by Ryan Ponto | Aug 10, 2017 | Bird Netting
A lane behind a number of popular Swansea city centre restaurants has been labelled an environmental threat because overflowing bins there are claimed to be attracting rats.
The lane in Castle Street is where a large amount of rubbish from several sources is left out for collection in the same place.
Kevin Casey is a resident of Baron’s Court which overlooks it and was extremely concerned by the situation.
“I used to live in Townhill and people say that Townhill is a dump, but it’s heaven compared to this place,” said Mr Casey.
“There is a lane behind a number of shops and restaurants in Castle Square and it is absolutely filthy.
“There is rubbish all over the place and there has even been rats there.
“There’s about three bins that are overflowing and there has been some dead pigeons on the floor for weeks.”
“I know the council come and clean some of it up but they don’t solve the root cause of the problem.
“They need to send enforcement officers and tell people to stop leaving rubbish all over the floor.
“I have complained to the culprits. The Council are soft and just don’t do enough.
“There are another three restaurants going in there in the near future and I dread to think how much worse it is going to be.”
But the owners of various restaurants and businesses in the area said they were unsure as to who was responsible.
“It is absolutely disgusting but we don’t have a lot of rubbish ourselves,” said Anna Redfern, the owner of Cinema & Co.
“It really needs to be cleaned up because it is an environmental risk and there is often a lot of glass on the floor.”
A restaurant owner, who asked not to be named, said: “We don’t know who the culprits are but it is annoying us as well and we have been on to the council.
“We have four bins round the back and we always put our rubbish out properly.
“But as for the main culprit I couldn’t tell you.”
A Swansea Council spokesman said: “Our cleansing team regularly visit this area to ensure that fly-tipped waste is removed, but we will continue to monitor the lane and will contact businesses there to remind them of their waste management responsibilities.
“There have also been a number of incidents recently where illegally parked cars have blocked our waste collection vehicles from accessing the lane to pick up commercial waste, so we’ve alerted our parking services team. Anyone caught illegally parking there runs the risk of a penalty charge notice.”
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 | Aug 9, 2017 | Bird Netting
Pigeons have been ruffling the feathers of taxi drivers by leaving their calling card on a Tayside street.
Grant Donald, 57, said pigeons are roosting on the top of buildings at Monifieth High Street beside the taxi rank — and their mess is being brought into cabs on customers’ shoes.
He said: “Every day when we arrive here there is a terrible mess on the pavement below.
“Basically the pigeons seem to roost on the ledges of local buildings and their droppings leave behind a terrible mess on the pavement below.
“It’s very unhygienic — the pigeon poo is everywhere.
“There’s loads of it and people walking along the pavement can’t help walking through it.
“It’s getting brought into our taxis on the soles of people’s shoes.
“It’s also getting taken on people’s feet into the shops in the area, including several food shops.”
Fellow taxi driver Trevor Rooney said that the problem had been going on for some time.
He said: “I’ve complained to our councillors about it in the past, but it continues to be a huge problem.
“The pigeons sit above the street and their guano drops onto the pavement below.
“The council do try to keep on top of the problem by cleaning the street, but there’s always loads of it left even after they have been along to try to clear it away.
“Some other kind of action needs taken to deal with it.
“I would hope that there is something that Angus Council can do.
“The mess is unsightly and it is very unhygienic.
“I’ve had it in my taxi and it ends up on the soles of shoes and gets dragged into the local shops. Some days it’s worse than others, but it’s a problem that’s not going to go away.”
Shona Gibb, co-owner of the Coffee Pot, said retailers had attempted to tackle the problem in the past.
She said: “Around four years ago several of us decided to take the matter into our own hands. People in the block here clubbed together and we paid for spikes to be put on ledges above the shops to stop the pigeons gathering there. It appears to have worked, although the pigeons just seem to have moved a little further along the street.”
A spokesman for Angus Council said: “Removing food sources is the single most important factor in reducing the number of feral pigeons and gulls in town.
“Means of doing this can include reducing food availability or preventing them from accessing roofs or other areas where they could cause 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 | Aug 8, 2017 | Bird Netting
These days, there are a multitude of different scams, each one designed to part innocent people from their hard-earned cash. From African princes to credit card scanners, pyramid schemes to hard luck online stories, they are as varied as they are many.
However, fraudsters in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province have turned to a more ‘pi-genius’ mode of theft – in the form of the common carrier pigeon.
The latest scam involves strapping fake lottery scratchcards to a pigeon’s leg and then waiting for unsuspecting passers-by to discover it and ‘claim’ their winnings.
One such victim was a woman in the city who was travelling to work on Wednesday. After peeling the card from the pigeon, she was amazed to find that she had won second prize, which just happened to be more than US$41,600.
When the lady dialled the number to claim her winnings, the voice at the other end of the line told her that US$7,400 in tax would have to be paid in order to free up the money. Fortunately, she realised it was a fraud and called the police.
The good news is that while the fraudsters appeared to be ‘winging it’, the pigeon has been released and officers are investigating.
Hopefully this is a scam that will not take off and that the criminals are cooped up for a long time.
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 | Aug 7, 2017 | Bird Netting
One part of Indonesia has experienced an unusual surge in divorce rates, attributing it to the pigeon-racing addiction that has gotten out of hand.
According to an official at the Religious Court in Purbalingga, Central Java province, their office received 90 divorce petitions in July alone, which is a dramatic increase compared to just 13 in June, the Jakarta Post reports.
Most of the divorce petitioners are women, for a number of obvious reasons, especially financial, as men are racing pigeons instead of working and thus helping their wives feed their families.
“Most of the petitioners are wives who have filed divorce petitions for economic reasons because their husbands are too addicted to pigeon racing,” court clerk Nur Aflah.
“In Purbalingga, there are many female workers while most men are unemployed. Most of the husbands end up becoming ‘pilots’. Here, a ‘pilot’ does not fly a plane but races pigeons,” she explained.
Neglect is also another important reason, as husbands seem to be spending way too much quality time with the birds instead with their families. Things are made even worse because pigeon racing is usually accompanied by gambling on the potential winners. This habit has apparently further deteriorated the families’ financial situations.
The court has ordered the local government and clerics to try and reduce the divorce rate in this regency by talking with the men and providing advice. A similar phenomenon has also been reported in Banyumas, Central Java.
“His bird is the first thing he grabs when he wakes up. At around 10 o’clock, he goes out with his friends to play with their pigeons in the fields nearby,” said Sartini, 35, a villager of Bojongsari. Although her husband sometimes gives her money from his winnings in pigeon races, he more often asks her for money for cigarettes.
Interestingly, the last pigeon to return to the coop is declared the winner, not the first.
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 | Aug 6, 2017 | Bird Netting
Previous Earth First articles have dealt with the issue of threatened species, how human activity has contributed to their threatened status and what could be done to save them from extinction.
This week readers are invited to read about three examples of human-bird interactions which should cause us to consider our responsibilities to the other living creatures on our planet.
The passenger pigeon in the mid-19th century was not only the most numerous bird in North America, but probably in the world, with an estimated population of three billion.
Reports were made of a huge flock a mile wide which blocked out the sun for three days.
Demand for their tasty flesh resulted in the passenger pigeon being being hunted indiscriminately, which, added to habitat destruction due to forest clearing, resulted in their downfall.
By 1871 their numbers were down to 136 million.
Despite this dramatic reduction in their population, a leading huntsman stated “shooting and hunting (of these birds) should continue. No exploitation could endanger a creature so abundant”.
So shooting, trapping and the torching of nesting sites continued.
Our huntsman was wrong. By 1900 there were no passenger pigeons left in the wild.
Two other bird species on our own doorstep have been also savaged by the human race, but have so far avoided extinction.
The magpie goose, an Australian native species with a population of approximately three million, has been killed in great numbers for food.
Quotas have been reduced in the face of dwindling numbers and open season now only lasts 11 weeks.
Nevertheless a licenced shooter can take seven geese a day, so if 100 licences are issued, the “take” could theoretically still be as high as 54,000 birds.
The American hunter believed no amount of exploitation could affect a creature so abundant … and they had three billion pigeons, while we have only three million geese. Can we learn from the American experience?
Another example is the short-tailed shearwater, also known as muttonbird because of its tasty flesh and the fact that it provided a staple diet for generations of early white settlers.
Mutton bird oil lit lamps and was used for cooking. Their eggs were a highly-prized delicacy.
Unfortunately, since white settlement millions of muttonbirds have been killed for their eggs, flesh and oil, but unlike the passenger pigeon, they seem to have weathered the slaughter and their numbers remain strong. They are now protected.
Some would say that these examples are from less enlightened times, and that we have developed a better and more ecologically sound relationship with our feathered friends.
Let us hope so, but the past shouldn’t give us cause for too much optimism.
The value of Where Song Began by Tim Low and Viking Books for the statistics in this article is gratefully acknowledged.
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)
