toss pigeons into the air with notes on their legs telling lawmen where they were needed.
There’s no need for such drastic measures now, though, as Mr. Craig, director of the county’s Emergency Management Agency, reports that a new $12 million state-of-the-art communications system, paid for with SPLOST funds, has been up and running since early August.
“We Band-Aided and repaired and fixed for 43 years on that system,” said Mr. Craig, who ironically had just started at the sheriff’s office when the old radios were installed, “and it finally got to the point where there were no more Band-Aids. It was just unacceptable and didn’t work. You could be standing in a parking lot somewhere, and I could holler at you and hear you fine, but I couldn’t talk to you on the radio.”
Mr. Craig thanked local voters for approving a SPLOST in March 2015 to pay for the new system. Two and a half years of planning finally came to a close on Aug. 2-3 when workers in several city and county departments switched over to the new digital communications system.
“What a glorious day it was. Great … no problems … best thing that ever happened … works fine … works great … … no dead spots,” Mr. Craig said when asked for comments he had heard from some of the users of the new system.
Count Dalton Fire Chief Todd Pangle is a believer in the new system.
“There’s no comparison,” he told the Dalton Daily Citizen. “We can talk portable to portable better than we could talk mobile to mobile before. So far, we have found no dead spots for communications. Previously, we had multiple dead spots. Even in residential calls, we would find that guys inside were having trouble communicating with people outside.”
A total of 1,196 radios were installed and are being used by the Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office, Dalton Police Department, Whitfield County Fire Department, Dalton Fire Department, Whitfield County Public Works, Dalton Public Works, 911, EMA, Cohutta, Varnell and Tunnel Hill, District Attorney’s Office and constables.
“This thing didn’t just happen, like, oh, we’re buying a new radio system, OK, open that box, there it is, OK, it’s our new radio system,” Mr. Craig said. “It just didn’t happen that way. There is thousands upon thousands of hours that have gone into this to make it work – from the infrastructure all the way down to training for the end user.”
And the work is not over.
“You’ve got to manage the system on a daily basis,” Mr. Craig said. “It’s not just out there running itself. We’ve got three tower sites we’ve got to maintain, got to keep power on them. Power goes out, you’ve got to have generators, got to make sure the generator runs. If the generator doesn’t run, you’ve got to make sure the UPS (uninterruptible power supply) works. We’ve got to keep power on. You’ve also got to manage the users because everybody has a unique code in their radio. You can’t take my radio and just go do whatever with it – it’s unique to each person. When you push that button, dispatch knows who’s talking.”
Managing the new system is easier, though, since the county joined the Tennessee Valley Radio Communications System (TVRCS), which includes 10 counties in Tennessee and Catoosa, Dade, and Walker counties in Georgia.
“The old system basically consisted of an antenna on a pole and a repeater,” Mr. Craig said, noting that it just broadcast an analog signal out as far as it could to the people that were close enough to receive it. “Be it a telephone pole, a three-legged tower pole, whatever, it was just an antenna and a repeater, and that’s what your system was. The repeater took what you said and repeated it so other users could hear you.”
The new system is much more sophisticated and reliable. “Our new tower at the 911 Center is ‘married’ to the three other tower sites, locally, and then regionally to all the other sites going up to Tennessee and Catoosa, Dade and Walker,” Craig said. “If one tower fails for any reason, the other three would be able to take over. The system would just say, hey, this site’s down, so just use the other three to broadcast the signals. It might even use a tower over in another county if it’s closer to the user.”
Mr. Craig said the original $26 million price tag to replace the old system would have required the county to build 11 tower sites, but by joining the TVRCS, they only had to build three new towers, cutting the cost of the project by more than half. “TVRCS already had a tower on Dug Gap Mountain in Whitfield County that was servicing another county,” he explained, “so we were able to tie onto that one, too.”
Jeff Ownby, deputy director at Whitfield EMA, pointed out that with the old system, each department basically managed its own equipment, which varied from agency to agency. Now everybody uses the same Motorola radios, which will be managed and updated by TVRCS in the coming years.
An advantage to being on the regional system is that Whitfield users can communicate with all the other agencies using it in Georgia and Tennessee, particularly useful during a regional emergency.
“We’ve always offered automatic aid to agencies around us,” Dep. Dir. Ownby said, “but the county fire department just recently signed some agreements to help with both our county and Catoosa and Walker county ISO ratings. Both those counties are on this system. Before, it was a challenge talking to these counties because they were on an 800 megahertz system and we were not. Now we actually have shared fire channels. If we’re responding in Catoosa County, for example, we can talk on their fire channel or even one of their fire ground channels which is immediately issued if there’s a working fire. They can do the same with us.”
More importantly on a daily basis, though, the new system has eliminated virtually all the dead spots in Whitfield County that plagued the old system for years and left first responders sometimes unable to communicate with others.
“We’ve got great coverage now,” Mr. Craig said. “I mean, there’s no question. We checked over 3,000 grids when we were testing the system, and we had only one grid that failed. We went back, and it turned out to be a grid that you couldn’t really drive into. So we did the test again on foot, and it was fine.”
Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Gary Stephens says he was recently near the Tennessee state line and was able to talk clearly to dispatch.
“In the previous situation,” he told the Daily Citizen, “I probably would have gone back to my car and used my phone, if I had phone service.”
Lt. Stephens recounted a recent ATV accident in the Chattahoochee National Forest in the northwest section of the county.
“We all went to the first responders channel,” he said. “As I was riding in, we could talk to the firefighters who were there, and in the past there would have been no radio service at all in that area.”
The new system is also encrypted, which means that people with scanners at home can’t hear what’s going on.
“But it means more than that,” Dep. Dir. Ownby said. “What it really means is that you can’t just show up with a radio and start talking on our system. You can’t just buy a radio from Motorola and show up in Whitfield County and say I’m gonna start using the radio system. That’s just not the way it works. It has to be programmed to the specifications of the TVRCS system. That means our system is more secure against attacks from outside users.”
Some two months into the system, Mr. Craig says the bottom line is that the new radios are “exceeding expectations.”
“The coverage is so much better,” he says. “Being able to hear is important in an emergency. You know, seconds count if you’re having a heart attack. If we’re dispatching an ambulance or a fire truck when you’re having a heart attack, if they can’t hear where we’re telling them to go, that costs time.
“Now, it’s…” Mr. Craig says, pausing to snap his fingers, “one time and go. The responders can actually hear the dispatchers give the addresses the first time whereas before it was a crap shoot. Sometimes you might hear it, sometimes you might not.”
Chief Pangle calls the new system a “great investment,” and fellow Whitfield County Fire Chief Ed O’Brien said it’s “exceeding our expectations.”
“I know it cost a lot,” Pangle told the Daily Citizen, “but from my perspective, it was worth every penny, and I really thank the taxpayers and voters for allowing us to make that investment.”
Now there’s definitely no need for those pigeons anymore.
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 3, 2017 | Animal Deterrent Products
ON Saturday Gauteng Pigeon Union liberated the pigeons from two race points for the final races of the season.
These were Three Sisters in the Eastern Cape and Beaufort West in the Western Cape. The skies were clear and there was no wind from both race points when the pigeons were liberated at 6.15am.
Riverpark Pigeon Club’s results for the Three Sisters race saw Doves Nest Guest House (Gawie Botha) having the only bird through on the day before the hours of darkness (clocks closing) came into effect. This was also Doves Nest Guest House’s first win for the season.
At the time of going to the press, Gawie was in 17th position in the GPU results.
The rest of the results were:
Doves Nest Guest House (Gawie Botha) 1st, 7th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 20th, 24th; Sky Lofts (Corrie Moller) 2nd, 6th, 10th, 17th, 21st, 26th; Blackie Swart 3rd, 8th; Hilton Pitout 4th, 5th, 13th, 22nd; Tallies Lofts 9th, 23rd; Pieter van den Broeck 11th, 29th; Le Roux Lofts (Pieter le Roux) 18th, 27th; Flip van Staden 19th, 28th and G&E Lofts (Graham Cheary & Elaine Russell) 25th and 30th.
The Beaufort West race saw no pigeons through on the day with the pigeons only arriving from early on Sunday morning. The first member of Riverpark to clock a pigeon was Tallies Lofts (Johan Taljaard) and 26 minutes later Pine Pienaar.
At the time of going to the press, Tallies Lofts were in 17th position in the GPU results.
The rest of the results were:
Tallies Lofts (Johan Taljaard) 1st; Pine Pienaar 2nd; Beano Daschner 3rd; Doves Nest Guest House 4th, 7th, 13th, 19th, 28th, 30th; Blackie Swart 5th, 8th; Sky Lofts (Corrie Moller) 6th, 11th, 12th, 16th, 18th, 24th; Connie Coertse 9th; Flip van Staden 14th; Pieter van den Broeck 10th, 15th; G&E Lofts (Graham Cheary & Elaine Russell) 17th, 22nd, 23rd, 25th; Le Roux Lofts (Pieter le Roux) 20th, 21st, 29th and Hilton Pitout 26th and 27th.
Riverpark’s long-distance champion and club champion for 2017 is Blackie Swart. Flip van Staden’s SOTV 2015 2850 Blue Bar Hen is the best long distance pigeon in the club.
The 2018 pigeon racing season will kick off on June 2 when the first race will take place from Theunissen.
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 27, 2017 | Animal Deterrent Products
This week’s Second Captains Sunday (RTÉ R1) begins with Eoin McDevitt confessing he’d never really been a fan of swimming. One can almost taste the iodine chill in the seaside air as co-host, and noted swimpresario, Ken Early reacts to this startling admission.
Even he, however, wouldn’t have found a more eloquent champion for the practice than this episode’s guest, Dorothy Cross. Before she became one of Ireland’s foremost visual artists, Cross was a committed and talented young swimmer on the fringes of Ireland’s Olympic team. She’d also gone for some slightly more perilous dips.
“They won’t attack you if they know they’re human,” she says, of her time swimming with sharks, “because we’re not good food. We’re bony old things.”
The bulk of the conversation concerns her work, and is studded throughout with eminently quotable lines from an artist unafraid to tackle large, weighty themes.
Or, indeed, large, weighty objects, such as her 1998 work Ghost Ship, an entire marine vessel off Dún Laoghaire harbour in Dublin, that was coated with phosphorous paint, giving it a gently luminous glow: “It was at times beautiful, although there were lots of technical problems.”
Then there is a recent quixotic attempt to mount a project that has so far met with failure due to her inability to procure a human heart.
“You everywhere encounter this fear and bureaucracy of anything related to the heart,” she says. “We wouldn’t have nearly so much trouble procuring a lung. People imbue hearts with so much value, probably correctly.”
“Art is about discovery” she later says, “Maybe we need a bit of psychic torment to do anything. Of course it’s about enjoyment, but it’s also about unsettling things. It shouldn’t be comforting, it should be about looking at something like you’ve not seen it before. It’s a funny, weird animal that can help us see things in a new way.”
Some much more dramatic, and practical impediments to ocean travel are evident as Cormac Ó hEadhra covers for Today with Sean O’Rourke (RTÉ One, Monday to Friday) and tells the inspiring story of Almuthana, or “Al” as he is known to friends.
Al is a Syrian refugee who, after “making the perilous journey to Greece in a little plastic boat”, eventually wound up in Ballaghaderreen, Co Roscommon, where he’s flourished due to the enormous generosity of the local community, and his determination to fulfil an improbable dream.
A lecturer in agricultural engineering back home, Al’s dream is to be a violinmaker, and in a story told jointly by himself and Debbie Beirne of the Friends of Ballaghaderreen, we hear his progress, step by step. Though not a common instrument in his native Syria, Al speaks movingly about the effect the instrument had on him.
“When I was a child, I saw something strange when players used their bow. When I moved to Ireland I knew I wanted to make violins.”
All this is not to say he was able to convince everyone.
“We did put him in touch with one elderly gentleman, who didn’t believe he had ever made a violin. I don’t want to say where he was from, he was a lovely gentleman, but he didn’t believe him. I think it was the language barrier.”
Eventually, Al gets some remarkable news when local violinmaker Dave Teehan has to abandon his business when he develops an allergy due to the chemicals used in wood resin. While inarguably not good news for Dave’s respiratory system, the upshot is an incredible bit of fortune for Al, who now has a workshop, tools, and all the materials he needs to get off the ground. Now, just a few months later, he has not only crafted his first violin, but is poised to present it to Michael D Higgins in a special ceremony later this year.
Indeed, Al’s story is so damnably uplifting that it borders on the unbelievable, and one fears the eventual sturdy, well-made little Irish film that’s begging to be made of this narrative, may need to tone the whole thing down a little.
Elsewhere, In the Shower with Taz Kelleher (Monday, Headstuff podcast network) is a brand new show with an admirably specific premise; it’s a 15-minute factual blast you listen to in the shower. As such, its presenters are sure it’s the first podcast in Ireland “aimed to be listened to while you’re naked”.
For the inaugural show, Taz and guest Marcus O’Laoire ask why we never see baby pigeons, in the process covering more about pigeons than the average listener likely thought there was to learn.
We discover that pigeons are basically a type of dove, a fact that amuses O’Laoire, who finds it pleasing that doves are universally symbolic of all things love and beauty, and their closest cousins considered little more than “rats with hang gliders”.
Pigeons are themselves, however, the very image of settled monogamy, romantic types who mate once and for life, all while exercising refreshingly untraditional gender roles, with the daddy pigeon tending to the nest, and the mother being the figurative, and one presumes literal, breadwinner. Oh, and we don’t see baby pigeons because they don’t leave their nests for 35-40 days after hatching, at which point they look like regular adult pigeons.
At 15 minutes, In The Shower is a bit long for anything but the most luxuriant shower, but luckily time is allotted each episode to do some admin, supplying reminders as to when you should be soaping up, towelling down and even going for a controversial, pre-spritz teeth brushing. Short, sweet, and silly without being irksome, the show hits just the right note of baffled inconsequentiality.
If, however, the episodes start piling up in future, do consider transitioning to a bath. Moment of the Week
Sean Moncrieff’s (Wednesday, Newstalk) intrepid beat reporter Henry McKean is a master of working the humble ranks of ordinary folk and getting great, even alarming quotes from them. Discussing Tinder with people on the street, in response to the news that Ann Robinson had joined the online dating app in her seventies, McKean gets a number of amusing responses but none more curt or beautifully timed than the caustic aul Dubliner who, when asked if he’d swipe right for Robinson, immediately replies “I’d swipe my phone right out the window” before swiftly walking off.
About Pigeon Patrol:
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products four years in a row.
Contact Info: 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD (www.pigeonpatrol.ca)
by Ryan Ponto | Mar 16, 2017 | Animal Deterrent Products
The number of birds in one man’s backyard in North Central has gotten so large, the City of Regina is stepping in and asking him to get rid of the animals.
And the move is ruffling Gordon Loucks’ feathers.
Dozens of pigeons can be seen perched or flying around his home, which he calls the “Club Med” for birds. For years, Loucks said he’s been racing and training mainly doves and pigeons — or what he calls rock doves. He gives them food, water and shelter. Because of this, he said other feral birds have migrated to his property.
While he said he’s received permits from the city before, he doesn’t have one for this year. Loucks said he was denied, told he has too many birds which violates a bylaw that states “all yards, buildings, and structures shall be kept free of infestations of vermin, rodents, pigeons and insects.”
He said you are allowed to have 90 birds, but the city determined he was over that number, and so did he, admitting he was over too.
“They’re not my birds,” he insisted on the feral pigeons attracted to his house. “I can’t control these birds from coming into my yard.”
Loucks claimed some of his neighbours have complained. But he backs the birds up, and said those who call them flying rats are just uneducated. He believes there is no difference between a dove and a pigeon, saying they’re the same bird, just a different colour.
He wanted to turn a hobby into a full time business, claiming the city had actually previously paid him thousands of dollars to release doves at various municipal functions over the years.
Now, the city giving him 30 days to remove the birds. It’s a ruling he recently went to city hall to appeal, but the decision was ultimately upheld.
“Everybody’s dream is to be financially independent. Well, they screwed my dream,” he said.
He believes the bylaw needs an update to reflect someone in his unique circumstance.
“There’s nothing in the bylaw for people who are using it for livelihood; for financial reasons.”
Loucks said he has until April 1 to remove all birds, both his own and the feral ones. He’ll comply, but only to a certain point he suggests.
“I will remove the wild ones, get in accordance with the compliance with the city for the number of birds,” he said, adding at that point the city can then come back and count the remaining birds.
About Pigeon Patrol:
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products four years in a row.
Contact Info: 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD (www.pigeonpatrol.ca)
by Ryan Ponto | Mar 6, 2017 | Animal Deterrent Products
ISLAMABAD: Islamabad has been declared a no-fly zone for kites, drone cameras, and pet pigeons as part of security measures for Pakistan Day parade on March 23.
The Islamabad police under the direction of top security forces of the country will be ensuring that the no-fly ban remains intact during the event being held at a time when anti-terror operations are going on across the country.
Over 2,500 personnel of Islamabad police will perform security duties for the parade.
The Capital Territory Police (CTP) have devised an elaborate security plan for the big day. The operations head of CTP, SSP Sajid Kiani held a briefing of SP (City) Zubair Ahmed Sheikh, SP (Rural) Syed Tanveer Mustafa, all SDPOs and SHOs and explained the security detail.
The SSP directed for effective checking and high alert security at all routes leading towards the parade ground.
SSP Kiani has divided the district into four sectors each to be monitored by an officer of SP rank. Similarly, an officer of DSP rank will be deputed in each sub-sector.
Joint pickets have been erected at various points while squads of Eagle, Falcon, Charlie, Rapid Response Force and mobiles are to keep a check on suspicious vehicles and people. Policemen will be deployed at roof tops while Reserve Force will remain on alert to tackle any untoward situation.
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)
