by Ryan Ponto | Jul 18, 2017 | Bird Netting
FERAL PIGEONS, WHICH LIVE ON every continent in the world except Antartica, are famously adaptable—They shack up all over, from San Francisco to London to Mumbai.
They are also in Calgary, where around 200 of them have made their home on the roof of the South Health Campus, a 269-bed hospital. This was an unwelcome development, since pigeons can carry disease, and they poop a lot.
The hospital’s efforts to get rid of them—including with noise, which worked at first, before the birds got used to it—haven’t been successful, so recently they chose to get a little more serious. They’ve hired three baby peregrine falcons, according to the CBC, as a future anti-pigeon patrol.
A falconer, John Campbell, plans to release the falcons from the building, where it is hoped they will hunt down the pigeons and “other small game,” the CBC reports.
“You could [use] anything that would scare them, that would go after them as prey,” Campbell said. “It doesn’t have to be falcons but the falcons work very well.”
It will be a little time before the falcons get to the hunting, as just one has fledged so far. In the meantime, though, they’re being fed dead pigeons to give them a taste for pigeon blood.
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 | Jul 17, 2017 | Bird Netting
Bengaluru: Some feed pigeons out of the belief that it would bring prosperity or wash off their sins, blissfully unaware that its increasing population was destroying the food chain of other birds and the ecosystem. Experts point out that the alarming rise in population of pigeons in the city was due to easy availability of food.
Expressing concern, Harsha, a bird expert, said, “Pigeons do not require a special place for nesting. They mostly build their nests on rooftops and windowpanes and not necessarily on trees.
Pigeons are growing at a rate of 20 per cent monthly, which is alarming as it is destroying the food chain of other birds like myna, Asian koel and crows.”
Food chain regulates the balance of each species based on their reproduction. Due to urbanisation, predatory birds which feed on pigeons have dwindled. Moreover, Blue Rock Pigeon which nests on the availability of food in the wild, reproduce at a faster rate due to the easy availability of food in urban areas.
“Shikra, predatory bird nests on trees and feed on pigeons. Due to the less number of trees in the urban areas, Shikra is not usually seen, hence the number of pigeons multiply. We cannot see Outstack, another predatory bird which feeds on pigeons,” Harsha said.
Carrier of diseases
Experts believe that pigeon droppings are acidic and the bird itself is a carrier of diseases.
“Pigeon droppings are highly allergic to human beings and it leads to early exhaustion,” says Dr Rupa from Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre.
Harsha claimed that pigeons are one of the causes of rise in cases of bird flu. “They are the carriers of diseases and once their faecal matter dries up it spreads in the air leading to the skin infection in children and respiratory problem amongst the elderly,” he added.
It may be noted that In 2001, a ban was imposed on feeding pigeons at London’s Trafalgar Square owing to health hazards.
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 | Jul 16, 2017 | Bird Netting
The first red-cockaded woodpeckers to be hatched in the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge in at least four decades were welcomed in early May by biologists.
Two of three chicks survived and have since been seen flying around with their parents. The woodpeckers are an endangered species.
“It’s a real milestone,” said Bryan Watts, director of The Center for Conservation Biology, and a first step in establishing a population of the swamp’s once indigenous bird. It’s also part of a larger recovery effort that includes a growing colony in Sussex.
“We’re sort of holding the line up here from keeping the species from contracting further south,” Watts said.
The red-cockaded woodpecker is a small, black and white bird named for the male’s flash of red feathers. They’re unique in that they carve their homes in live trees and mate for life, though young are raised by a collaborative group.
The birds once numbered in the hundreds of thousands in the Southeast and as far north as New Jersey, biologists say. But logging, development and forestry practices reduced the bird’s habitat and sparked a 20th century decline.
The species was listed as endangered in 1970, and hadn’t been seen in the Great Dismal Swamp since 1974. Public and private agencies have been working for years to get the population back up. The Nature Conservancy’s Piney Grove Preserve in Sussex is the only other Virginia enclave and home to 70 birds broken into 14 breeding groups, Watts said.
Over the past two years, 18 woodpeckers have been released into artificial roosts in the Great Dismal Swamp, relocated from populations in North and South Carolina. There were slim hopes the five remaining birds – two males, three females – would reproduce this year.
“But the birds worked it out,” Watts said.
Two nests with eggs were discovered initially. Three chicks hatched in the first nest on May 13, but one bird was grossly underweight and died, biologists said. The second nest was found devoid of eggs or babies. Biologists suspect a snake got them before they hatched.
Colored leg bands, which the surviving birds got at 7 days old, help scientists track them, according to Watts and Jennifer Wright, biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services.
The birds are featherless and rubbery at that age – primitive looking and golf-ball sized – yet still flexible and hardy, Watts and Wright said. The chicks’ eyes are initially closed. They can only discern light and dark, which makes them easier to extract from the nest.
Still “you want to be careful,” Wright said. “It’s all by feel.”
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 | Jul 15, 2017 | Bird Netting
Downy Woodpeckers are year-round residents of our area, raising their families in summer as well as spending winters here. When the breeding season arrives, a pair selects a nest site in a dead branch and sets to work excavating a cavity. Both male and female dig the cavity, and all the work is done with their beaks — breaking off pieces of wood and discarding them as the nest takes the shape of a gourd, larger at the bottom.
You can tell the male from female because the male has a red patch on the nape of his neck. Females lack this colorful adornment.
Woodpeckers employ three strategies for safe and secure nests. They need to be hard to find, difficult to reach, and hard to get into. A nest that is well-hidden high in a tree is difficult for such predators as snakes and raccoons to find and reach. And, if reached, a cavity nest with a small entrance is hard to get into.
It takes the pair about 16 days to excavate the nest, then male and female take turns incubating the three to nine eggs the female lays. It takes just 12 days for them to hatch.
With as many as nine babies in the nest, it must be hard to keep it clean, right? Baby woodpeckers are fed several times each hour, and what goes in must come out.
Removal of baby woodpecker poo is made easier because it comes out in the form of a fecal sac — a gelatinous capsule that Papa carries in his beak and drops well away from the nest.
Leaving the nest must be a little scary for young woodpeckers. Imagine looking out of the nest from 15 feet up the tree and trying to fly for the first time.
Young downy woodpeckers do this when they’re just 3 weeks old.
The fledglings are fed by the parents for another 3 weeks, then they’re on their own.
Of the seven species of woodpeckers that can be found in this area, the downy is the second most common, outnumbered only by the red-bellied woodpecker.
Both the downy and the red-bellied can be seen in most suburban neighborhoods that have lots of trees. You can enjoy these birds by stocking a simple tube feeder with sunflower seeds. Nuthatches, chickadees, titmice and finches will also be drawn to these feeders, providing you with many hours of pleasure enjoying these birds.
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 | Jul 14, 2017 | Bird Netting
With a decision forthcoming on proposed protections for a rare species of woodpecker found in the Black Hills, a new population estimate for the bird has provoked warring reactions from opposing sides of the debate.
A master’s thesis presented in May by Elizabeth Matseur of the University of Columbia-Missouri estimated a population of 2,920 black-backed woodpeckers in the Black Hills in 2015, and 3,439 in 2016.
Those numbers are about three to four times higher than the estimate included in a still-pending 2012 petition to list the birds as a threatened or endangered species.
The petition was submitted by four environmental and conservation groups. A decision is required by Sept. 30 from the director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in cooperation with the secretary of the Department of the Interior.
A Black Hills timber industry group opposes the listing because it could result in more protected habitat for the birds, and therefore reduced logging, in the Black Hills National Forest.
Ben Wudtke, forest programs manager for the Black Hills Forest Resource Association, said the new research disproves the case for listing the birds as threatened or endangered.
“This study should put the final nail in the coffin and show that black-backed woodpeckers are doing very well in the Black Hills,” Wudtke said.
Chad Hanson, a representative from one of the groups that submitted the petition, said that simply is not true because the student researcher’s findings are fundamentally flawed.
Hanson is an ecologist for the John Muir Project of Earth Island Institute in Big Bear City, Calif. He said the new research has “one major flaw” — a buffer area of 500 meters between sites where birds were counted, rather than 1,500 meters, which Hanson said is the appropriate standard.
“To avoid overcounting, you have to take that into account,” Hanson said. “They would’ve counted some birds not just twice, but with a 500-meter buffer, they very likely would’ve counted some birds three times or more.”
In other words, Hanson thinks the population estimates in the new research might be inflated by a factor of three. But even if the new estimates are accurate, he said, they still fall below the threshold of 4,000 individual birds that the petition cites as necessary to avoid a risk of extinction.
Matseur, the author of the thesis, said she and her collaborators accounted for the likelihood of individual birds being counted more than once.
“We feel this is an accurate model and population estimate,” Matseur said.
The research was sought by the U.S. Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station, which provided support for the work along with partners including state government agencies in South Dakota and Wyoming, Matseur said.
Matseur and a crew of up to five helpers spent the summers of 2015 and 2016 doing a combined 1,800 miles of off-trail hiking in the Black Hills. They followed predetermined routes and stopped for five minutes apiece at predetermined points to watch and listen for black-backed woodpeckers. Each detection point was visited three times per summer.
In all, the team made 7,110 stops at the detection points and logged 362 detections of black-backed woodpeckers.
“Sometimes we would go a week without detecting a woodpecker,” Matseur said, “but that made it more exciting when we got one.”
Matseur and her team put their data into a statistical model that included additional factors, such as forest conditions, to produce estimates of the total black-backed woodpecker population in the Black Hills.
The birds are about the size of a robin and are adapted to peck insect larvae from trees in burned areas of the forest. The black-backed woodpeckers in the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming are said to be a genetically distinct subspecies, as are another population of black-backed woodpeckers in Oregon and California. The two groups are the only ones covered by the petition for threatened or endangered status.
The petition groups say that decades of firefighting, fire prevention and post-fire logging have destroyed much of the charred and snag-filled habitat — full of dead and dying trees — that black-backed woodpeckers need for long-term viability.
A mountain pine beetle epidemic in the Black Hills that lasted from the 1990s through last year created some additional habitat for the birds, which is a factor that could account for increased numbers. But researchers say the snag-filled areas created by mountain pine beetles are not as conducive to a thriving black-backed woodpecker population as the snags created by fires.
Managers of the Black Hills National Forest already strive to preserve some black-backed woodpecker habitat. If the birds are listed as threatened or endangered, forest managers could be required to protect more areas for the birds.
“The result is, there would be less logging,” said Hanson, of the John Muir Project. “That’s almost certainly true. And there should be. Ecologically, that is what’s called for here.”
In national forests, the U.S. Forest Service selects areas to open for logging and sells logging rights to private companies through a competitive bidding process. For timber that was cut during the 2016 fiscal year in the Black Hills National Forest, the Forest Service received $2.17 million, according to the agency’s quarterly reports.
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)
