by johnnymarin | Mar 15, 2018 | Pigeons in the News
Literally. The stately Constanta Casino in Romania once hosted the family of Russian tsar Nicholas II, who became familiar with its large art deco rooms, lavish staircases and shell-shaped windows overlooking the Black Sea.
But now, this is what remains of the old casino – a crumbling, and rather spooky, abandoned manor.
Photojournalist Jakub Kyncl got special permission from Constanta City Hall to visit the old casino, which he said faced an uncertain future as the local community couldn’t afford to restore it to its former glory.
“There are hundreds of pigeons inside as well as family of cats eating deceased pigeons,” Mr Kyncl told news.com.au.
“Bird feathers and faeces are all over the building. A bandana over the mouth was a very good idea.”
The Art Nouveau building has had a fascinating history since it opened as a casino in 1910. Soon after the Russian royal family visited in 1914, it was converted to a military hospital with the outbreak of World War 1.
A devastating bomb attack at the hospital in 1916 left 10 people dead.
By 1917 it was operating as a casino again – until the outbreak of World War II, when it was again hit by a bomb.
Another blow came after the war, when Romania’s strong anti-gambling laws effectively ended its days as a casino.
It was given a new life as a restaurant, bar and meeting venue, but by 1990 it was abandoned and left to rot.
In January, the building was short-listed for a list of the seven most endangered buildings in Europe.
A submission to the Europa Nostra heritage foundation noted the main danger to the building came from the corrosion and rusting of metal.
“Sea storms and winds have shattered most of the windows facing the sea,” the submission read.
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 | Mar 14, 2018 | Pigeon Patrol's Services
BENGALURU: Man is a gregarious animal – we were taught this line in school, but I only understood the true meaning of this sentence a few days back. My first connection with animals was at the Nandankanan Zoo in Bhubaneswar, which has the unique distinction of housing the most bored animals on the planet.
The tigers and lions would stare at people like they were high on opium. The snakes never stepped out of their quarters, even though lines of visitors slithered around their cages. Peacocks rarely spread their wings out to dance, considering Odisha is largely a humid place. The only ones having a ball were monkeys, who stepped out of their enclosures and attacked people for groundnuts.
My connection with animals came from books and movies. Famous Five, Secret Seven, Chacha Chaudhary, and Raja-Rancho. My parents never allowed us to have a pet – it was assumed that pets were for rich people. What we had instead, was a white stray dog named Tipu that was fed unfinished rice and curry. Flashforward to decades later, and I live in a street filled with IT employees and party animals.
The predictable schedules, wide roads, and a lack of traffic makes my locality a haven for all kinds of birds and animals. The one creature I miss the most is the tiny sparrow. While researching for this article, I found out that sparrows were targeted and executed by the Mao regime in China. Turns out, there were huge ecological repercussions from the act, since sparrows also ate a lot of insects. With large malls and skyscrapers, I can’t even remember the last time I saw a sparrow.
We have a lot of pigeons though, and I have mixed feelings for the species. Pigeons have adapted fairly well to urban landscapes, making AC outlets their foster homes. My flat has three balconies, and pigeons have colonised two of them – marking their territory by leaving their droppings on my dried clothes to show me who’s boss. While the status of a cow has been elevated from ‘Aye, shoo!’ to ‘Go Mata’, I don’t think the cows in my locality are aware of this change. They still walk about chewing newspaper and polythene, lying about on the side of the road as crows play hide and seek all over them. There are hardly any bulls around, and I wonder if it’s because they didn’t get any promotion in the last fiscal year.
The cats in my locality behave exactly like cats, and chose not to step out while I was taking the census for this article. I glimpsed upon a few here and there, but when they saw me, they stopped licking their paws and magically vanished. My biggest disappointment however, is reserved for dogs. I have found that dogs that live near shawarma shops and chicken centres lead a more fulfilling life than dogs outside temples and mosques.
I found a white stray dog that reminded me of Tipu, and befriended him. While going to work, I used to feed him biscuits and pat his furry head. Fat and lazy, Tipu was clearly used to affection and adulation. However, I was shocked while returning home a few days ago. I was walking back, and Tipu started barking at me! As it usually happens with dogs, word spread around quickly, and very soon I had a pack of dogs barking at me till I reached my building. I tried to make eye contact with Tipu, but he avoided my gaze, as if to say ‘work is work, bro!’.
At first, I was disappointed. Dogs were supposed to be man’s first friends, and here I was experiencing a brutal betrayal by a bitter Brutus. But when I reached my home, I realised there was no point
getting emotional about these things. We human beings aren’t too different – we work all day for food, hunt on prey at work, protect our territories, and give out mating calls to the other gender. We are all animals here, in this concrete jungle that feeds on fire in the belly.
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 | Mar 13, 2018 | Pigeon Patrol's Services
They are the scourge of British streets and dubbed ‘rats with wings’ for their unhygienic habits.
But scientists believe an army of urban pigeons could be recruited to help prevent the spread of disease and toxins by acting as constant ‘biomonitors.’
The feral birds have an unedifying reputation as pests, but their ability to spread out and occupy all parts of a city could be harnessed to keep track of toxins and diseases which damage human health, say experts.
Rebecca Calisi-Rodriguez, of the University of California, believes pigeons are a perfect tool for monitoring dangerous pollutants because they live off human waste and are therefore inhabit same areas as city dwellers and are exposed to the same contaminants.
The California team said pigeons could serve as ‘the proverbial canary in the coal mine’ because they ‘walk on the same pavements, breathe the same air and eat the same food as humans.’
“Pigeons have existed for ages in close proximity to us, eating the same food, drinking and being exposed to the same water sources, soil, air, pollution,” said said Dr Calisi-Rodriguez, associate professor of neurobiology, physiology and behaviour.
“They have a very small home range, spending the their life within a few neighborhood blocks. And because they are alive they process these chemicals in their bodies.
“This offers up the opportunity to not only find toxin hot spots in our environment, but to understand HOW these toxins affect biology.”
There are 18 million feral pigeons in Britain so scientists would have a huge supply of birds which could act as biomonitors.
In a recent study, the team set out to find out if pigeons could highlight areas which were high in lead pollution.
Although lead has been banned from products for decades – because it harms brain development – it is still present in the many cities, often in old painted street furniture, or children’s play equipment.
Ass Prof Calisi-Rodriguez’ studied the blood levels of pigeons and children living in New York between 2010 and 2015 and found that both birds and humans inhabiting the same neighborhoods experienced similar patterns of lead in their blood.
The team has also received funding to start screening pigeons for other toxins including, pesticides, fire retardants, BPA, and other heavy metals. They are even monitoring the genetic make-up of the birds to see how stress affects DNA.
“Birds, like us, are vertebrates,” added Ass Prof Calisi-Rodriguez. “We share a lot of the same evolutionary history, and our bodies have many similarities in terms of tissue form and function.
“For example, like humans, pigeons lactate. They produce crop milk in their crop sacs to feed their chicks when they first hatch.
“The process is controlled by the same hormones that control human milk production, and both types of milk have essential nutrients the babies need to survive. So as you see, what we learn in birds can have far-reaching implications.”
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 | Mar 12, 2018 | Bird Deterrent Products
From fledging time, two groups of homing pigeons were protected for most of the time from wind exposure. Instead, they were subjected to artificial odorous winds. One of the two groups was subjected to an odorous wind of olive oil from the S and an odorous wind of a solvents’ mixture (“synthetic turpentine”) from the N. The other group underwent the opposite treatment (odorous wind of olive oil from the N and odorous wind of synthetic turpentine from the S). The birds of the first group, released from two points 21.0 and 26.5 km W of the aviary flew in a northerly direction when olive oil was applied to their nostrils and in a southerly direction when synthetic turpentine was applied. Under the same conditions, the birds of the second group flew in the opposite directions. These results support the olfaction hypothesis of pigeon navigation (Papiet al., 1972).
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 | Mar 11, 2018 | Pigeons in the News
Iranian security agencies are worried about the presence of pigeons at the Macca Masjid. Iranian President Dr Hassan Rouhani will visit the historic mosque, along with his delegation, and address a gathering of namazis on Friday.
The police have deployed sharpshooters and armed guards as part of the security arrangements for his visit. But, security personnel are worried about pigeon droppings.
Iranian security agents who visited the mosque to oversee the security arrangements noticed that there were bird droppings and twigs on the first row, where Dr Rouhani is likely to sit while he offers prayers. The agents pointed it out to the mosque authorities, who assured them that they would look into the issue.
The Macca Masjid, a symbol of Iranian architecture, is home to a thousand pigeons. The birds have been living in the mosque’s minarets and lintels for years. There are pigeonholes on the roof as well.
A 70-member group consisting of the Iranian delegation, local public representatives and officials will offer prayers at the mosque on Friday.
Officials have requested the minorities welfare department and the Macca Masjid authorities to arrange for a shamiana (tent) outside the mosque.
“Inside the mosque, we will tie a cloth to cover the first two rows.
“We have been told that the President of Iran will be addressing a small gathering,” said an official from the minorities welfare department.
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)
