by johnnymarin | Jul 23, 2018 | Bird Deterrent Products
Here lies Pippa the Pigeon, beloved mother to 28 chicks, scavenger of crisps, befouler of statues, buried here at the age of 63 (in bird years).
If this sounds unfamiliar, it is because there are no pigeon cemeteries in British cities, nor are there any pigeon crematoria, which rather begs the question: where do pigeons go when they die? According to one estimate, there are up to one million pigeons in London alone. With a life expectancy in the city of as little as four years, this suggests that several million dead pigeons should have piled up around us, but where are they all?
An expert in animal physiology has felt moved to provide an answer to the mystery. Steve Portugal, an ecophysiologist at Royal Holloway, University of London, said: “Foxes, rats, gulls, crows and ravens all do a wonderful job of cleaning up any carrion they come across, including deceased pigeons.
“Alongside these native janitors, domestic cats are equally happy to take care of a dead or injured pigeon . . . this network of surreptitious street cleaners will usually whisk away any pigeon corpses long before they’re seen by human eyes.” Dr Portugal added that when pigeons are ill or injured, they often hide. He wrote on The Conversation, a news website: “[They] instinctively retreat to dark, remote places — ventilation systems, attics, building ledges — hoping to remain out of reach and unnoticed by predators. The predators don’t see them but neither do we: often when pigeons expire they are in hiding.”
He added: “Dying of old age is not a luxury afforded to most pigeons. As soon as they shows signs of slowness or sickness, many are snapped up by peregrine falcons, sparrowhawks, or other predators.
“Whether snatched midair by birds of prey, entangled by man-made obstacles or alone in a remote corner of a skyscraper’s roof garden, there are many ways that pigeons pass on from this world. But they all take place within an internal urban ecosystem, that, for the most part, is hidden from our sight.”
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 | Jul 22, 2018 | Pigeon Patrol's Services
WASHINGTON — Court records obtained by WUSA9 show the accused shooter who killed five journalists from the Capital Gazette newspaper on Thursday spent years filing lawsuits, petitions and motions against a long list of people who came in his line of sight.
Anne Arundel county prosecutors have charged Jarrod W. Ramos with five counts of murder in the first degree.
WUSA9 sifted through more than 300 records, diving into Ramos’s history inside and outside of the courtroom.
The documents obtained by WUSA9 begin in 2011, when a woman Ramos attended high school with asked law enforcement to file charges against him for harassment. The victim told prosecutors Ramos began contacting her via the internet in 2009.
In a handwritten statement seeking a peace order, the victim told the court “initially the nature of these emails was friendly,” but said later they became “increasingly alarming, vulgar, and incoherent.” She alleged Ramos told her to harm herself and called her place of employment with a disparaging remark.
The court granted her request for a peace order in 2011, the first of at least two the victim filed and granted against Ramos.
He eventually pleaded guilty to one count of harassment on July 26th, 2011. He was sentenced to 18 months of probation, which included a responsibility to attend counseling and have no contact with the victim,-a condition he’d later seek to “clarify.”
On July 31, 2011, a reporter for the Capital Gazette, Eric Thomas Hartley, described his case in a column about internet harassment.
The story enraged Ramos.
Court records show months after the story ran, Ramos requested reconsideration of his sentence. In November 2011, a judge struck the guilty finding from the record and allowed for probation before judgment, a conditional probation before sentencing.
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 | Jul 21, 2018 | Pigeon Patrol's Services
It was spring, and the young Red Oak tree was proud to say it was growing tall. Its lovely red leaves were unfolding and spreading out, and it longed to grow as tall as the bigger Red Oaks, that elite group of its “seniors” whose branches made a beautiful red canopy above.
They whispered and giggled and told secrets to each other, their leaves rustling in the wind. The young Red Oak usually missed out on these conversations, because it had been too small and too much of a sleepy head. Now that it was awake and growing each day, it was almost the size of the older Oaks, and it was looking forward to being a part of the “club”. “Welcome, Kid”, said a good natured Red Oak tree that stood a little away from where it was. “We’ve been watching you grow. You’re lucky you made it this far!”
“Lucky?” said the young Red Oak, a little puzzled. “Why do you say that?” The older Oak tree shrugged. “Ah, you wouldn’t know. Do you see those Great White Oak trees, growing tall above us?” The young Red Oak squinted upwards. It saw for the first time that there were several bigger trees that towered tall over the beautiful Red Oaks, atleast a hundred feet in height. They were more in number as well. “Oh!” gasped the young one, “These are numerous! And huge! But what does that have to do with us?”
“Well, you’ll see quite soon”, said the older Red Oak. “Now that you’re tall enough, and aware of your surroundings, you’ll see what keeps us Red Oaks from prospering in this land”, it said mysteriously. No sooner had it finished speaking when there was a curious rumbling sound that reverberated through the North American forest. The sky seemed to darken as if thunder clouds were looming over the horizon. The rumble soon grew into a cacophony that became louder and louder, and soon the young tree could make out the source of this noise: an enormous flock of pigeons, so many in number that they covered the sky like a dark blanket blocking out the sun, was making its way towards them.
The flapping of the wings of thousands of the pigeons seemed to sound like the flapping of the giant wings of a single unearthly monster. The hungry pigeons attacked the Red Oak trees with a force that surprised the young tree. It was still small, and didn’t have acorns yet— the fruits that Red Oaks usually bore, but that didn’t stop the birds from settling on its tender branches, weighing them down heavily. The rest shuffled through its leaves and branches, and not finding any food, contented themselves with trying to gorge on the acorns of the bigger Red Oaks.
The young tree glanced at the older Oak that was trying to fight them off, trying to toss its branches about a bit. But the stubborn pigeons stayed on, feasting on its acorns and nestling in great numbers on its branches, all the while cooing and pecking and tittering away. Elsewhere, they heard a loud crack, the sound of a branch breaking due to the weight of the birds. A while later, when they had had their fill— or rather, when they’d eaten up everything they could find, the pigeons flew away, again a hurricane in the distant horizon. “Passenger pigeons!” the older Red Oak said in disgust.
“Do you see what they do now? They lay the Red Oak trees bare with their appetite. They are too many, and too greedy! Our acorns carrying our seeds for the next generation of Red Oak trees, all eaten up by those gluttons!” Some of the other Red Oak trees murmured their agreement. The young Red Oak looked up at the White Oak trees. They were untouched. “Why don’t they forage in the White Oaks for food?” it asked. “The White Oaks have acorns that germinate during autumn, and the pigeons breed then”, said the older one. “They are safe for now. But this is what goes wrong for us Red Oaks. And just look at the amount of droppings on the forest floor! If a fire breaks out, we’re done for!”
“Why, what about the White oaks?” said the young Red Oak. “Won’t they get hurt too, in a forest fire?” “They’re resistant to fire”, said the older Red oak. “Aren’t these the birds that I heard, are used by humans to carry messages?” said the little Red Oak, trying to recollect what he had overheard somewhere from someone. “Oh, you’re getting confused!” said the older Oak, “those are carrier pigeons, or messenger pigeons. Those ones can find their way back home alright. Much more sensible. And intelligent. Not crazy like these ones. Now you’ll see the native Red Indians coming to kill some of these silly birds sometime soon.
Sometimes I wonder if they are as crazy as the birds. They hunt the birds for the meat, then offer the meat to their deity, and then there’s this elaborate ritual, it’s quite funny actually—” But before they could say anything more, the sound of a gunshot rang through the forest. “What was that?” asked the little Red Oak, but it couldn’t ask anymore as several gunshots were fired into the stillness of the forest, and the wild pandemonium caused by fluttering wings and bird squeals reached them. “Looks like it’s the White people who’ve moved in around here newly— they have something that’s used to fire at the birds. All you have to do is, point it upwards and press something, the birds are so many that atleast one will be hit and killed”, muttered the older Oak tree. “I hope they finish them all”, it added, under its breath.
In the following days and months, the little Red Oak tree grew taller and stronger, and as it did, it started noticing that the Passenger pigeons were no longer coming in flocks. Their number had come down drastically, while the number of hunters had gone up. The older Oak tree and the other Oaks that stood some way away in the distance were overjoyed by this development. Several new Red Oaks were taking root in the forest, thanks to the acorns being left alone by the dwindling number of Passenger pigeons.
Only the little Red Oak tree missed them bit. It had not seen enough of them, and it seemed like it had taken root at the dawn of a new era with the disappearance of the Passenger pigeons. It grew to be one of the biggest Red Oaks in the region, with numerous other Red Oaks all around, having managed to outnumber the White Oaks after all!
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 | Jul 20, 2018 | Pigeon Patrol's Services
“Pigeon racing” may conjure images of robust, healthy birds zipping across finish lines in quick succession. But what it really means is releasing strategically bred pigeons far, sometimes hundreds of miles from their homes, to see which one makes it back the fastest.
Many of them don’t make it back at all.
The news that three Northwest Side aldermen are trying to legalize pigeon racing as a sport is alarming to the bird enthusiast community and should be to the entire city.
Here’s what those aldermen may not know: Racing pigeons are domestically raised birds that don’t have the survival skills to make it in the wild. The pigeons we see on the street were raised by their parents to survive in an urban setting. But when humans selectively breed birds and feed them from hatching, they don’t develop the scrappy resourcefulness that wild pigeons have.
They don’t know how to find food or avoid predators, and they haven’t been produced by natural selection, but rather by selection by humans for certain qualities.
An investigation by PETA released in 2012 found that more than 60 percent of racing pigeons don’t make it back to their home lofts.
And the birds that don’t perform to the standard of their pigeon-racing owners are subject to abandonment and culling, the killing of weak or undesirable specimens in a group of animals.
The aldermen stipulate that standards will be enforced regarding the conditions in which the racing birds are kept, the containers that feed will be stored in and the registration of individual birds. But none of this regulation will protect the birds, at all, once the race begins. PETA lists common methods of culling as suffocation, drowning, decapitation, neck-breaking, and gassing. If pigeon racing is legalized in Chicago, will there be regulations in place for which manners of culling birds are considered humane?
And while the aldermen say that the ban will only be lifted for members of pigeon racing organizations in good standing, how beneficial is it to be in good standing with an organization wherein culling and abandonment are commonplace?
When I gave word to Annette Prince, the director of the bird rescue organization Chicago Bird Collision Monitors about the potential legalization, she said the organization responds to hundreds of calls every year for banded pigeons and doves that have been attacked by predators, injured, abandoned and starved.
Those birds need rescue and care. Homes and medical treatment need to be provided for endless numbers of rescued racing pigeons because, in most cases, owners do not want the lost birds back.
Pigeon racing, legal in many U.S. cities, is already affecting local bird rescue organizations even before the city considers legalizing it.
In November of 2017, as previously reported by the Sun-Times, Chicago Bird Collision Monitors rescued about 75 of more than 100 banded pigeons dumped in a parking lot in Ravenswood. The rest succumbed to predator attacks or were found frozen to death. Those that lived had to be treated for avian pox, likely a result of having been kept in poor conditions before they were dumped. It was a rescue effort that spanned more than a week and involved multiple wildlife rescue agencies and many volunteers who came out in the cold to catch the birds with boxes, with nets, and with our hands.
If the city legalizes pigeon racing, it will be this organization and other bird advocacy groups that will be called upon to capture, treat and place the birds after they’re found emaciated and bleeding — at the expense of the organizations. Their resources are already stretched thin. And the birds that are rescued will be the lucky ones — many more won’t have a chance.
Birds have an internal navigation system that’s still largely a mystery to us. Pigeons are intelligent birds that can recognize individual human faces. Domestically raised pigeons are affectionate companion animals and rewarding pets, not objects to be used for sport and then dumped like garbage.
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 | Jul 19, 2018 | Pigeons in the News
Another great classic has found its way onto my TV, and as I watched “On the Waterfront” I was reminded once again why all of these movies made their mark. Like classic rock, they have stood out as the terrible or forgettable films of the day fell to the wayside, and these stood the test of time. I watch them as a regular audience member, not a studious purveyor of classical work, not a film critic with notes in hand, searching for faults or reasons for me to whine about modern films compared to older ones. And still, these movies are classics for a reason, and watching them reminds me of why they have survived all these years. They’re just straight up good — so before I get into my literary exploration of this film (and others to come), know that I just plain old enjoy them too.
“On the Waterfront” follows Terry Mallow (played by Marlon Brando), a talented ex-prize fighter who works on the docks alongside a slew of poverty-stricken workers struggling to make ends meet. Terry is one of many thugs who work for the ruthless union boss, Johnny Friendly (played by Lee J. Cobb) They are all part of killing a would-be whistleblower who tried to speak out against the brutally enforced corruption in the upper echelons of the union. However, the sister of the murdered man catches Terry’s eye, and the two of them fall into a complicated romance that pulls him between two worlds — one of empathy and another of brutality. With the help of a local priest, some of the union members get in their heads to stand up against Friendly, and Terry doesn’t know where he ought to stand.
For the duration of the film, Terry spends much of his free time tending to pigeons on the roof of his impoverished apartment complex. He used to be a tenacious prize-fighter, deadly in the ring, but Friendly had him lose a few fights on purpose to win some bets, and that lost him his chance at the big leagues — the softer side of him finds solace in tending to the delicate birds on his rooftop. His love interest, Edie Doyle (played by Eva Marie Saint), has joined him and is watching him with longing eyes, at the rough man takes care of animals with great care and affection.
He begins to speak of hawks and pigeons, and how he has to protect the pigeons from the hawks who come from bigger, more expensive (and taller) buildings. If he doesn’t, they’ll swoop down and eat the pigeons alive.
This is quite obviously a metaphor for the powerful, predatorial union bosses taking advantage of the dock workers. The “pigeons and hawks” motif is referenced several times in the film, and the obvious question (as I outlined before) is where Terry stands. Does he stand with the pigeons, who get mauled and eaten alive but with their souls intact? Or does he stand with the hawks, who survive but at the cost of their own consciences?
Everyone is worrying about what side they are on, or which identity they belong to. Terry wrestles with this for the whole film — following his conscience only ever got him hurt, but following men like Johnny Friendly only ever hurt the ones around him. His lover wants him to stand up to them, but when that doesn’t work she wants him to run away with her. His own brother wants him to survive and look out for himself, and to work his way up the ranks of the union/gang.
In a world like that, you’re either predator or you’re prey.
Terry winds up ditching the whole metaphor entirely. After all his inner turmoil and outer conflicts, it’s as if he says, “You know? Screw all these categories and people trying to tell me what I can and can’t do. I’m not a hawk, I’m not a pigeon — I’m a man. And a man does what he’s gotta do.”
He ditches the philosophy of the pigeons; he ditches the philosophy of the hawks. He uses the strength of his hawk-like character, the perseverance and the physical brute force of a prize-fighter who grew up in poverty, as well as the empathy and compassion of the pigeons. Terry needed the encouragement of the good woman and he needed the inspiring words of the priest; he also needed his indomitable spirit and strength that he gained from the a life of hardship on the streets — at the end of the day, he needed to soften his heart and harden it at the same time in order to do what is right.
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)
