by johnnymarin | Oct 13, 2017 | Pigeons in the News
Koka is a respected figure in Cairo’s pigeon fighting world. His life revolves around preparing for the contests, in which whole neighbourhoods clash to hunt and capture each other’s pigeons.
Away from the duels, he spends his time caring for the hundreds of pigeons he rears in a ramshackle wooden tower he has built on his roof.
Like numerous other breeders, Koka treasures the pigeons for their loyalty, discipline and the deep pride they bring him.
But his pigeon fighting days may be numbered. Coming from a conservative community, the 29-year-old is under immense pressure to quit his passion, get married and settle down.
Fearing that his next contest could be his last, Koka challenges one of Cairo’s best pigeon fighting neighbourhoods. Will he cement his reputation as a great pigeon handler or lose his parting battle?
I stumbled upon the phenomenon of pigeon contests in Cairo while working on different topics in this mega city’s endless suburbs. I was always impressed by the fragile wooden structures standing on rooftops all over the city, and I knew that they were connected to pigeons, but I would never have thought that there was a whole world up there with its own rules, even with its own language.
I was wandering the streets of Garbage City, an area of mostly Christian waste workers, when I first met Koka, one of the strongest competitors inside the community of pigeoneers. Standing on his pigeon tower felt like being in a different world, far from the chaos that rules the streets.
Fortunately, I met Koka during wintertime, the season for pigeon contests. It was right before some major encounters between different neighbourhoods that have a long tradition of going into battles with their pigeons.
Seeing a race for the first time was an overwhelming visual experience, which made me stick to this topic for the following three years. These pigeon contests served as a perfect vehicle for getting an inside view of such a closed community. I was taken to gatherings and battles in areas that I would never have gotten to otherwise.
The society of the pigeon fighters is unknown even to most Egyptians. Their races are based on a sophisticated set of rules and their language is dominated by military expressions. The combatants call themselves knights and each knight has a nom de guerre, such as “The Butcher” in Koka’s case.
During filming, the question that interested me the most was, “How does a pigeon – otherwise the symbol of peace – become the token of martial spirit and male pride?”
One of the fighters tried to explain it to me this way: “Imagine it like it was Barcelona against Real Madrid. It is like football, only that it’s more serious, because we’ve been doing it for way longer than them.”
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 | Oct 12, 2017 | Bird Deterrent Products
If you feed them, they will roost.
And poop. They will definitely poop.
Nesting pigeons and the scat they leave behind have been a perennial and somewhat costly problem for Clark County. Complaints from residents are so common that Commission Chairman Steve Sisolak wants to discuss what can be done during Tuesday’s commission meeting.
“We’ve got a proliferation of pigeons in some of these areas,” Sisolak said. “There’s a lot of property damage as a result of pigeons roosting.”
The bird’s corrosive poop can damage paint, concrete roof tiles and air conditioning equipment. Their nesting material can clog a drainage system. There’s also a concern about the spread of disease from pigeon carcasses and waste.
Chris Bramley, who oversees the county government’s pest control management, said most of the county’s facilities “have some kind of a pigeon issue.” Flocks of 50 to 60 pigeons can be found living on some roofs.
But the problem has become exceptionally noticeable at the West Flamingo Senior Center, supervisor Diane Olson-Baskin said.
Despite the county’s efforts to dissuade the birds from roosting there — including a sonic repellent system — close to 30 pigeons have made the community center home, Olson-Baskin said. She believes the blame lies in some patrons’ delight in tossing piece of bread to the birds every morning.
“We try to discourage people from feeding the pigeons, but they enjoy it so much that all we can do is encourage them to feed them as far as possible from the building,” Olson-Baskin said.
Such is the stuff that makes up the passionate debate over pigeons. While some people see the birds as pests, others love them.
When county commissioners considered a law banning the feeding of feral pigeons in January 2012 they were inundated with opinions from both sides. A majority of commissioners voted against the proposed law.
Bramley said he has a hard time telling people they should not feed the birds. He understands it’s an enjoyable pastime for many.
Still, “if people want to feed pigeons they should feed them in small amounts,” he said. “Don’t let them learn that you’re taking care of them like they’re your children.”
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 | Oct 11, 2017 | Pigeons in the News
As we know, there are a great many mad people in the southwestern bit of the country. They claim often that a black panther is living on Exmoor and that if you paint a picture, it’ll be better if you are standing on a ley line.
And now the people of Exeter are saying that homeless people, many of whom may be from Poland, are roaming the streets at night eating pigeons. There are fears this could get out of hand with a local police community support officer saying “now we’re eating pigeons, now we’re killing seagulls. It escalates.”
One resident said she saw two men pounce on a pigeon and put it in a sack and in the space of 20 minutes they’d captured 14 of them. This has made the Royal Society for the Prevention of Birds very angry, with a spokesman describing the incident as “horrible”.
“Unlikely” is nearer the mark, though. I knew a man once who wore a suit, played a lot of golf and had never had so much as a parking ticket. But one day, while walking to work over Waterloo Bridge, he remembered being told that you can never kick a pigeon, because it has a housefly-like ability to get out of the way before your foot arrives. And for reasons that haunted him for the rest of his life, he decided to put the theory to the test.
So, in front of all the other suited-and- booted Margaret Thatcher enthusiasts, he took an almighty swing at the bird strutting about in his path and — wallop — it sailed 6ft into the air and crashed back down to earth, stone dead. This proved, much to his embarrassment, that you can kick a pigeon to death.
I had a similar moment in northern Spain about 10 years ago. I was out and about in the packed streets of San Sebastian when I noticed a listless pigeon sitting on a windowsill. “I’ll put that out of its misery,” I thought, and tried to break its neck. But the manoeuvre went wrong and its head came off, which caused the body to fall to the floor where, much to the horror of the many onlookers, it flapped about for several minutes before it decided there was no point any more and lay still.
The weird thing is that this was Spain, where stabbing cows and throwing donkeys off tower blocks is basically like Swingball. And yet they were horrified that I’d pulled a pigeon’s head off.
I think the problem is that we learn from an early age that pigeons are clever. That you can take one to Berlin and it is able to find its way back to its loft in Peterborough.
The Nazis certainly thought this way. Heinrich Himmler was a pigeon enthusiast and made plans for birds to be used to convey messages from agents ahead of an invasion of Britain.
And when authorities here got wind of this, instead of saying, “Oh, don’t be stupid. Why would you use a bird to convey a message when you have a radio?”, they decided the south coast should be patrolled by falcons. And in the Scilly Isles, it really was. That really did happen. It was the Battle of Britain, with feathers.
That legacy lives on in the way people react when pigeons are being harmed. But the thing is that salmon can also home and no one minds when Jeremy Paxman hauls one of those from a river and clubs it to death. Or when a little old lady buys a tin of its flesh and feeds it to her cat.
The fact is, though, that unlike salmon, pigeons are a menace. In towns their muck ruins buildings and in the countryside they can do more damage to crops than an army of drunken students with an alien fixation and garden roller. If you shoot a pigeon — which is harder than kicking one, I assure you — and you open it up, you’ll find more grain in its stomach than in the silos at Hovis.
Which brings us back to the issues in Exeter. If you are fit and sober and you have a gun, it is only just possible to kill a fit pigeon. So I’m suspicious of the story that these homeless drunks are able, in the space of 20 minutes, to get 14 live birds into a sack. (I feel a game show coming on here.)
Let’s just say, though, that they are able, through the fog of strong cider, to catch pigeons, and if things escalate, seagulls. So what? Yes, under the Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981 it’s illegal to kill, injure or take any wild bird, but this was drawn up to stop people stealing ospreys and ptarmigans.
Let’s not forget, shall we, that Ken Livingstone, darling of the left and therefore an RSPB poster boy, ejected all the people selling grain to tourists in the pigeon-infested Trafalgar Square and when Wilbur and Myrtle continued to show up with birdseed they’d bought from a Chelsea ladies’ health food shop he introduced a Harris hawk to the area. Which is the Messerschmitt of the skies.
He’d be the first to say that homeless people should be encouraged to eat pigeons and I’d go further. Right now, the hedgerows on my farm are teeming with succulent blackberries and the few trees that haven’t been ruined by deer and squirrels are laden with all kinds of delicious fruit.
If a homeless person were to spend a day in the woods with some Rambo traps and a bit of cunning, he would end up with a feast that even Henry VIII would call “a bit extravagant”.
The problem is, if he killed a deer for some venison and a squirrel for seasoning, he’d have the whole country calling for his blood. And that’s ridiculous. We need to lose our dewy-eyed Disney sentimentality and accept that homeless people eating pigeons they’ve caught is better for them, better for our windowsills and better for the coffers at the NHS than encouraging them instead to eat takeaway pizza and Double Decker chocolate bars they’ve half-inched from the local corner shop.
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 | Oct 10, 2017 | Pigeons in the News
Who needs Farmersonly.com when love can blossom in the livestock barn.
If it wasn’t for the Kansas State Fair, Kacey Rieger, 22, Powhattan and Clay Toews, 24, Burrton, would never have met four years ago. A mutual friend introduced them while they were both showing livestock. They turned out to be agricultural soulmates and will be getting married next Saturday in Brown County.
Preparing for a wedding would be reason enough to forgo a trip to Hutchinson with a livestock trailer filled with their prize Duroc, Chester, Spot and Yorkshire swine to show.
But neither the bride-to-be nor her fiancé would consider it.
Resting on a bleacher in the Sheep, Swine and Goat Building on Friday morning, they were with her brother, 14-year-old Jake Rieger, and her parents, Lori and Bill Rieger, in between swine shows.
Clay Toews says he grew up at the Kansas State Fair.
“I use to show brown Swiss cows,” he said. His father, Bill Toews, is superintendent at the dairy barn.
“We’re a pretty tight tribe,” Clay said. “The Holling family has been showing swine for 56 years, the Harms family 50 years and the Wehner’s 25. That’s consecutive years.”
Now Clay and Kacey will return next year as husband and wife building their own memories. They have had a head start, showing swine together for the past three.
Next Saturday’s wedding will be in a barn at a pumpkin patch near the Rieger farm. A pit-barbecued pig is on the menu.
— Kathy Hanks
McPherson man shows 180 pigeons
He had made it all the way to the grandstand before the Kansas Highway Patrol caught the culprit that flew the coop.
They returned Dave Orth’s pigeon safely back to its cage.
The McPherson pigeon man was thankful. He came with 180 pigeons, and he wanted to return with them all.
Orth’s success can be seen in the poultry barn. He had a number of placings, including this year’s grand champion and reserve champion pigeons. His granddaughter, Brinley, had the grand champion at last year’s fair. Another granddaughter, Jayden, also received several honors. Someday his toddler grandson, Hudson, will have pigeons at the fair, too.
But for Orth, it’s not about winning a prize.
“People haven’t seen birds like these,” he said. “We want people to know there are more than just pigeons that fly around and crap all over cars.”
No, these aren’t your flying nuisances. These are fancy pigeons – homing pigeons, racing pigeons, Birmingham rollers, helmet pigeons. There are many other breeds in several colors and sizes. One breed has curly feathers. Another is snowy white.
He used to race pigeons at a place near Medora. He goes to a pigeon swap meet in Missouri. He takes his pigeons to shows across the Midwest.
Pigeons are a passion that developed when he was in eighth grade.
“Then you grew up and girls didn’t like pigeons,” he said with a laugh.
Later in life, after he had kids and a place to put them, he began growing his flock.
“I got a couple birds and a couple more birds,” Orth said. Now he has more than 300 birds.
His wife doesn’t mind, he said. He has pigeons. She quilts.
His grandchildren, who entered some of the birds in the fair, come over and help him feed and water them, he said.
Pigeons are a food source in developing countries, he said. They are like eating a turtle dove. In the 1940s and 1950s in the United States, people could buy squab in a can.
During World War II, pigeons were used to carry messages, Orth said.
Orth said these days there is good money in racing and show pigeons. What he earns at the Kansas State Fair pays for his annual feed bill.
These are all things he tells folks when he is in the poultry barn at the fair. It’s like a zoo, he said. He works to educate the public about the state fair flock.
Orth does this every year. He enjoys it.
“People come in ’You know what kind of bird that is?” and I tell them.
— Amy Bickel
Peanut legacy
Ron Allen and his sons Jeremy and Heath, might have the healthiest, affordable and one of the oldest concessions at the Kansas State Fair.
On Friday morning, Mark Statzer stopped at their peanut concession stand to grab a $1 bag of roasted peanuts.
The Wichita resident says he stops at the booth every year.
“I’ve already had enough grease for the day,” Statzer said. “I need something calmer.”
The simple product hasn’t changed in 73 years, except they now sell salted and Cajun spiced bags of peanuts. The Allens keep bags of peanuts warm in a large heated metal barrel. They purchased 550 pounds of peanuts to roast during the 10 days.
“Peanuts sell,” Harold said. Though, he says, it has been a slow year for all the vendors in their neighborhood. “Warm peanuts sell best when the weather is cooler. ”
The Allens purchased the stand from Harold and Dorcas Tate — better known as Mutt and Pie. From 1944 to 1992, the Tate boot with its big barrel and shaded by an assortment of beach umbrellas was always the first booth on Pride of Kansas Avenue.
Mutt and Pie missed the 1993 fair due to health issues. Then in 1995, they sold the stand to the Allens.
“They sold it lock, stock and barrel,” said Jeremy. “Literally.”
Along with the barrel, they even included the original signs with the peanut man.
Both Dorcas and Harold have died, but their memory lives on in the State Fair Museum’s exhibit this year.
In the early days, the Tates sold peanuts for 5 cents a pint and 10 cents a quart; however, by today’s standards, a $1 for a bag of roasted peanuts is cheap. Allens also have a brisk business selling soda pop for $1.50.
The peanut booth is a family affair. While Ron is retired, Jeremy and Heath take vacation days off from their jobs to work the fair. Along with the three men, Ron’s wife, Colleen, helps with the booth. Plus Heath’s daughters, Taylor, 18, and Sydney, 11, help.
“They don’t know it yet, but it will be all theirs,” Heath said.
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 | Oct 9, 2017 | Pigeon Patrol's Services
Q: I am not a hardcore outdoorsman, but I do enjoy a little dove hunting when the time rolls around each year. Typically, I get invited to a friend’s lease a few times a season and, thankful that the group I hunt with pools our take, end up with two or three freezer bags of birds when it’s all said and done. The problem is that my dove preparation, which consists of olive oil, salt, pepper, and a grill, does not impress the missus. At all. Do you have a favorite dove recipe with which I could better please my wife?
John Carter, Austin
A: Texas is blessed with both the largest population of dove in the country and, unsurprisingly, the largest population of dove hunters in the country. As such, it makes sense that Texans would consume a lot of dove. Equipping oneself with a good go-to cooking method is important, so the Texanist is glad to hear from you, Mr. Carter.
The bird of peace’s most succulent pieces are the breasts, but that succulence is, alas, relative. While doves themselves are bountiful, the same cannot be said of their bosoms, which are unimpressive in both their size and, if the Texanist is going to be honest, overall toothsomeness. Au naturel, dove are small, a smidge gamy, and wholly unsatisfactory as a standalone entree. If you were to serve the Texanist a plate with five or six scrawny bits of salt and pepper-seasoned dove and nothing more, he would be left feeling about as excited as your wife.
Thankfully, the Texanist has one word for you that will guarantee a more pleasurable experience for both Mrs. Carter and yourself. One delicious, mouthwatering word. And that word is—drumroll, please—bacon. Really, what’s not enhanced by way of a good old-fashioned bacon wrapping? Over the years, it has been the Texanist’s gluttonous delight to have consumed bacon-wrapped shrimp, bacon-wrapped asparagus, bacon-wrapped dates, and prosciutto-wrapped melon (The Texanist thinks of prosciutto as a type of Europeanized bacon). He is particularly fond of bacon-wrapped hot dogs, which are known colloquially in various locales as danger dogs, Mission dogs, Tijuana dogs, and when stuffed with cheese, francheezies or Texas Tommies. The Texanist has also heard them referred to as gout dogs.
And then there’s bacon-wrapped jalapenos, which are good, and bacon-wrapped jalapenos with cheese, which are delicious. Hey, the mention of bacon-wrapped jalapenos and cheese, in addition to making his mouth water, has reminded the Texanist that he was supposed to be working on an answer to an important question. Where were we? Ah, yes, dove. And jalapeno. And cheese. Wrapped in bacon.
Say hello to the Texanist’s World-Famous Dove Poppers.
What you’ll need:
- Dove
- Jalapeño
- Cheese
- Bacon
- Toothpicks
- Tequila
- Mylanta (optional)
How to do it:
- Take the jalapeño (the official state pepper of Texas) and slice it in two, lengthwise. Give it a rinse.
- Take a dove breast (the unofficial migratory game bird breast of Texas) and cut in half, lengthwise.
- Give these pieces the Carter treatment: olive oil, salt, pepper. Maybe a dusting of garlic powder, too.
- Cut the cheese (rimshot) into lengths similar to the jalapeño and dove. (The Texanist prefers Mexican cheese and has good results with queso fresco, queso blanco, queso cotija, queso Oaxaca, and has even used queso crema.)
- Combine the dove, the jalapeño, and the cheese, and wrap tightly with a half-slice of bacon, securing it with a tequila-soaked toothpick.
- Repeat until there is no more dove.
- Throw on a grill for a few minutes, turning occasionally, until bacon is sizzling and crispy.
- Gobble ‘em all up, washed down with the libation of your choice.
Additionally, it’s never a bad idea to augment the poppers with an entrée of juicy ribeye, sided with the sides of your choosing. The grill’s already hot, so might as well, right?
Bon appétit, Carters.
Now that’s a recipe that will not only satisfy the missus, but will, the Texanist bets, have her begging for more.
And please remember to stay safe, mind your bag and possession limits, and know your dove before you blast them out of the sky—the common ground dove, Inca dove, and band-tailed pigeon are off limits. Happy hunting. And happy eating.
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)
