Every day, at sun rise, A. Prasanna heads to the terrace to feed a flock of pigeons. He scatters millets from a bowl, held in his left hand. “Every week, I spend nearly 50 kilos of millets for feeding the pigeons.” Prasanna, a resident of Sathasivam Nagar in Madipakkam, says, “Every day, around 6.30 a.m., I feed the pigeons. If I am unwell or out of station, my wife and son and daughter — A. P. Priyadarshini, P. Anirudh and P. Harini — feed the pigeons.” On an average, more than 200 pigeons gather every day at our terrace. He began feeding the pigeons two years ago. Besides pigeons, a good number of squirrels have also started visiting Prasanna’s terrace.
“I started this practice after I watched a video that was circulated on WhatApp. It showed a resident of Royapettah feeding parakeets on his terrace every day,” he says, adding, “ I also feed cows and stray dogs with bananas, sesbania grandiflora (Agathi Keerai) and biscuits and help poor people by buying them food.”
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.
John Wilson Foster’s Pilgrims of the Air starts in the realm of magical realism and ends in horror. From miles of passenger pigeons blocking out the sun, to vast massacres of the bird and deforestation by humans, to a solitary last bird dying in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914, the story is all too easy to allegorize.
Allegories have long surrounded the passenger pigeon, so astonishing to many of its witnesses that only figures of speech could convey their wonder. They were called clouds — or, more threateningly, tempests, streams or floods, troops and regiments — and compared to the “coils of a gigantic serpent,” in John James Audubon’s recounting. Attempts at literal depictions conveyed the flocks’ grand scale — ornithologist Alexander Wilson estimated 240 miles and more than two billion pigeons in one grouping — but lacked the splendor of figurative language.
The comparisons at times suggested an uncertainty about the birds — were they good or evil? Early European explorers in the New World saw a prelapsarian Eden, yet, Foster writes, nature’s “abundance was her abandon” in the Puritan Protestant response. The passenger pigeons, again serving as symbols, were either augurs of disaster or signs of God’s pleasure, presaging sickness (because they stayed longer during mild weather) or promising bounty. Either way, they were chaotic, not orderly — and “this new world cried out for order, discipline and overmastery through agriculture,” Foster writes. “The New World was to be a spiritual and material enterprise: colonisation obliged conversion. Native abundance, at first marvelled at, was to be harnessed and pruned; Nature was to be appropriated, exploited and marketed.”
Our knowledge of what happened to the species does not diminish the magnitude of its tragedy. The vastness of the passenger pigeon flocks shifts, horrifyingly, to the scope of their massacre, a “slaughter of the innocents, as one market gunner admitted.” The birds had long been consumed — the Potawatomi people, for instance, were among its hunters — but in the mid-19th century, harvests turned into “carnivalesque org[ies] of destruction,” and eventually the killings were “dispassionate, organised, ruthless and of an industrial scale.” Pigeoners, aided increasingly by the expansion of the railroad and information networks that let them know where to go, descended on nesting sites and mass-executed the birds using sledgehammers, fire, clubs, and guns. No destructive force seemed taboo. “As many birds as possible were killed or captured, irrespective of demand or need,” Foster writes. Milliners and taxidermists were among the beneficiaries of the killings.
Foster, a literary critic, presents this American tragedy as one of anthropocentric ego. He writes acutely and, perhaps appropriately for the subject, often in dense columns of winding prose. Even as he cites historical facts and ornithological details, there is an underlying poetry to his descriptions; the story he is telling is, ultimately, a eulogy. Most hauntingly, a subtextual question pervades Pilgrims of the Air: As temperatures rise, which species must we eulogize next?
One of the book’s most powerful poetic devices is the metaphor in its title. The birds were pilgrims and explorers; Foster writes that Ectopistes migratorius, the passenger pigeon’s scientific name, translates to “wandering wanderer.” Passenger pigeons “might embody American wilderness in which they exercised the unfenced freedom of nomads or rootless pioneers,” Foster writes, although “their nesting sites were nevertheless called cities.” As industry and pigeoners encroached, “the pilgrims of the forest became fugitives,” and within mere decades, the wandering, and the wonder, were over.
As Anne Schmauss discussed in The Santa FeNew Mexican earlier this week, 2018 has been named the Year of the Bird by the National Audubon Society, National Geographic, and other institutions. This year marks the centennial of the protective Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which arrived too late for the passenger pigeon but did save the snowy egret and other species. “The Year of the Bird might be just the wake-up call we all need to protect our birds and ourselves from the mounting threats against our world,” Schmauss writes.
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.
A PODGY pigeon will be flying high again thanks to a little girl’s rescue mission – and a much needed pedicure.
When seven-year-old Daisy first met Pat the Pigeon she thought the bedraggled bird had donned a pair of shoes for the occasion.
In fact, the overweight pigeon had fallen from her nest into frosty mud that clamped around her claws and formed hard balls.
The kind-hearted Darlington schoolgirl spotted the young bird struggling to fly and stepped in, sparking a rescue that ended in a pedicure for the podgy pigeon, courtesy of the RSPCA.
Animal lover Daisy found Pat on West Auckland Road in early December and begged her grandparents to call in the charity.
Thanks to her actions, the pigeon is now receiving treatment and is expected to be released into the wild upon her return to full health.
RSPCA inspector Kristina Raine collected Pat after a call from Daisy’s grandparents.
She said: “We don’t often see young pigeons like this at this time of year and in these colder conditions.
“It’s very unlikely she would have survived on her own. I took her to the vets and they gave her a much needed pedicure.
“She is now being looked after at the vets until she can lose her Christmas weight and learn to fly.”
She added: “We are so grateful for kind members of the public who see an animal in need and decide to act.
“We receive a call to our cruelty line every 27 seconds alerting us to animals in distress and without this we wouldn’t be able to continue to rescue, rehabilitate and rehome all the animals that we do.”
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.
The blaze broke out at a site off King Oswy Drive in the town shortly after 2pm. Crews from Stranton station rushed to the scene, where they put out the fire a short time after. A total 24 pigeons died in the fire, although officers were able to rescue several pigeons and chickens. Andy Hardy, watch manager at Stranton station, said: “The three sheds which were involved have been pretty much destroyed. “The two owners were there and of course they are unhappy about what has happened. “It looks like there was some kind of heating on inside one of the sheds and that may have been a factor, but we can’t say for definite at this stage. “There is certainly no sign of it being malicious ignition.”
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.
Partners Kevin Newell, 35, and Flo Blackbourn, 21, run Wiggy & Friends Animal Rescue and are embarking on a mission to help the Aberdeen’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.
The idea was inspired by the New Arc animal rescue centre in Ellon.
And it is hoped the project will help alleviate some of the pressure on New Arc by dealing with pigeons in the city.
Kevin said: “They do an amazing job with the thousands of animals they get through the door.
“They don’t always have time to get out and pick up animals.
“We’ve taken quite a few injured pigeons in during the summer.
“There’s large populations of pigeons all over the city.
“We’re calling on people to let us know where they are.
“We’ve created a rapid response first aid kit for pigeons. If a pigeon is ill we’ll catch it and treat it.
“The idea is we’ll go out and try and help these pigeons.”
Kevin, who has his own business Humane Wildlife Solutions, and Flo, a zoology student, run the rescue centre from their home in Old Aberdeen.
He added: “We just work out of our home. We’ve got a little outhouse in the back that’s been converted into a wildlife hut.
“We play pigeon noises to them so they feel like they have contact with other pigeons and not just us.
“The biggest problem with pigeons is their feet when they get string or bits of hair wrapped around their toes.
“If that doesn’t get treated or cut off their toes can eventually drop off.
“A lot of the cases we’ve had the birds have either flown into cars or windows and they suffer from concussion.
“They can recover from concussion but it’s usually a slow process.”
The centre is named after Wiggy the pigeon who the couple treated when he had an injured wing.
The public is being asked to help map pigeon colonies
Kevin said: “Wiggy had damaged his wing.
“He eventually ended up losing half a wing.
“He stayed with us for two months and we managed to rehabilitate him and get his wing treated.
“He also had string around his foot which we treated.
“We got him to a point he was fit, healthy and strong and he went to the New Arc.”
“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.
“We’re not a long-term facility.
“We’re like the ambulance service.”
So far around a dozen colonies have been mapped, including George Street, the railway station, Denburn underpass, Woolmanhill Hospital and St Nicholas Street.
Kevin added: “There’s a lot of pigeon colonies in the city.
“Each colony is usually quite small.
“On average from the ones we’ve found so far there’s probably eight to 15 pigeons in a colony.
“We’re doing patrols of all these different sites and we see if there’s any ill or injured pigeons or babies fallen out of the roost.”
Keith Marley of the New Arc said: “I think it’s an excellent idea.
“It’s a big task, but Kevin’s got the experience to know where the most likely spots are.
“They’re doing all the hard work in going out and getting them.
“They’ve only got limited facilities but they’re doing a great job.”
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.
