by Ryan Ponto | Jun 3, 2017 | Bird Netting
Given recent concerns in China about social unrest or even foreign espionage, it was not surprising that a civic-minded citizen in Nanjing, Jiangsu province called police on Sunday after he found a carrier pigeon at his home with suspicious note tied to its leg, a news website reports.
Carrier pigeons have long been used for communication – legal and clandestine – in China. In the late 1990s, for example, dissidents were known to release pigeons carrying slogans written on ribbons tied to the birds’ feet.
The website of Jstv.com reported that worried policeman took the bird back to the station where they gingerly opened the note to reveal its short but direct message: “Lili, I love you!!! With love from Xiaojun.”
The bird was found to be a champion racing pigeon from Henan province and had an authorised ID band, according to the report.
The Carrier Pigeon Association of Nanjing said the bird might be trapped in recent rainstorms and suggested that the police feed the bird for a few days. After rest, the carrier pigeon would fly back to its host.
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 | Jun 2, 2017 | Bird Netting
“The harmless pigeon still has its use in war as a bearer of dispatches despite the great development of modern means of communication,” The New York Times Mid-Week Pictorial told its readers 100 years ago. “When it is impossible to depend upon the telephone between the front trenches and the rear through wires being cut or broken, a carrier pigeon service becomes extremely valuable.” The photograph showed a pigeon mail carrier leaving a British trench.
“The method of sending a message is to enclose it in a small aluminum tube about one inch long and half an inch in diameter and then fasten the tube to the pigeon’s leg. Now that the United States Army is learning all the latest devices used in modern warfare, the Signal Corps is being trained in the use of carrier pigeons. Three thousand birds have already been called into service at Philadelphia.” (The article did not say whether they had volunteered or been drafted.)
“An occasional hindrance to pigeon-carrier communication is that civilians, unaware that the birds are on active service, shoot them.”
“America Calls — Enlist Today. A photograph of U.S. signal officers wigwagging the above message from the dome of Capitol at Washington at the opening of the recruiting week for the regular Army.” The officers, slightly more than specks, can be discerned at the base of the cupola.
“Here we see why the Red Cross needs all the help it can get. These wounded men, who happen to belong to the British Army, have just been brought in from the firing line by stretcher-bearers, and are waiting for ambulances to take them to base hospitals.” The Times reported that the American Red Cross had just succeeded in raising $114 million (about $2.1 billion today) during a seven-day campaign — or $14 million ($263 million) more than its stated goal.
A motorboat “armed with machine gun and manned by yachtsmen cooperating with the police in harbor patrol work” was photographed off Stamford, Conn. The threat to America did not necessarily come from abroad, The Times said darkly in an accompanying article about domestic defense measures. “In a population so varied in racial origin, traditions and sympathies, including a small element which is influenced by subversive ideas, there must inevitably be some danger of disturbance.”
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 | Jun 1, 2017 | Bird Netting
Wimbledon’s resident hawk Rufus decided tennis was not the life for him and disappeared to the golf course this year, his handler has revealed.
The hawk is used by the All England Club to scare pigeons away so they do not cause a nuisance to players on court.
His handler Imogen Davis said: “He likes to keep me on my toes every year…and generally when somebody is expecting something of me.
“He disappeared to the golf club, and made me go into the pond after him. I was soaked up to here (my knees) and I was like: ‘You didn’t’.”
Rufus starts work at 5am, and not just during the two weeks of the Championships, his year-round job includes making sure pigeons do not nest in the roof of Centre Court.
Ms Davis, from Corby, Northamptonshire, said the Harris Hawk is trained not to attack.
She said: “It’s based on the innate sense of fight or flight, so if a pigeon wants to fight him they can hang around and give it a go but ultimately he is the predator versus prey.”
Ms Davis has to keep a close eye on the bird after he was stolen in 2012 before being returned to the RSPCA.
The 30-year-old handler said: “We were running around frantically. We never did (find out who did it). At the time all I could think about was the well being of Rufus.
“Generally on a day he has one quail or three chicks and the RSPCA had given him 13 chicks. When I went to pick him up his crop was massive.”
Rufus, who has a special Wimbledon pass with the job title ‘bird scarer’ on it, has patrolled the grounds at SW19 for a decade.
The hawk has no special plans to celebrate the anniversary, but will be keeping the grounds pigeon free as usual.
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 | May 31, 2017 | Bird Netting
ALL I WANTED was a quiet place at the end of the road where I could write my memoirs.
About the years of struggling it took to become an overnight excess with a publishing empire stretching from Oil City to Whiskey Flats dedicated to shining the light of freedom on truth, justice and the American way.
If I could just find the time.
Something is always interrupting.
It’s all part of the nightmare we call country living.
It started with the drumming.
It was sort of a Bo Diddley- on-a-bender beat that just kept going and going and wouldn’t stop.
Naturally, I assumed it was just another Sasquatch drum circle heating up.
Sometimes I think that’s all they do.
Maybe I should apologize, but somebody has to work.
Financing the hunt for Bigfoot and baiting them in takes major funding.
Peanut butter and jam sandwiches don’t grow on trees, you know.
I opened the door and stuck my head out, ready to holler into the woods to get them to pipe down for a while, and saw the real reason for my disturbance: a cute little woodpecker.
With a bright red head and a great big beak, the woodpecker was pounding a hole in the side of the house.
Woodpeckers are some of the dumbest creatures on the planet.
Maybe it’s because they spend their lives beating their head against trees.
It only makes sense that an ecological niche that involves brain damage could lead to an evolutionary dead end.
Shooting the woodpecker was not an option.
That would contravene the Geneva Convention of Birdwatching and possibly upset the neighbors.
There are simple rules to get along in the country, such as drive slowly, mind your own business and don’t spray the neighbors with birdshot.
They could shoot back.
And besides, you have a lot better chance of borrowing stuff from the neighbors if you don’t shoot at them first. Enough said.
Not to mention woodpeckers are a protected species.
The birds seem to sense this.
When I tried to scare it away, the woodpecker looked at me like I was impacting his habitat.
I thought we could all just get along.
And we did until the starlings moved into the woodpecker hole.
This is a curse I would not wish on my best enemy.
First, there is the endless process of the starlings building the nest, which means they have to pull the pink fiberglass insulation out of the wall, scatter it over the yard and replace it with a flammable nest made of moss and dry twigs.
Eventually, the babies hatch.
You will know this from their constant shrieking for food from dawn till dark for weeks on end with a distinct aroma wafting through the wall.
It’s a congealing mass of rotting starling nest just waiting to be used again next year.
I sprang into action.
It was going to be too easy.
I grabbed a fish net and beat on the wall.
When the starling flew out of the woodpecker hole, I caught it, then drove it to town to turn it loose.
I could not imagine a crueler fate.
That was until I returned home to find the starling had beaten me back to the house.
The net trick wouldn’t work anymore.
I had to borrow a ladder from the neighbor and nail a board over the woodpecker hole.
For a moment, there was peace.
I’d just sat down to type a really good column for once and heard a woodpecker beating another hole in the wall.
Here we go again.
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 | May 30, 2017 | Bird Netting
Q. On my two-year-old maple tree, at about hip level on the trunk, all the bark is gone all the way down the tree. – S.S., Springfield
If the bark is peeled all the way around, it does not sound too hopeful that the tree will survive. A tree would have a hard time surviving if such damage went even half way around.
This is a process known as girdling, the killing off the tender wood just below the bark. This area of the bark is where all the moisture and nutrients travel up and down the tree to keep the plant alive.
I can think immediately of four possible causes for what you describe.
First, some maple trees do shed plates of bark, and sometimes these can be in rings around the tree. However, the tree is already putting on a new tough layer underneath that will now be the new bark.
The second possibility would be insect damage. You will usually see some holes bored into the tender wood where the bark has been peeled away.
If insects are the culprit, I assume you would find bore holes in the wood and possibly some slime or sawdust lying about on the trunk or on the ground. If you are convinced it is an insect problem then I would have the tree removed and burned or hauled away.
Possibility number three would be squirrel damage. Squirrels may scratch away at bark on a tree to try to get to some insect that may be living underneath the bark.
Finally, it could be a result of woodpecker damage — a woodpecker searching for insects pecks lots of holes into the tree and eventually does enough damage to the bark and the tender layer of new wood underneath, that the two separate and the bark will peel away.
Q: I’ve had a problem in the past with flowers and plants not blooming.– G.H, Springfield
The problem is usually related to the age of the plant, temperature, light, nutrition or pruning practices.
Many plants must reach a certain age before they are mature enough to produce flowers. Fruit trees, such as apples and pears, may require as long as five or six years before they produce fruit. Gingko trees can take up to 15 years before flowering.
A stressful environment may delay flowering even further.
Plants that have been budded or grafted may have delayed flowering or early flowering, depending on the type of rootstock onto which the plant was grafted.
Plants must be positioned to receive the proper amount of sunlight. Some plants flower best in full sun, others prefer cooler conditions in the shade.
Cold weather may kill buds on partially opened flowers. Hot, dry weather may cause buds to dry up. Various apple cultivars and peaches require exposure to periods of low temperatures.
Nutrition imbalances such as too much nitrogen can cause plants to produce primarily leaves and stems with few flowers.
Pruning plants at the wrong time of the year can be a reason plants fail to bloom. Spring-flowering plants begin setting next year’s flower buds in the late spring.
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)
