Pigeon Patrol

Scientists give extinct passenger pigeon a place on the family tree

by Pigeon Patrol | Jul 19, 2021 | Pigeon Predators, Pigeon Spikes, Pigeons, Pigeons in the News, Raccoons, Sparrows, UltraSonic Bird Control

With bits of DNA extracted from century-old museum specimens, researchers have found a place for the extinct Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) in the family tree of pigeons and doves, identifying this unique bird’s closest living avian relatives for the first time. The new analysis, which appears this month in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, reveals that the Passenger Pigeon was most closely related to other North and South American pigeons, and not to the Mourning Dove, as was previously suspected.

“This research demonstrates the remarkable potential of DNA to answer questions about species that no longer populate our planet,” says Dr. Jack Dumbacher, Curator of Ornithology at the California Academy of Sciences. “The Passenger Pigeon has been extinct for almost 100 years, but with the help of museum specimens and DNA analysis, we’re still learning new information about the bird’s evolutionary history and its place on the tree of life.”

Naturalists have long lamented that one of North America’s most spectacular birds was also one of the first to be driven to extinction by humans. In the early 1800s, the Passenger Pigeon was the most abundant bird species on the planet, even though its range was limited to the eastern and central forests of the United States and parts of eastern Canada. Flocks of Passenger Pigeons included millions of birds–they were so vast that they darkened swaths of the sky up to a mile wide.

Passenger Pigeons followed their food, settling down in forests that periodically produced a superabundance of acorns and chestnuts. The pigeons nested in dense colonies covering hundreds of acres. This made them easy targets for human predators. Intensive pigeon hunting in the mid-to-late 19th century disrupted the birds’ ability to breed. These hunting sprees, coupled with habitat destruction, rapidly drove the Passenger Pigeon to extinction. (The last of her kind, a Passenger Pigeon named Martha, died in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914.)

To find the Passenger Pigeon’s place in the evolutionary history of pigeons and doves, Dumbacher and his colleagues compared sequences from two of its mitochondrial genes with those of 78 species of pigeons and doves from around the world. Their analysis revealed a surprising result. Most scientists had assumed that the Passenger Pigeon’s closest relative was the Mourning Dove, a smaller species that shared the Passenger Pigeon’s relatively long tail. However, the DNA comparison showed that the extinct bird’s closest living relative is the Band-Tailed Pigeon (Patagioenas fasciata), a bird that is commonly found in California.

North America’s largest pigeon, the Band-Tailed Pigeon is distinguished not only by its large size but by its distinctive coloring, with yellow legs, a patch of iridescent greenish-bronze feathers on its neck, and a yellow bill with a black tip. Despite its large size, the bird is surprisingly adept at feeding on berries and seeds in the tops of trees. In northern California, it is found in mixed evergreen forests and redwood forests.

The research team was lead by Kevin Johnson, an ornithologist with the Illinois Natural History Survey at the University of Illinois. Additional team members included Jack Dumbacher from the California Academy of Sciences, Dale Clayton from the University of Utah, and Robert Fleischer from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation.

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The pigeon has landed

by Pigeon Patrol | Jul 19, 2021 | Bird Deterrent Products, Doves, history of pigeons, MBCA, pet bird, Pigeon Control

I have written before about the widespread fear of German paratroops in Britain in May and June 1940. Here’s a sterling example from somewhere in London, as described in the Ministry of Information’s Home Intelligence report for 7 June 1940:

A false alarm on a housing estate of parachutists occasioned by a flock of pigeons resulted in about half the tenants rushing to the roof and the rest rushing to the shelters in the basement. In the melee several women fainted. These people are normally calm and collected. They seem to need more advice as to what to do and how to do it on such occasions. ¹

It’s hard to imagine how an ordinary flock of pigeons could be mistaken for descending parachutists. But if there’s one thing I’ve been hammering over and over on this blog, it’s this: fear can make people see danger in the innocuous, whether it’s footpaths, meteors, motor cars, Venus, Venus, weather balloons, or even nothing at all. Having said that, there’s less evidence of widespread misperception of this sort (as opposed to rumours, of which there are many, though with frustratingly few details) in the MOI reports than I might have expected.

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Testing pigeon memory in a change detection task

by Pigeon Patrol | Jul 19, 2021 | Pigeon Predators, Pigeon Spikes, Pigeons, Pigeons in the News, Raccoons

Six pigeons were trained in a change detection task with four colors. They were shown two colored circles on a sample array, followed by a test array with the color of one circle changed. The pigeons learned to choose the changed color and transferred their performance to four unfamiliar colors, suggesting that they had learned a generalized concept of color change. They also transferred performance to test delays several times their 50-msec training delay without prior delay training. The accurate delay performance of several seconds suggests that their change detection was memory based, as opposed to a perceptual attentional capture process. These experiments are the first to show that an animal species (pigeons, in this case) can learn a change detection task identical to ones used to test human memory, thereby providing the possibility of directly comparing short-term memory processing across species.

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Wartime hero pigeon Paddy honoured with fly-past

by Pigeon Patrol | Jul 19, 2021 | Pigeon Patrol's Services, Pigeon Predators, Pigeon Spikes, Pigeons, Pigeons in the News

One of Northern Ireland’s smallest World War II heroes has been honoured.

Paddy, a messenger pigeon who served with the RAF during the Normandy operations in June 1944, was remembered in his home town of Larne on Friday.

PDSA, Britain’s biggest veterinary charity, awarded Paddy the Dickin Medal, dubbed the animals’ “Victoria Cross”, 65 years ago this month.

He received it for being the fastest pigeon to reach England with a coded message from the battle-front beaches of Normandy.

The brave bird brought back vital information about the Allies’ progress, flying 230 miles in four hours 50 minutes – the fastest time of any of the messenger pigeons involved in the mission with an average speed of 56mph.

PDSA spokesman James Puxty said: “Paddy’s contribution to the D-Day operations was a credit to the thousands of messenger pigeons donated by the racing pigeon fraternity for service during World War II.

“He was one of 32 brave, feathered heroes that received the PDSA Dickin Medal for their life-saving flights during the war, and the only recipient from Northern Ireland.”

Local hero

Paddy was born and raised in Carnlough and joined thousands of other racing birds who were trained and drafted to RAF Hurn in Hampshire for military service.

Impressing military brass with his flying in the Air-Sea rescue units he was seconded to the United States First Army for undercover missions during the Normandy Landings.

In the face of poor weather conditions and the threat of German falcons, deployed to intercept Paddy and his comrades, he delivered his message to his home loft at RAF Hurn.

After the war Paddy returned to Carnlough and lived out his days with his owner Captain Andrew Hughes, until his death in 1954.

A memorial to the winged hero was erected in Carnlough harbour.

A feathered fly-past of pigeons formed part of the Paddy Memorial Day event held at Larne Museum and Arts Centre.

Larne Borough Council and the town’s historical society were joined by guests from PDSA and the owner of Paddy’s PDSA Dickin Medal, former Irish Army officer Kevin Spring.

Younger guests were entertained by Gail Seekamp, the children’s author, who read from her book “Paddy the Pigeon”.

The Dickin Medal was introduced in 1943 by Maria Dickin, PDSA’s founder. She wanted to recognise the gallantry and devotion to duty of animals serving with the Armed Forces and Civil Defence units during WWII.

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Pigeon flies past broadband in data speed race

by Pigeon Patrol | Jul 19, 2021 | Animal Deterrent Products, Bird Deterrent Products, Bird Law, Bird Netting, Bird Spikes, Columbidae

Broadband is the most modern of communication means, while carrier pigeons date back to Roman times.

But on Thursday, a race between the two highlighted the low speeds of rural broadband in the UK; the pigeon won.

Ten USB key-laden pigeons were released from a Yorkshire farm at the same time a five-minute video upload was begun.

An hour and a quarter later, the pigeons had reached their destination in Skegness 120km away, while only 24% of a 300MB file had uploaded.

Campaigners say the stunt was being carried out to illustrate that broadband in some parts of the UK is still “not fit for purpose”.

It is not the first time that such a race has taken place. Last year a similar experiment in Durban, South Africa saw Winston the pigeon take two hours to finish a 96km journey. In the same time just 4% of a 4GB file had downloaded.

The pigeons are expected to complete a 120km journey to Skegness in around two hours, but Tref Davies, who is organising the stunt to give publicity to the campaign for better rural broadband, said the broadband connection will take significantly longer to transfer the 300MB file.

“The farm we are using has a connection of around 100 to 200 Kbps (kilobits per second),” Tref Davies, the stunt’s organiser, told BBC News on Thursday morning.

“The kids need to do school work and the farmer has to submit online forms but the connection is not fit for purpose.”

Mr Davies, who is co-founder of business ISP Timico and serves on the board of ISPA (Internet Service Providers’ Association), believes the issue is one that industry and government needs to address.

“This is the UK. It should be well-connected but around a third of homes still can’t get broadband,” he said.

However, BT disputes his figures. A spokesperson said that 99% of homes could now get broadband, leaving an estimated 160,000 lines “where excessive line length means broadband won’t work”.

Speed test

Even among those who can get broadband, rural areas are fighting to get reasonable speeds.

Research commissioned by the BBC last year found that around three million homes in the UK had internet connections of below 2Mbps (megabits per second).

The government has committed to delivering a minimum of 2Mbps to every home by 2015.

However, a recent report by communications watchdog Ofcom found that while these “headline speeds” were on the rise, they are not the relevant measure for broadband customers.

According to the report, “although headline speeds increased by nearly 50% between April 2009 and May 2010, actual speeds delivered increased by just 27%, and averaged just 46% of headline speeds”.

Lloyd Felton, founder of the Rural Broadband Partnership, said the effort to draw attention to rural broadband deprivation and low speeds was laudable.

“It’s true that there are particular areas of the country that suffer much more than others,” Mr Felton told BBC News.

“You’ve got massive deprivation – this long-quoted ‘digital divide’. As we all get more dependent on the internet, that divide gets wider.

“In the end it’s who takes ownership and responsibility for co-ordinating how a parish is going to handle it – what we say is that ‘communities need to help themselves to broadband’.”

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Scientists give extinct passenger pigeon a place on the family tree

The pigeon has landed

Testing pigeon memory in a change detection task

Wartime hero pigeon Paddy honoured with fly-past

Local hero

Pigeon flies past broadband in data speed race

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