by Ryan Ponto | Aug 6, 2017 | Bird Netting
Previous Earth First articles have dealt with the issue of threatened species, how human activity has contributed to their threatened status and what could be done to save them from extinction.
This week readers are invited to read about three examples of human-bird interactions which should cause us to consider our responsibilities to the other living creatures on our planet.
The passenger pigeon in the mid-19th century was not only the most numerous bird in North America, but probably in the world, with an estimated population of three billion.
Reports were made of a huge flock a mile wide which blocked out the sun for three days.
Demand for their tasty flesh resulted in the passenger pigeon being being hunted indiscriminately, which, added to habitat destruction due to forest clearing, resulted in their downfall.
By 1871 their numbers were down to 136 million.
Despite this dramatic reduction in their population, a leading huntsman stated “shooting and hunting (of these birds) should continue. No exploitation could endanger a creature so abundant”.
So shooting, trapping and the torching of nesting sites continued.
Our huntsman was wrong. By 1900 there were no passenger pigeons left in the wild.
Two other bird species on our own doorstep have been also savaged by the human race, but have so far avoided extinction.
The magpie goose, an Australian native species with a population of approximately three million, has been killed in great numbers for food.
Quotas have been reduced in the face of dwindling numbers and open season now only lasts 11 weeks.
Nevertheless a licenced shooter can take seven geese a day, so if 100 licences are issued, the “take” could theoretically still be as high as 54,000 birds.
The American hunter believed no amount of exploitation could affect a creature so abundant … and they had three billion pigeons, while we have only three million geese. Can we learn from the American experience?
Another example is the short-tailed shearwater, also known as muttonbird because of its tasty flesh and the fact that it provided a staple diet for generations of early white settlers.
Mutton bird oil lit lamps and was used for cooking. Their eggs were a highly-prized delicacy.
Unfortunately, since white settlement millions of muttonbirds have been killed for their eggs, flesh and oil, but unlike the passenger pigeon, they seem to have weathered the slaughter and their numbers remain strong. They are now protected.
Some would say that these examples are from less enlightened times, and that we have developed a better and more ecologically sound relationship with our feathered friends.
Let us hope so, but the past shouldn’t give us cause for too much optimism.
The value of Where Song Began by Tim Low and Viking Books for the statistics in this article is gratefully acknowledged.
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 | Aug 5, 2017 | Bird Netting
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – A home near Paseo del Norte and Wyoming looks quiet during most of the day, but around traditional meal times, it becomes a home base for dozens and dozens of pigeons.
“It started a year ago in about March and escalated since then. The neighbor is feeding more frequently and now the birds know there’s food so they come in flocks,” said a neighbor.
Neighbors say it happens two to three times a day and that it is not unusual to see approximately five to six dozen birds.
Neighbors say the homeowner who is feeding the birds scatters seeds on the ground, which attracts birds and some other unwelcome guests.
“With all the mice it has drawn the hawks in and the hawks started killing my chickens,” said a different neighbor.
Albuquerque’s Environmental Health Department says this house has been on their radar for about a year, which is the same amount of time neighbors have been filing complaints through 311.
“Approximately every two weeks. Nothing has changed,” said a neighbor.
Nick Pederson with the city’s Environmental Heath Department says he’s visited the home about four or five times. However, on his visits, he’s never actually seen the homeowner feeding the pigeons.
Pederson says for the city to be able to do anything about the complaints, they need to see the problem actually happening. He did say the Environmental Health Department is considering changing their rules to allow time stamped photos and video as a replacement for witnessing the complaint first hand.
Feeding pigeons is against Albuquerque City Ordinance, in part because the birds can carry diseases.
“I just would hope she would understand what the city ordinance is and there’s a serious reason why we don’t feed them,” said a neighbor.
KRQE News 13 spoke with the homeowner in question and she told us she doesn’t feed pigeons.
“I just feed the songbirds. That’s my intention and if anything else shows up I’m unaware of it,” said the homeowner.
As she said that, there were at least two dozen pigeons on her roof or in her yard.
When KRQE News 13’s Brittany Bade asked about the dozens of pigeons in plain view on her property, the homeowner replied, “Hmm, I don’t know anything about that.”
Neighbors just hope the homeowner stops throwing seeds in the yard and that the pigeon problem goes away soon.
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 | Aug 4, 2017 | Bird Netting
LUBBOCK // Texas Tech University will soon begin giving birth control to pigeons. The university spends more than $100,000 a year trying to deter the birds from nesting on the campus, administrator Sean Childers told KLBK. Starting this fall, staffers will fill bird feeders with a tasty blend of cracked corn and OvoControl, a commercial product that prevents the birds’ eggs from being fertilized. “We’re hoping to humanely decrease the population by 90 to 95 percent,” said Erin Bohlander, a graduate student studying natural resource management.
VICTORIA // In what this writer considers a persuasive argument for good copy editing, a highway sign was printed with spelling errors not once, but twice. The Victoria Advocate reports that for years, a sign on U.S. Route 59 directed drivers to the Dorothy H. O’Connor Pet Adooption [sic] Center. In June, the Texas Department of Transportation replaced the sign and fixed that typo, but the new version misspelled O’Connor’s name as “Dorthy.” “It happens,” Victoria County Commissioner Clint Ives said. “We’ve got 160 miles of county roads.”
LEVELLAND // Two friends riding in a pickup truck were startled to see a surprise visitor wriggle out from under the hood. Swade Moyers and Zakary Wyatt were on State Highway 114 when a bull snake crawled onto the windshield. In a cellphone video he later posted to YouTube, Moyers can be heard shouting, “Get your booty out of here! Oh my lord, please leave.” The men feared the snake would crawl through an air vent, Wyatt told KMAC. “We picked up anything we could have, which was an umbrella,” he said. “It was game on.”GRAPEVINE // Goat yoga has taken northeast Tarrant County by storm. The latest trend at the intersection of farming and fitness has attendees doing downward dog alongside baby pygmy goats, who munch grass and meander from mat to mat. After Grapevine Recreation Coordinator David Mote heard a radio broadcast about a goat yoga class in Oregon, he knew what he had to do. “I Googled it, did some research and thought, ‘This is something we need to do in Grapevine,’” Mote told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. The first free class, with spots for 45 human participants and 10 to 15 goats, filled up within 30 minutes.
CORPUS CHRISTI // The brave men and women of the Corpus Christi Fire Department took home top honors in the city’s second-annual Police, Fire and Media Rib-Eating Contest. Five firefighters bested the cop and reporter teams by downing all their ribs in just over 10 minutes as part of a Special Olympics fundraiser. “I think eating is something we do well,” Assistant Fire Chief Kenneth Erben told the Caller-Times.
DALLAS // The Dallas Museum of Art set the first Guinness world record for the number of people dressed as Frida Kahlo in one place. Artnet News reports that on July 6, more than 1,000 Fridas gathered as part a celebration of the Mexican artist’s 110th birthday. In addition to the requisite unibrow, participants had to wear a red or pink shawl, a below-the-knee floral dress and “a minimum of three artificial flowers.”
WACO // Officers were irked after a woman called 911 to report an overly long wait for an order of chicken nuggets. “Yes, we actually tied up two officers on this call,” Sergeant Patrick Swanton posted on the Waco Police Department’s Facebook page. Swanton refused to name the restaurant, but later told KCEN that “management worked with her [and] gave her money back.”
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 | Aug 3, 2017 | Bird Netting
BOTHELL, WA – This is something out of an old Looney Tunes cartoon. A hard-working woodpecker in Bothell pecked nearly clean through a utility pole this week. An eagle-eyed local resident spotted the damage before the woodpecker was able to cause a power outage – or worse.
The Snohomish County Public Utility District was able to replace the pole within hours of the resident calling it in. The lineman who did the work was so surprised, he snapped a picture. The image has drawn thousands of comments on Facebook.
“Don’t put Red Bull in the bird feeders, people!” one person wrote.
Snohomish PUD spokeswoman Julie Cunningham said that the utility has dealt with woodpecker damage before, but never like this. The pole was so thoroughly chewed, some suspect that a beaver is to blame.
“That’s pretty high up for a beaver,” Cunningham said.
The woodpecker – who no one has actually seen – has even earned a new nickname as a result of his work.
“Somebody said that the woodpecker’s name should be ‘Timber,'” Cunningham said laughing.
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 | Aug 2, 2017 | Bird Netting
Have you ever wondered why woodpeckers don’t get headaches? It is quite remarkable when you think about it. This bird, on a regular basis, subjects its brain to 1000 g of deceleration every time it pecks (g represents the acceleration due to gravity acting on all bodies on the surface of the Earth), and it does so in bursts of 10 – 20 pecks at a time, many times a day! Fighter pilots need specially designed g-suits to not lose vital biological functions at only a handful of g’s.
Studying the woodpecker, then, enables an important question: How can the biophysics of pecking help humans avoid head injuries? This is important because head injuries are a common occurrence. Humans hit themselves in the head a great deal, and so any engineering solution that can additionally prevent severe injury would be beneficial compared to the state of the art. More and more, engineers are turning to nature to seek “bio-inspired” solutions (a field called “biomimicry”). The reason is simple: no need to reinvent the wheel; after all, evolution has selected the best adaptations to behavior. Whatever edge the original pecker birds had to find their food, evolution has rewarded them with ingenious adaptations that now allow furious pecking without injury!
In a paper published in PLOS One by a team led by Dr. Lizhen Wang of Beihang University in China, new insights into the “safety features” of the woodpecker have been identified. In a comprehensive study of the biophysics, involving X-ray analysis of the skull, strength testing of bones, and detailed computer simulations of the stresses on the skull resulting from pecking, the researchers concluded, unsurprisingly, that the woodpecker is incredibly well adapted to pecking. What was surprising was the co-existence of clever adaptations that, hopefully, will weave themselves into original engineering solutions for head protection.
The most incredible adaptation is the hyoid bone. In humans, the hyoid bone is a tiny relict bone in the neck. It is used to anchor muscles that enable tongue movement and swallowing. For forensic scientists it is useful because its fracture is a telltale sign of deadly forced strangulation.
The researchers were able to confirm this spongy material using high resolution X-ray computed tomography, which is a fancy way of saying “non-destructively slicing the skull with X-rays to see inside.” Using their newfound knowledge of the how the skull is built. They designed, using a computer, a model of the skull. In this computer model they assigned a strength value for each bone (that they had measured mechanically by breaking them in a gauged instrument in a previous set of experiments), linked them all together on the computer, and simulated a peck. Using state-of-the-art engineering mathematics (called “finite-element analysis”), they were able to investigate (and predict) the amount of stress that the beak experiences during a peck, and how that stress travels through of the bones of the skull. It is this study that revealed just how ingenious the hyoid bone is in channeling a great deal of pecking stress through it, sparing more sensitive parts of the skull.In the woodpecker, the hyoid bone is much more developed and truly amazing. It begins as an attachment to the nostrils in the upper beak. It splits into two between the eyes, wraps around the head, and rejoins in the neck and ends as the muscle attachment to the tongue of the animal. During pecking, the tongue is thrust forward as far as it can go while still inside the beak. This thrust pulls the bone taught around the head, acting as a seatbelt to the cranium, spine, and the brain, and thus minimizing brain movement inside the cranium during deceleration. This, coupled with the spongy cranium material to cushion the impact essentially wipes out risks of injury.
The woodpecker is uniquely designed to experience high g brain decelerations. Humans brains are not, but are impact-tightening helmets in the horizon? Studies like those of Dr. Zhang and her team are sure to inspire the next generation of safety engineers.
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)
