by Pigeon Patrol | Sep 8, 2016 | Animal Deterrent Products, Bird Netting
Indian officials are so paranoid about Pakistan that they took a pigeon into custody on suspicion of espionage on Friday.
According to Indian media reports, investigators from the army and the state intelligence in Punjab’s Hoshiarpur district were inspecting the bird which had a text resembling the Urdu language written on its wings.
The bird was handed over to police by a local who spotted the “suspicious text.
“11 digits and some Urdu text were written on its wings which after translation stood for ‘Sunday, Wednesday, and Thursday,” said a police official.
In 2015, Indian authorities had captured what they claimed was a ‘spy’ pigeon from Pakistan.
Police in Chandigarh had claimed that the white pigeon bore markings in Urdu and a seal. The pigeon was taken to a local veterinary hospital for an x-ray but no clues were discovered establishing any links with Pakistan.
According to Indian media, the pigeon was flying in the border area during a meeting between Punjab Police and the Indian Army.
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 Pigeon Patrol | Sep 7, 2016 | Bird Deterrent Products, Bird Netting, Pigeon Spikes
People mostly see pigeons in the park. Some feed them while the others shoo them away. They are sometimes considered as “rats in the air.” But, beware because what you might be reading in the park can also be read by pigeons. As research shows, pigeons can also learn how to read.
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In New Zealand, a team of researchers from the University of Otago, headed by Dr. Damien Scarf gathered 18 pigeons and trained them to identify words from the different string of letters. They introduced the birds to 308 four-letter words randomly mixed along thousands of string of letters, and their goal is to peck on the shown words.
For example, in the experiment, the pigeons come on the screen and need to distinguish words from non-words such as “USRP.” Then, the birds need to identify the word among the non-words through pecking. Meanwhile, among the 18 pigeons, researchers identify four pigeons to be outstanding in their experiment. For the birds, sooner or later built vocabularies with a scope of 26 to 58 words over the 8000 non-words shown in a report by IFL Science.com.
To make sure that the pigeons learn and not memorize the words from the non-words, the experts introduce them to new words which they have never seen before. Thus, the birds still correctly identify it.
As a result, Dr. Scarf shared that, the pigeons comprehends certain pairs of letters such as “TH” and “AL” as it was more often show in the English language. The birds were able to identify words with those letters quickly. He also added that “during training, the pigeons derived some general statistical knowledge about the letter combinations that distinguish words from non-words”
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In line with this, another researcher, from the Otago’s Department of Psychology , Professor Michael Colombo suggested that “we may have to seriously re-think the use of the term ‘bird brain’ as a put-down,” according to Phys.org.com.
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 Pigeon Patrol | Sep 6, 2016 | Bird Deterrent Products, Bird Netting, Pigeon Patrol's Services, Pigeon Spikes
Dear Diary:
I was biking in Riverside Park near the 79th Street Boat Basin, when suddenly a swarm of pigeons formed a thick, fluttery wall, obstructing my view. I swerved and fell hard on the bike path.
Bloody and barely able to move, I looked up toward the pigeons’ likely point of origin and locked eyes with a woman who was tossing out bird seed. Naturally, I started up a conversation.
“Please stop feeding the pigeons,” I said as politely as I could in my stunned state.
“I’m feeding them on the side of the bike path so that they don’t get in the way of the bikers,” she said.
I frowned. “I don’t think that’s actually going to be very helpful.”
She offered a new line of reasoning: “You know, bikers are dangerous on their own. I’ve seen them get into lots of accidents from sheer carelessness.”
“I’m sorry, but that has nothing to do with feeding pigeons,” I said, trying to steer the conversation back on track.
“Pigeons need to eat too!” she said.
I paused for a moment to consider how I might redirect her overflowing empathy.
“I was just in a potentially life-threatening accident, and I may have broken my arm,” I said. “Personally, I value human life more than pigeon life.”
She frowned.
“O.K.,” she said. “I’ll feed them up on the hill so that they’re not so close to the bikers.”
Yes! I thought. I finally got to her.
But as the ambulance arrived moments later, I couldn’t help but think that my small victory would be a fluttering, er, fleeting one.
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 | Sep 5, 2016 | Bird Netting
Mercedes Equips Delivery Van With Robotic Carrier Pigeons
Mercedes-Benz is looking at mounting automated flying drones onto a new line of electric vans as part of a 500 million-euro ($562 million or roughly Rs. 3,732 crores) investment aimed at speeding delivery times for online orders.
The small pilotless aircraft would be part of a suite of on-board systems, including digital sorting equipment, that could cut both costs and delivery times in half for the final portion of a package’s journey, the carmaker said Wednesday at a presentation in Stuttgart, Germany. The two drones (robotic carrier pigeons) can each fly items weighing as much as 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) as far as 10 kilometers (6 miles), enabling service to difficult-to-reach to places.
The concept is among the Daimler unit’s efforts to help corporate customers speed product transport as volumes rise because of the boom in electronic commerce. Deutsche Post’s DHL division and United Parcel Service are also looking at how to ensure items are delivered on the first attempt even when the consumer isn’t home. Online retailers such as Amazon.com are experimenting with handling deliveries themselves.
“The business in our sector is changing dramatically, so we’re looking far beyond our core product and getting into new markets,” Volker Mornhinweg, who heads Mercedes’s vans business, said in a statement. “We want to make vans an intelligent, connected data center on wheels.”
The investments will be spaced over five years. Mercedes didn’t outline a time frame for when the drones or technologies like a robotic arm for sorting parcels inside the van might become commercially available.
Many industries are researching potential uses of drones beyond dropping the latest Internet shopping on people’s doorsteps, such as railroad-track inspections, spotting criminals on the run or organ delivery for hospitals, though a regulatory structure for the aircraft is still in its infancy.
“The growth in transportation means we have to change our processes accordingly,” said Stefan Maurer, head of Mercedes’s future transport systems for vans.
The drones on the Mercedes concept are fixed to the van’s roof above a hatch that opens to the vehicle’s inside. Made of carbon fiber and aluminum, the mini-copters with four propellers measure about 55 centimeters (22 inches) across. The aircraft were developed jointly with Swiss partner Matternet, and similar models have already helped carry medicine to people in difficult terrain, Mercedes said.
When a van reaches the area where the drone is supposed to take off, a robotic arm in the cargo area moves parcels inside a special box to the hatch, which opens automatically for the drone to pick up the item. Using GPS, the aircraft flies to a landing spot set by the customer, Mercedes said.
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 | Sep 4, 2016 | Bird Netting
DOWNTOWN — Racing pigeons, valuable birds trained to fly more than 1,000 miles in a clip to win huge prizes, are among the thousands of birds killed each year as they pass through Chicago.
Blame it on the skyscrapers.
The latest death came this week when a racing pigeon, identified by the band around one of its legs, apparently crashed into a building on Wacker Drive.
Chicago Bird Collision Monitors, whose members pick up dead or nearly dead birds that have crashed into buildings, receives hundreds of calls each year about the racing birds.
The birds, unlike regular city pigeons, are banded around their legs and can travel more than 1,000 miles during events. The racing birds, raised in coops and fed by humans, sometimes get lost during races or meet an unfortunate fate when they slam beak-first into a city skyscraper.
Annette Prince, director of the collision monitors, said she’s recently fielded calls from people who have found dead, banded racing pigeons in Old Irving Park, Logan Square and Downtown. That includes the bird discovered dead Tuesday on Upper Wacker between State and Wabash.
“People are racing these everywhere,” Prince said. “They’re trained to come home, but they don’t always make it home. … These birds don’t find food or recognize predators like city pigeons do. If they get lost, they won’t make it. They’ll either starve or get injured.”
Pigeon racing is banned in Chicago, but that doesn’t mean the birds don’t fly through the city during competitions — either as part of the route or by getting lost. One Oak Park-based pigeon last year was blown off course by a storm but nursed back to health by an Indiana family.
Deone Roberts, sport development manager for the American Racing Pigeon Union, said “homing pigeons are always expected home … however, in dealing with nature, there are no finite certainties.”
“There are predators that have an eye for smaller animals such as other birds, small dogs, maybe rodents and other such animals,” Roberts said.
Roberts said her group has more than 600 clubs and 10,000 members (called fanciers) in the United States alone, and there are several other pigeon racing organizations across the country and worldwide. Roberts said the birds are “geniuses” in their own right, noting they can pick up sound from as far as a state away.
“They are amazing creatures,” she said. “To experience them in the racing hobby is to delve into nature unlike the typical activities of man.”
Racing pigeons are identified by bands with letters and numbers on their feet. The band on the pigeon found dead Downtown on Tuesday was not fully visible, but part of it read “AU 2016.” AU is the national organization that registered the bird, in this case the American Racing Pigeon Union; 2016 is the year the bird was hatched and banded/registered. Other information included on bands are letters representing the pigeon club the bird is registered to and numbers to represent each pigeon from that club.
Racing pigeons is a sport that dates to 1200 B.C., according to the Royal Pigeon Racing Association. The birds are descendants of rock doves, which were used by the Romans as messengers to fly more than hundreds of miles. In the 1800s, an official pigeon postal service was used in France, and the birds were used as messengers in World Wars I and II.
There are many theories about why the birds can remember long flights home,including a 10-year study from Oxford University that concluded pigeons use roads to navigate and can change directions at junctions. Other studies say the birds can remember visual clues like landmarks.
“These are amazing birds. They’re underappreciated. They’re smart. They’re great flyers. They learn things,” Prince said.
The hobby can be expensive. One Chinese buyer paid more than $300,000 for a racing pigeon in 2012. The top birds can win huge prizes, too — up to six-figure payouts. Some tournaments cost thousands of dollars to enter.
The Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center estimates 365 million to 988 million birds are killed in collisions in the United States each year. In the area Prince and her network of 100 volunteers can cover, about 5,000 birds per year are picked up.
Hundreds of bird species migrate through Chicago every year, especially during thespring and late summer/early fall.
Prince would rather focus on the birds passing through the city because of migrations rather than a race.
“Hours and hours have to be spent answering hundreds of calls and trying to rescue these unfortunate birds,” she said.
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)
