by johnnymarin | Feb 17, 2018 | Pigeon Patrol's Services
North Korea has released posters that promote inter-Korean cooperation, in the lead-up to its participation in the PyeongChang Winter Olympics.
Pyongyang’s move comes amid speculations that it is reaching out to Seoul to dampen the growing alliance between the latter and Washington.
North Korean posters are notorious for their militaristic and anti-American messages, but the ones released by North Korea’s Uriminzokkiri propaganda website last week stressed cross-border relations, and specifically reconciliation, solidarity, self-reliance and unification.
One of the posters depicts a “unified Korea” flag that shows an undivided Korean Peninsula on the one hand and a group of people carrying the flags walking side by side on the other.
The poster states, “Let us actively form an atmosphere aimed at reconciliation and unification,” and has slogans commonly used by the North in its strategy for the South, such as “uriminzokkiri,” meaning “on our own as a nation, “solidarity of the people,” “self-reliant unification” and “self-reliance of the people.”
A different poster that shows people looking up to a brightly shining Peninsula, states, “Improvement on the North-South relations in 2018” and “Let us light up this meaningful year and leave a noteworthy record of achievements!”
A third poster portrays a boy and a girl dressed in traditional Korean clothing releasing pigeons into the sky, as the pigeons fly in a formation in the shape of the Peninsula.
It shows a black missile that states, “U.S. rehearsal for invasion of the North,” being shattered into pieces. The poster also states, “Let’s ease military tension between the North and the South and prepare a peaceful environment on the Peninsula first!”
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 | Feb 16, 2018 | Pigeon Patrol's Services
It’s been a good week for … birds
An ambulance service for pigeons has been launched in Aberdeen. Kevin Newell and Flo Blackbourn run Wiggy & Friends Animal Rescue and are on a mission to help the city’s injured doos.
They are asking people to help them map the city’s colonies so their Pigeon Patrol can check up on the birds’ welfare.
“We’ve created a rapid response first aid kit for pigeons,” explains Newell. “If a pigeon is ill we’ll catch it and treat it.”
Newell, who has his own business Humane Wildlife Solutions, and Blackburn, a zoology student, run the rescue service from their home in Old Aberdeen. The centre is named after Wiggy the pigeon, who the couple treated when he had an injured wing.
“A lot of people absolutely hate pigeons but once you get to know them they’re all little people with their own characters and traits,” says Newell. “We play pigeon noises to them so they feel like they have contact with other pigeons and not just us.”
Very Dr Doo-little.
It’s been a bad week for … plants
Flat-sharing can be fraught with difficulties. The divvy-up of bills, the sharing of the limited hot water, the impromptu parties. And there’s always that nagging question: who nicked my last bit of cheese?
But rare plants don’t usually come into the equation – but they did for Lancashire ecology student Joshua Styles, who woke up to discover that his flatmate had vomited on his collection of rare plants and seeds gathered from more than 40 rare species.
And instead of a drunken student accident, Styles, 22, appears to think the vandalism was an act of retaliation. “My flatmate came in drunk at 3.30 in the morning with five girls making loads of noise. I’d had a bit of conflict with him already over not paying the bills, including the internet, so this time I cut off access to it.
“The next morning I woke up to find he had vomited over the plants I’ve collected for a project I set up in order to save them from regional extinction and poured bleach over them. I can’t tell you how upsetting it’s been. Those plants meant everything to me.”
But his faith in humanity has perhaps now been restored. Since writing on social media about his plants’ plight, supporters have launched a crowdfunding page to help raise £5,000 to repair the damage.
It seems there are seeds of hope 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 | Feb 15, 2018 | Bird Deterrent Products
A Syrian soldier serving in Aleppo has an unusual way of spending his downtime – breeding pigeons on the rooftop of a partially-destroyed building.
Bassil, who asked to be identified by his first name only, is a 29-year-old soldier from the eastern Syrian city of Deir el-Zour.
He has been serving as a soldier with the government forces in Aleppo in the north of the country for eight years, and has not seen his parents or siblings in all that time.
In 2016, Bassil witnessed some of the most intense fighting of the civil war as rebel fighters took control of parts of government-held western Aleppo.
In December 2016, the city came under full control of the government after a crushing offensive that forced remaining insurgents to evacuate to the northwestern province of Idlib.
But in the past two years, a scaling down of the fighting in Aleppo has given him the chance to explore his hobby of breeding pigeons.
In a residential area known as Ramouseh, which used to house a major bus station, almost all the buildings have been destroyed.
It was the target of a lightning rebel offensive in August 2016, and was captured from government forces for several days.
On the roof of one building, where the staircase is only partially intact, Bassil keeps his pigeons in a cage.
When he’s not required for duty, Bassil climbs up the damaged stairs, squeezes himself through the rubble and metal joists and comes out onto the roof where he spends time with his birds.
He feeds them and admires them as they fly over the destruction down below – buildings riddled with bullet holes or partially collapsed from airstrikes and shelling.
“I climb here to relax and have some good time with the pigeons,” he says.
“I am far away from my parents so I spend my spare time with these birds after I finish my shift. I watch them and make them fly.”
Almost none of the buildings left in the area are fit for habitation, but Bassil says he is hopeful for the future.
“All parts of Syria should be built. God willing, all this destruction will be rebuilt.”
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 | Feb 14, 2018 | Animal Deterrent Products
WHEN he is not being kept busy in an active political schedule, Raymond Schenk spends a lot of his free time with his hobby of many years – pigeon racing.
A well-known local personality, Schenk is the leader of the Democratic Alliance in Ndlambe.
Born and raised in the Transkei near Umtata, Schenk and his brothers were always interested in pigeons, but it was only after he left school and began working that he started taking a keen interest in this sport.
He spent most of his working career with the SABC in Johannesburg, ending up as head of advertising and production with 32 years’ service. It was during this time that he really became serious about pigeon racing and joined the Horizon Pigeon Club in Roodepoort, eventually serving this as chairman for four years. After building his loft, he obviously needed stock birds.
“Pigeon fanciers are generally generous people and will always help and encourage a beginner with birds. But they don’t let out too many of their trade secrets and competition was tough among the 32 members,” he said.
Read Bob Ford’s full story in this week’s Talk of the Town.
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 | Feb 13, 2018 | Pigeon Patrol's Services
“I love photography,” says Franca Marazia. “It is my great escape.”
She focuses on the world she knows best.
“I photograph everyday objects, daily life activities, the environment that surrounds us, and the people and pets I meet along the way,” she tells me.
Marazia, 59, who lives in Hamilton, taught elementary school for 30 years. She says she is self-taught when it comes to photography, but she has had many years in which to sharpen her skills.
“I have always been photographing something, usually at family functions,” she says. “I seem to be the keeper of memories. I used photography in my classroom as well.”
Camera in hand, she usually sets out with a destination and a plan. But she welcomes the photograph that presents itself when she is not expecting it.
“Knowing the right scene is hard to explain,” she says. “It’s something I feel.”
Marazia is a regular contributor to Art in the Workplace at McMaster Innovation Park, located at 175 Longwood Rd. S. One of her offerings in the current show is “Sunset Boulevard,” taken at Pier 8 in the West Harbour.
She found a scene with a variety of shapes and textures, some of them unexpected.
Three figures sit at a table silhouetted in front of a landscape lying beyond a fence. The regular verticals of the fence contrast with the humans’ irregular shapes. A sparkling body of water leads to a horizontal strip of wooded land in the distance. This darkened land mass complements the dark human shapes in the foreground.
The sky, which fills the upper two-thirds of the composition, contributes a different combination of colours and textures, including an emphatic circle of sun.
“I had been photographing activity on the water and on the pathways,” she recalls. “Just happened to stay long enough to capture a breathtaking summer sunset. In trying to shoot its reflection on the water, one of my images included a family sitting at a picnic table. I didn’t realize what I had until I uploaded the images onto my computer.”
Marazia is never without her camera when she travels. In Viseu, Portugal, she was sitting at an outdoor café when she saw a man feeding pigeons, a familiar sight that inspired a sepia photograph.
A spacious foreground leads to six pigeons, each one attentively facing the man seated on a bench. He’s leaning toward them, looking at the food in his hand. He is as attentive as they are. Cars are lined up behind him, a background of modern urban clutter that contrasts with the timelessness and spaciousness of the event in the foreground.
In Amsterdam, Marazia found bicycles.
“It was bicycle heaven for me,” she says. “I captured hundreds of them. Such variety in design and functionality.”
In “Sunshine Yellow” she comes up close to bicycles wet with rain. In cropping the scene, Marazia draws our attention to the many circles and lines that crowd and overlap one another.
Red paving bricks and green moss add more geometric shapes and bright hues.
“I have a large collection of bicycle images. I’ve thought about why I feel the need to capture these images,” she explains. “On the one hand, I am reminded of earlier days, my teen years, when I practically lived on my bright blue ten-speed. It was my method of transportation for getting to my part-time job and for meeting up with friends. On the other hand, I am drawn in by the colour and design — the wheels of freedom.”
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)
