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Pigeon fancier makes call to rehome family of peregrine falcons living in Colchester’s Jumbo Tower

by | Sep 26, 2017 | Pigeons in the News

Calls have been made to rehome a family of peregrine falcons in Colchester, after concerns they could threaten the pigeon-keeping community

The unique residents moved into the town’s disused Jumbo Tower in June, after a lone falcon was spotted on top of the building at the start of the summer.

For pigeon fanciers though, – people who keep and breed pigeons – the news means there is a heightened risk of attack on their birds.

There are also concerns that it will threaten the already-declining sport of pigeon racing.

Micky Hughes, who lives near the tower, said: “People seem to think these birds just want to find a home. However, towns such as Colchester are an unnatural habitat for peregrine falcons, causing damage and destruction to many small birds including racing pigeons and song birds.

“As a result I have to be constantly wary of the movements of predatory birds – something that I’ve never had to worry about before.

“It’s important to me to ensure that wildlife flourishes in its natural habitat, therefore I’m keen to see these peregrine falcons rehomed somewhere which will not only benefit pigeon fanciers such as myself, but the birds in question too.”

While birds of prey, such as sparrowhawks and peregrine falcons are safeguarded by the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, birds owned by the 60,000 pigeon fanciers in the UK have no legal protetction against attacks from raptors.

As a result, The Raptor Alliance – which lobbies for change on behalf of pigeon fanciers – has been working with councils to ensure the number of birds of prey circling communities stabilises.

Lee Fribbins, from The Raptor Alliance, said: “It is imperative that we investigate ways of controlling and managing the increasing population of predatory birds humanely whilst ensuring that they are not introduced to unsuitable locations.

“We are currently liaising with people who have been affected by attacks and engaging with councils to educate and investigate solutions to the problem.”

He added: “Racing birds provide great company for their owners and are able to enjoy freedom on daily basis, naturally competing as they are released from their lofts.

“This is a hobby that can be taken up by anyone at any age, provides almost £107 million to the UK economy every year and provides substantial donations to many worthy charities across the country – therefore we want to make sure this past time isn’t lost forever.”

 

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)

Arizona Dove Season Outlook: Scout Now for Desert Hotspots

by | Sep 25, 2017 | Pigeons in the News

Arizona’s dove hunters know what a huge part agriculture plays in their hunting success.

No matter the crop — wheat, sorghum, millet, milo, sunflowers – grain fields are like magnets for flight after flight of mourning and the larger white-winged doves, providing some of the best wing-shooting action in the nation.

“Arizona consistently reports the highest number of birds harvested per hunter (18.1 in 2016) than any other state in the West (11.1),” said Johnathan O’Dell, small game biologist for the Arizona Game and Fish Department. “Some years, Arizona turns in the highest number in the country.

“We saw an increase in 2016 in the mourning dove population — 45.7 million, up from 36.3 million in 2015 — in the Western Management Unit, which consists of Arizona, Utah, Nevada, California, Oregon, Idaho and Washington. We expect numbers to remain high for opening day in 2017.”

Once again, the greatest number of doves – and dove hunters — will be concentrated in the state’s agricultural areas when the season begins Friday. O’Dell said he expects even more white-winged doves than usual in these areas, based on this year’s weather patterns in some places that inhibited the production of saguaro cactus fruit – a popular food source for white-winged doves.

For a change of pace, as well as a little more elbow room, O’Dell offers this tip:

Find a desert hotspot.

“Substantial rains that covered Arizona this year allowed for mourning doves to spread out across the desert in search of food and nesting sites in trees near previously dry livestock waters,” O’Dell said. “It would be worth doing some scouting to find a dove hotspot this year.”

The department reminds dove hunters to review the “2017-2018 Arizona Dove and Band-tailed Pigeon Regulations,” which are posted online.

The regulations also are available in a new format that hunters will find particularly handy in the field. The color brochure is easier to read and features important hunting information, such as season dates, daily bag and possession limits, and legal requirements, at a glance. The printed version is available at all department offices and more than 200 license dealers statewide.

A youth combination hunt/fish license is only $5 and includes a migratory bird stamp. Hunters 18 and older who want to hunt doves and band-tailed pigeons (as well as ducks, geese, coots, snipe and common moorhens) must possess a valid Arizona hunting license, as well as a migratory bird stamp for the 2017-18 season. Both can be purchased online.

 

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)

WRONG!: Feathered friend falsehoods

by | Sep 24, 2017 | Pigeon Patrol's Services

BELLEVILLE – One good thing about fall approaching, besides the melancholy panoply of colours, is the fact the outdoor wedding season will be over and, thus, many doves and white pigeons will survive at least another several months.
There are many myths and misconceptions about birds and their behaviour. Perhaps the most annoying and dangerous is the one where a wedding couple releases white doves into the air.
The ritual is intended to symbolize peace and freedom. But while the happy couple is whooping it up at the reception those poor birds are flapping their wings for the last time.
If the birds are released too close to sundown they will not be able to orient themselves and find their way home, which is the breeder’s home. Birds can’t navigate in the dark. Also if they’re domestic-raised they possess no survival skills. Even those with a fighting chance probably have no notion of hydro wires or crows, ravens and hawks.
Most ‘white doves’ are pigeons bred to be white. Even white homing pigeons are in danger. Genuine ring-necked doves as well as white king pigeons have little if any chance of survival.
At least, most wedding doves are purchased from breeders. It is illegal to buy and release any store-bought bird.
All birds do not fly south in the winter and not just ones from the Southern hemisphere. And those that do fly south usually get there by an indirect route, first heading east or west. Ornithologists are not agreed on why this is so. The precious little hummingbird is supposed to fly all the way to South America but North American hummingbirds have rarely been seen in Panama and never south of there.
There is the myth flightless birds are easy prey. Usually, however, they are flightless because they don’t need to fly. They can run or swim faster than their enemies.
The rhea, for instance, can run as fast as any horse. Ostriches and cassowaries can run nearly as fast and kick like giant UFC fighters.
In southern British Columbia a few weeks ago, while sitting outdoors at a table, I had the strange experience of close contact with a hummingbird. It flew to the table and hopped onto my forearm before taking off. It didn’t pause there but rather touched down for a nanosecond. Nevertheless, it was a nanosecond of wonder.
Because people love these birds so much many put out feeders. Last year a friend sent me a photo taken on Christmas Eve of a hummingbird at the feeder outside his kitchen window. The water in the feeder was dyed red ostensibly to provide more attraction to the bird. This is a misconception.
Some people are hesitant to leave home for long periods in the winter because the poor hummingbirds might starve. They won’t.
They feed elsewhere. Hummingbirds need amino acids — protein — to survive and get this from tiny insects, particularly aphids and mosquitoes.
Another domestic bird feeding myth is the one about making sure to keep peanut butter away from birds because it will choke them. It won’t. It is, in fact, a good idea to set out some peanut butter in the winter because it supplies the bird with much needed fat.
And then there is the myth that birds don’t sing on the ground. Observe the flicker and the common robin to realize the folly of that one.
The Seven-Colours, from Brazil, defies several myths. Not only does it sing on the ground but seems to sing when happy, Getting down on the ground and rolling around before springing to its feet to emit an incredible cry that alternates between a train whistle and a sobbing woman and followed by a song of 30 different syllables. It’s a tanager.

 

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)

Backtrack: Extraordinary story of a Grade II-listed pigeon loft

by | Sep 23, 2017 | Pigeons in the News

APPROVING a new e-book on a year in the life of the Northern League, last week’s column noted that Ryhope – a semi-self-contained suburb of Sunderland – was said to boast the only pigeon cree that’s a Grade II listed building.

Flight of fancy? We set out last Saturday to find it.

That the great Ryhope derby – Sunderland RCA v Ryhope CW – was to take place that very afternoon may be considered a little less than coincidental.

Ryhope still proclaims itself a village, though the 2011 census recorded 10,484 souls – about the same as Shildon, and Shildon’s a veritable metropolis.

The old water works pumping engine it itself a listed building, as is the early 19th century place identified on the plaque outside as the Ryhope Rent Office. But a pigeon cree?

Homing instinct or accustomed good fortune – the latter, it may be assumed – we find Maurice Surtees’s celebrated sanctuary almost at once.

It’s in the allotments off Back Ryhope Street, near the former Blue Bell pub – now a tanning salon. Pubs don’t get listed, not in Ryhope, anyway – and the memorial garden to the many killed in the 110 years of Ryhope Colliery. Most of the allotments appear rather better kept.

MAURICE, an 85-year-old former pitman, isn’t there. “He’ll be about five minutes,” says his mate Graham Burns. A pigeon clock may be set on it.

He arrives on a mobility scooter – “his go-kart,” says Graham – but walks unaided down the path to the cree.

A delightful man, much given to the observation that nowt’s a bother, he is at once asked where his own plaque is. “All these years and I still haven’t got a one,” says Maurice. “I’ve asked MPs, all sorts. I’d pay for the bugger mesel’.”

He and his brother Bill built the cree in 1955, chiefly with wood liberated (shall we say) from colliery houses awaiting demolition.

“Look at them netty doors, good as new,” says Maurice. “If pigeon men want owt mekkin’, they mek it theirsels.”

Forty years later, his allotment and 20 others were threatened when the Newcastle-based owners sought to develop the land for housing.

Local MPs Chris Mullin and Fraser Kemp were whistled up, consulted the Heritage Department, agreed the indubitably ingenious idea that the cree should be listed, and no matter that the official document calls it a dovecote.

“That’s just southern talk,” says Maurice, a man equally unlikely to call his pigeon palace a loft.

The term “loft”, he supposes – perhaps apocryphally – originated because that’s where the Belgians, big pigeon men, hid their birds when the Germans invaded. Maurice pronounces “Germans” almost as Stan Boardman did.

In 2007 the owners again tried to reclaim the land, offered the allotment holders £250,000 between them, were reminded by MP Kemp of the import of listing. There was talk of bailiffs, and of barricades. “Any damage to a listed building is a criminal offence that can lead to a prison sentence,” warned Kemp.

Maurice was more brutal, perhaps more pitmatic. “If them bigshots want a fight they should come down to the gardens and take their jackets off,” he said at the time.

There was a debate in the Commons – “The government has a very clear and strong view on pigeon fancying and that is that we are wholly in favour,” said Harriet Harman, leader of the House – a lot of press, another victory.

“A very British coo,” said the Mirror, rather magnificently.

In 2011 the cree was part of an English Heritage open day, alongside places like Durham Town Hall and Darlington Civic Theatre. “I made about 200 cups of tea and coffee, gave people taties, onions all sorts,” Maurice recalls.

“One woman even took me nettles, I thowt she was mekkin’ game but she said she wanted them to make tea. The next few days, people were coming back with pies and all sorts for me. Folk are lovely if you only know where to look.”

AS luck again would have it, Saturday’s a racing day, Graham anxiously rattling a tin of corn as pigeon men do. “Divvent thoo worry, they knaa where they live,” says Maurice, though his birds have had a disappointing season.

“They’re good enough, they’re bonny enough. They just seem to have nee luck.”

Among the retired birds pecking at their feet is one – the Owld Hen, they call her –which won a major race from Lille. “Only one eye, got a bat or something, lovely bird,” says Maurice.

Visitors have included Robbie Coltrane – “queer bugger, him” – and Grayson Perry while researching a North-East tapestry. “Canny feller, cross dresser, all right, though,” says Maurice.

Labour ministers Tony Banks and Andy Burnham also came; a BBC crew spent six weeks there on and off. “They said they had about five hours of stuff but had to cut it down to an hour because of the swearing,” Maurice adds.

He also told the BBC that he’d had a cuckoo clock but that the cuckoo was deed. The website felt obliged to translate.

Beamish Museum have expressed interest in the cree when Maurice is no longer racing – “I’m not so sure how they’ll shift it” – though he hopes to be fleeing, as he puts it, for several years yet. Fewer are ready for take off.

“Ryhope used to be the biggest club in the North-East, 56 members. Now there’s 21, only two on these gardens and owld John’s retiring next year. I can still remember my first race, 680 away. My brother won.

“At one time if you worked at the pit that was it – bed, work and pigeons, that was your life. Now the sport’s dying, getting dearer and dearer. Once you could send a bird away for a few coppers, now it’s a few pound. Then there’s the big teams, mekkin’ it hard for lads like me. If you enter 20, they enter 60. They make pigeons a business; it isn’t right, they should enjoy it.”

 

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)

Bird flu grounds racing pigeons

by | Sep 22, 2017 | Pigeons in the News

Cape Town – The recent outbreak of the avian flu virus has the racing pigeon industry all aflutter after they were told to keep their birds indoors.

The South African National Pigeon Organisation (Sanpo) said they had decided to heed to recommendations made by the provincial department of agriculture.

Spokesperson for MEC Alan Winde, Bronwynne Jooste, said they recommended that any movement of birds be limited as far as possible.

“Movement must be covered by a movement permit if coming from within 30km of an infected farm. This permit can be obtained from a local state vet. Bird owners should be aware that as soon as their birds travel, they are at increased risk of catching avian influenza and spreading it.”

The department said there had been 13 outbreaks in South Africa since June. These involved seven commercial chicken farms, two groups of backyard chickens, three sets of wild birds and one group of domestic geese.

The H5N8 strain of the disease has already wreaked havoc in the poultry industry in Zimbabwe, where thousands of commercial birds have died or had to be culled.

This strain of the virus has so far shown no sign of being infectious to people.

Sanpo president Fadiel Hendricks said they decided to listen to the recommendation, to protect themselves.

“We have an understanding that you can race, but if something happened and a pigeon gets killed and tested and it’s found to have avian flu in the pigeon, then pigeons from that area will be culled. So for now, there is no racing.”

He said they “found themselves in a disaster especially in the Western Cape” and it was beyond their control.

“We can’t control certain diseases in the wild. It is a fear, but as custodians of the sport we have to listen to what the vets and authorities are saying.”

He said some members were concerned about losing points and their national colours were at stake.

The official vet for the organisation, Ockert Botha, said: “Scientific evidence is clear that currently there is no evidence that avian flu affects domesticated pigeons, or that they play a role in carrying the disease and therefore are a threat to the poultry industry. However, we are being ever vigilant of the importance of the disease.”

Botha said all pigeons in the area would be vaccinated against other viruses.

“We are being proactive about it.”

 

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)