MOSUL, Iraq – For the first time in over two years, flocks of white and grey pigeons can be seen circling Mosul’s rooftops.
Among the many rules imposed by the Islamic State group when it seized the northern Iraqi city was a ban on breeding or flying the birds, which many Iraqis keep as pets or raise for food. The extremists feared young men practicing the hobby would neglect their religious studies or spy on female neighbors from the rooftops.
Many Mosul residents slaughtered their flocks or confined them to cages, fearing detention or death if they were found out — but 17-year-old Mustafa Othman couldn’t bring himself to do it.
“I couldn’t bear locking them up, my heart wouldn’t allow me to do it,” he said. “They were created to fly.”
Othman would sneak upstairs to feed his birds. He couldn’t clap or yell to fly them in formation, but he left the hatches open so they could come and go.
“Every time he came up here, he risked his life,” said his brother, Afan. “It’s crazy, but he loves them.”
Othman’s father gave him his first birds when he was just 11 years old. He always loved animals, and the pigeons were one of the few pets his family allowed him to have in their small home.
Their rooftop and the balconies betrayed other secrets kept from Islamic State militants, who overran Mosul in the summer of 2014 and imposed their harsh version of Islamic law.
The Othmans threw a blanket over a satellite dish near the pigeon coop, so they could keep up with the news. They hung thick curtains across balconies so that women in the family could water plants and hang laundry without wearing the all-encompassing veils mandated by the extremist group.
When Iraqi forces at last drove IS from the neighborhood earlier this month, Othman celebrated their liberation by releasing his birds into the smoke-filled sky. “All I felt was happiness,” he said.
Today, the birds share the skies with U.S.-led warplanes and Iraqi helicopters, as Iraqi forces work to drive IS out of the remainder of the city. Over the last three months, they have fought their way from the east to the Tigris River, which divides the city in two, but IS still rules western Mosul.
“Sometimes, birds we don’t know land on our roof and they have cigarettes tied to their ankles,” said Younis Fathi, Othman’s uncle. He assumes the birds are used by smugglers to reach IS-ruled neighborhoods, where smoking is forbidden.
The streets below Othman’s rooftop betray the heavy toll the war has taken on the city. Buildings are flattened, walls are pockmarked and bridges destroyed. Just across the street, the bodies of two IS militants have been left to rot in a building destroyed by an airstrike.
But Othman mostly looks upward where the birds wheel overhead in formation.
“I would have died for them,” he says. “But we survived.”
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.
The success of a pollution-fighting pilot program involving pigeons and the Internet of Things has taken flight in a big way. This month, it has expanded to involve humans. The Pigeon Air Patrol recruited about 100 volunteers in London to wear air quality sensors.
But this newest phase never would have happened without the innovative thinking of Pigeon Air Patrol creator Pierre Duquesnoy. Duquesnoy, who works at the London office of marketing and technology agency DigitasLBi, says he came up with the notion of giving pigeons connected air sensors as part of a Twitter contest called #PoweredByTweets, in 2015.
He took part in the contest with his then creative partner, Matt Daniels. „At that point I was learning about air pollution,” he says. „I had read a few papers on the subject, and one said there was a need for more data about the problem in London.”
See also: Tech and the environment
The city has a number of met stations that provide very exact readings, he says. But they are in fixed places, so cannot track air as it moves around. Since people cannot see the dirt and poisons in the air, it is hard to get them to react to it.
„It’s a problem that you can’t see,” says Duquesnoy. „And that means people don’t think about it. I thought: ‘How could we wake people up and at the same time get more data?’” The Pigeon Air Patrol concept woke people up enough to win one of two first place prizes in #PoweredbyTweets. At that point, though, it was just a concept. Duquesnoy was not sure if it would go any further.
Then Duquesnoy took a phone call from a Paris-based startup called Plume Labs, which is working towards cleaner air around the world. Plume had an ultra-light air quality sensor. Would he like to use it for the Pigeon Air Patrol? Duquesnoy leapt at the idea.
But he soon found that hooking pigeons up to a data capture system was easier said than done. For a start, the birds had to be happy flying with sensors on their backs. That meant stripping the already small sensors down to their bare basics, to make them as light as possible. Then tiny jackets had to be built in order to hold the sensors in place. The Pigeon Air Patrol team worked with a racing pigeon owner and a vet to train 10 pigeons to fly with the sensors.
The team released the birds from a number of points around the city, at the height of rush hour every day for a week. The effort paid off.
For the first time, the sensors measured ozone, nitrogen dioxide, and volatile compounds, giving the team important data to show pollution levels right across the city.
The pigeons provided data over the mobile phone network that would have been hard to get any other way, especially since the use of drones is controlled in London. The birds crossed London in about half an hour, a fraction of the time it would have taken to cover the same distance at ground level, and showed pollution levels in the sky above Londoner’s heads.
Perhaps the biggest gain of all, though, was that the Pigeon Air Patrol campaign helped turn air pollution tracking into a top news item. Major news outlets, from The Guardian to CNN, ran the story. As a result, Plume Labs was able to secure people and funding for the next phase of its fight against pollution. This involves having humans wear the sensors, and getting data on an ongoing basis rather than just for a week.
The people phase kicks off in January, and will involve more complex sensors. London’s Imperial College will provide data analysis. In the meantime, the feathered heroes of the Pigeon Air Patrol have gone back to normal life in the loft.
But Internet of Things (IoT) expert Dima Tokar, of MachNation, says there are plenty more networked animals springing up in their place. „In the farming industry, several firms are developing solutions for livestock management,” he says. „In the consumer space, there are a variety of connected solutions for pet tracking.”
Other connected-animal applications include using sensors to track and protect endangered species from poachers and rogue hunters, and even a Dutch company that trains birds of prey to hunt down hostile drones, Tokar says.
„Creating new revenue streams and driving down costs are major benefits that are driving the adoption of the IoT,” he says. „All industries, including those working with animals, are likely to be revolutionized.”
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.
The Border Security Force (BSF) on Monday seized 20 pigeons and arrested a smuggler from West Bengal’s Nadia district, an official said.
Acting on a tip-off, troopers at Vijaypur border outpost in Nadia district staged an ambush and apprehended a person with 20 pigeons in a plastic bag, the official said.
“A person named Samarjit Biswas (21) Awas arrested near the international border at Vijaypur and 20 pigeons in a plastic bag were recovered from him,” R.P.S. Jaiswal, DIG PRO of BSF South Bengal Frontier confirmed.
Stating the pigeons would be handed over to the Zoological garden in Kolkata’s Alipore, the officer said the BSF has recovered several protected wildlife animals including 88 birds of different species, 70 snakes and 74 Indian spotted turtles from the smugglers in the last one year.
In a separate raid, another smuggler was arrested by the BSF personnel from Nadia district’s Mahakhola border with two gold biscuits weighing around 200 grams.
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.
Bath’s Pigeon Man has appeared in court to learn his punishment after continuing to feed pigeons despite a community protection notice ordering him to stop.
Paul Charlton was fined £300 and ordered to pay £300 costs and a victim surcharge £30 after being convicted of three charges of failing to comply with the community order.
The defendant was also handed a criminal behaviour order which will last for two years.
In those two years the pigeon man must not provide food for members of the public to feed the birds – and he must also stop feeding them himself.
If Charlton breaks the CBO by continuing to feed the pigeons, he could face time in prison.
The 42-year-old got his nickname thanks to his act of balancing pigeons on his arms, shoulders and head and giving members of the public grain to feed them in exchange for loose coins.
Despite being hit with a large fine and the threat of prison, Charlton told Magistrates: “I’m going to carry on feeding the pigeons.”
He also said he would not pay his fines and that “I will have to go to prison before I give you a single penny.”
Last year, Charlton was issued with a community protection notice by B&NES Council ordering him to stop feeding the pigeons.
But on May 9, May 10 and September 23 he was seen by council officers to be carrying on his act.
Charlton denied three counts of breaching the notice against him, but was convicted in his absence on November 21.
The defendant appeared for sentencing in Bath Magistrates’ Court on December 19, but the case was adjourned until today (January 23) pending a psychiatric report.
Just 10 days after his first appearance for sentencing, the pigeon man was back outside the Roman Baths, where he told the Bath Chronicle: “This has been my job for the past four years. It is how I pay my rent and my bills. I make a living out of it.
“It’s my occupation whether people want to see it as an occupation or not. It makes people happy.”
The defendant arrived at court today in his performance attire – a feathered hat, blue scarf and long coat.
Barrister Carrie-Ann Evans told the court on behalf of the local authority: “He understood what was required of him to stop feeding the pigeons.
“Despite this he carried on feeding the birds and providing grain.”
She also read out a victim statement from the manager a café by the Roman Baths, who said: “Paul Charlton feeds the pigeons directly outside my premises.
“We have a responsibility to make sure the tables are clean and hygienic.
“Many members of the public are uncomfortable and often find the number of pigeons unacceptable.
“We have had pigeons fly into the shop on multiple occasions. They have landed on our cakes which then have to be thrown away.
“There is an absolutely clear correlation between his presence and the pigeons. There’s an emotional cost of frustration.”
Charlton responded that it was “a bit rich” for the court to go at him about feeding birds and called the legal system “totally corrupt”.
After some deliberation, Magistrates decided to accept the local authority’s application for a CBO against Charlton.
Mr Taylor said: “Mr Charlton there are three offences that have been brought before us.
“And for each of those offences you will be fined £100 – that’s £300 in total.
“You will also pay a victim surcharge of £30 and £300 in contribution to costs.”
Charlton started putting his coat on while receiving his sentence and left the court while magistrate Peter Taylor was still talking.
He exited court with a final “Tata”.
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.
Around 2,500 pigeons preened their feathers and strutted their stuff as their owners competed for ‘bird of the year’.
For the 40th year on the run the British Homing World Show was held at Blackpool’s Winter Gardens, with an estimated 25,000 breeders and fans travelling from across Europe to be at the event.
And the bird that came out on top was presented to adoring fans by breeder John Bell of Ayrshire – who lifted the trophy for the fifth 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.
