by johnnymarin | May 19, 2018 | Bird Deterrent Products
Q: Why don’t pigeons migrate?
A: That’s an interesting question and part of the answer lies in the fact that these birds are not native to the United States. Settlers brought rock pigeons to this continent in the early 1600s. On their home grounds in Europe, North Africa and Asia, they don’t migrate but live and nest on rocky cliffs. They’ve adapted to urban life well, treating tall buildings as their home cliffs. Their strong homing instinct makes them easy to train as homing, racing and messenger birds. Similarly, another nonnative species, the house sparrow, is nonmigratory, as well.
Frozen food
Q: We were surprised to see a male cardinal eating the freeze-dried mealworms we set out for the chickadees. Is this unusual?
A: Birds had to put on a layer of fat each day to fight the cold, and your cardinal figured out that mealworms are an excellent source of energy. Cardinals seem to be fairly adventurous birds that are willing to try new things — maybe this one noticed a chickadee carrying off a mealworm and was intrigued. Once the cardinal tried them, he found the dried worms to be a good way to stoke his inner furnace.
Owls in the ’hood
Q: A pair of great horned owls was hanging around our neighborhood this winter, and we could hear them hooting back and forth. The whole neighborhood is hoping they nest nearby, maybe in a large pine tree, and keep the rabbits under control.
A: Imagine having these large owls nesting right in the neighborhood. I think you and your neighbors can count on two things: Since they’re not nest-builders, the owls will need to adopt a nest built by another species (red-tailed hawk, crows, even squirrels) or a large break in a tree to settle into. And now that it’s spring, the owls will be feeding their voracious owlets, and rabbits may begin to disappear from the neighborhood.
Disappearing act
Q: We have robins nesting around our property from spring into July every year, and then they seem to disappear. Isn’t that too early for them to fly south? Where do they go?
A: Good question, and as you know, robins in our region raise at least two broods during the breeding season. As summer progresses and the second nesting period begins to wrap up, the males gather in parks and natural areas to feed and roost. As young robins become independent, they find these flocks. Females join them once they’ve finished raising their last brood. The robins will spend the final weeks of summer and fall fattening up and preparing for migration (although not all will leave).
Feisty red bird
Q: A male cardinal has been attacking our windows this past fall and winter. I know they will do this during breeding season, but he’s out there every day, attacking numerous windows. What gives with this bird?
A: You’re right, this behavior is not uncommon in the spring, when birds maintaining their territories will attack “competitors” they see reflected in windows. I checked with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and researcher Andrew Farnsworth says that your bird may be a highly dominant male who is trying to keep other cardinals out of his territory. Anything that cuts down on the reflectivity of your windows (cardboard on the outside, curtains closed inside, etc.) may help deter him.
Raptor meal
Q: We just happened to be looking out the window as a bald eagle held a struggling Canada goose down and began to rip off its feathers. The eagle fed for a while and then was joined by another, which we assumed was its mate. Were they pairing up this early?
A: I suspect that the hapless goose probably had an injury or illness that made it unable to escape the eagle’s talons. And at the time of your observation, early February, bald eagles had been building or refurbishing their nests for some weeks. Female bald eagles in our region begin laying eggs as early as mid-February. So the birds you saw were probably a nesting pair, and you may be lucky enough to spot the nest near your home.
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 johnnymarin | Apr 10, 2018 | Bird Deterrent Products
When Colin Hill was eight years old, a friend gave him a pigeon. ‘I brought it home and put it in the aviary with Mum’s budgies, but when my father came home he let it out and it flew straight back to my friend,’ he recalls.
‘When I appeared with it a second time, my father relented and built me a little pigeon loft at the bottom of the garden.’
It wasn’t long before Mr Hill acquired more birds and the obsession he calls ‘the pigeon bug’ bit harder when he realised it was possible to race the birds.
In the past, Mr Hill has owned up to 80 pigeons, but he currently has 28 – it takes roughly three hours a day to clean them out and exercise them.
‘I set up a deckchair in the garden and wait for them to come back. That’s the most exciting part, seeing them arrive and thinking of the distances they’ve covered,’ says Mr Hill, who’s raced pigeons from as far as Thurso on the north coast of Scotland and Pau in southern France.
Having recently been instrumental in setting up the ‘Pigeons at War’ exhibition, currently on display at Bletchley Park, Mr Hill points out that ‘not many people know that messenger pigeons saved hundreds of lives in the Second World War and 32 were awarded Dickin medals for gallantry’.
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 johnnymarin | Mar 26, 2018 | Bird Deterrent Products
LOS ALTOS — From the street, you’d never know what was hidden behind the tall fences and lush foliage of a large suburban Los Altos home. After walking through the garden gate, though, you know that Pandemonium Aviaries comes by its name naturally.
Amadeus, the one-legged Amazon Parrot, sings hello. Olivia and Ferguson, big ostrich-like birds called East African crowned cranes, screech a racket. African Greys, macaws, parakeets, rare doves and fancy pigeons each call out in their own language, above the rhythm of hundreds of fluttering wings.
Michele Raffin — a Stanford Business School graduate, entrepreneur, writer and stay-at-home mom — never intended to become a self-described “crazy bird lady.” Twenty-two years ago, she opened up her backyard to rescued birds. Her mission pivoted toward endangered bird conservation and breeding.
“The birds changed me,” Raffin said. In the business world, she said, there’s much pushing and striving. The birds have shown her that it’s more important to connect and help others. “Who I was as a person became more important than external achievements.”
Now, she’s looking for the next generation of stewards to offer a new home for her flock of nearly 400 birds.
Shortly after, she responded to an ad seeking a home for another white dove, then found herself with a half dozen.It all started with an injured white dove — the type released at weddings — discovered on the side of a road. Raffin wasn’t sure she even liked birds, but she doesn’t want any animal to suffer. Thinking it had been hit by a car, she took it to the vet and visited the bird every day until it succumbed to its wounds, which she learned had been inflicted by a hungry hawk.
Raffin didn’t know the first thing about birds, so she met people who could teach her. She befriended a bird breeder in Sebastopol, who gave her some birds that needed a home. At his Christmas party, she met a whole brood of elite breeders and birders. Later, Raffin went to zoo school in West Virginia to learn what she could about bird husbandry.
Her goal was to take in birds that nobody wanted, find them mates, and provide species-appropriate housing. Housed as pairs or flocks, they’re never isolated. “Who wants to be all alone?” Raffin asks.
The death of a female green-naped pheasant pigeon led to an epiphany: The urgent need to restore populations. The bird’s mate started crying and wouldn’t stop, yet when Raffin tried to find him a new companion, she discovered that there were only 32 birds, worldwide, left in captivity. Tribal feuds and land rights issues make it too difficult to initiate conservation in their native New Guinea.
“I had no idea there were so few left,” she said.
Raffin already had a number of these colorful pigeons given to her by zoos, breeders, agricultural societies, and fish and game conserves. So she decided to use them to build a species “bank” — like a crop seed bank — to ensure that there was enough genetic diversity to support a healthy population. If the species became extinct in the wild, these captive-bred birds could help restore it, she dreamed.
In 2009, Pandemonium Aviaries stopped taking in strays and converted to a nonprofit devoted to conservation-driven breeding. It specializes in six species of endangered birds from New Guinea and the Philippines.
Her project has successfully bred birds even after they’ve been pets, and it has shown that captive birds can raise their own.And those green-naped pheasant pigeons? After solving some challenges, Pandemonium now has the largest flock in the world — four generations, with 14 distinct bloodlines. They thrive under Raffin’s care.
But the achievement hasn’t come easy. It takes four hours a day to feed the birds. Pandemonium depends on major donors like Whole Foods and Costco to provide outdated produce. The food — strawberries, blueberries and papaya — must be sorted and chopped, then doled out with seeds and grains, so each flock gets its ideal diet.
Raffin doesn’t treat them as pets, preferring to retain the birds’ knowledge, culture and integrity. A sign in the aviary reads: “You were wild once; don’t let them tame you.”
Carol Stanley, president of the Avicultural Society of America, said Raffin “has brought awareness of the plight of the birds in the wild to the public.”
“Michele Raffin has put her heart and soul into increasing numbers in the endangered species she works with at Pandemonium Aviaries,” Stanley said. “She is focused, tireless and steadfast in Pandemonium’s mission.”
But Raffin never expected to house the birds this long. She had hoped to reintroduce them back into their native environment in New Guinea but it has been mostly destroyed by mining and agriculture.
It’s not the ideal way to conserve, she knows. In the past, breeders tried to establish colonies in their native habitats. But Raffin’s birds were destined to be pets or zoo animals, which is why she created a U.S.-based conservation. And it worked.
Although New Guinea is not safe for her pigeons now, Raffin is confident the nation will someday discover ecotourism, and native habitats will improve.
Her dream is to someday see them fly in the wild.But, until then, they need to go somewhere, she says — somewhere with lots of room to fly. Her organization is seeking corporate or institutional sponsors to continue the conservation effort, preferably someplace warm like southern California or Puerto Rico, where solar panels and heat lamps wouldn’t be needed.
The Amazon Parrot in her native Puerto Rico offers inspiration: Its numbers plummeted to just 13 in 1975 after decades of forest clearing, but have since rebounded after captive breeding and release.
“People do want to protect animals,” Raffin said, “but the best way to do that is to protect their habitat, the environment.”
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 johnnymarin | Mar 23, 2018 | Bird Deterrent Products
Maned, or Nicobar, pigeon (lat. Caloenas nicobarica) is one of the most beautiful representatives of the family columbidae, and the last survivor in the same kind of Barbary doves. His business card – the sparkling emerald and azure necklace of long feathers that form around the neck something like a multi-colored mantle.
In the most favorable light, his plumage looks under the bright sun, shimmering with all the colors of the rainbow. In the shadows, the colors become more subdued, giving the bird more grey everyday.
Homeland ruffed pigeons – small Islands East of India: from the Nicobar and Andaman to the Solomon Islands and New Guinea.
They live in small flocks or in pairs in the jungle, giving preference to the uninhabited Islands of Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. A solitary life on a remote island, where it had virtually no natural enemies, has left its mark on the appearance of the Barbary dove.
This heavy, weighing up to six hundred grams of poultry, growing almost forty centimeters in length, not very fond of flying. And although flocks of pigeons ruffed can often be seen plying between the Islands in search of food, most of the time they spend on the ground.
Nature has given these birds a powerful, sturdy legs, outstanding experienced walkers. Only danger can make ruffed pigeon to leave familiar ground and seek refuge in the branches of trees. During the day, gathering in flocks of several dozen individuals, ruffed pigeons fly from one island to another, leaving their attention and mainland Southeast Asia in search of seeds, berries, fruits, nuts and insects.
A special device stomach allows them to digest the nuts from the shell is so strong that to break it with a hammer.
Unlike other species, the Nicobar pigeons fly with columns, and to navigate in the pack, they help the white tails serving as a kind of beacon for flying back. With the beginning of the breeding season, ruffed pigeons fly into one of the outlying uninhabited Islands covered with dense tropical vegetation.
Like most doves, they are monogamous and choose one mate for life. But a longtime acquaintance does not exclude courtship and mating dance that can last for several days.
The basis of the wedding ceremony, all kinds of bows with bright tints lifted up the mantle. After the official part, the time of mating – the male selects a suitable nest location a few meters from the ground and collects firewood from which the female builds comfortable and stable nest. Delayed egg hatch both parents take turns every two weeks. Hatched Chicks are weak and helpless, and are under guardianship of adults for the first three months of his life.
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 johnnymarin | Mar 12, 2018 | Bird Deterrent Products
From fledging time, two groups of homing pigeons were protected for most of the time from wind exposure. Instead, they were subjected to artificial odorous winds. One of the two groups was subjected to an odorous wind of olive oil from the S and an odorous wind of a solvents’ mixture (“synthetic turpentine”) from the N. The other group underwent the opposite treatment (odorous wind of olive oil from the N and odorous wind of synthetic turpentine from the S). The birds of the first group, released from two points 21.0 and 26.5 km W of the aviary flew in a northerly direction when olive oil was applied to their nostrils and in a southerly direction when synthetic turpentine was applied. Under the same conditions, the birds of the second group flew in the opposite directions. These results support the olfaction hypothesis of pigeon navigation (Papiet al., 1972).
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 johnnymarin | Mar 7, 2018 | Bird Deterrent Products
SHRAVANABELAGOLA:With just a day to go for the Mahamastakabhisheka, the world media has arrived in the temple town of Shravanabelagola to cover the anointing ceremony which is held once in 12 years. The event will be telecast/streamed live on various channels and websites from February 17 afternoon.
The advent of the media in the recent decades has been a plus in attracting people from all over the world for the veneration and as well as to visit Shravanabelagola as tourists. But before internet was invented and telephones were a rare thing, covering the Mahamastakabhisheka was a challenge for news agencies.
But the reporting team from Madras Mail Eveninger from Chennai took this as a challenge. The reporter G M Edward got trained pigeons to Shravanabelagola six months ahead of veneration ceremony in 1910, and got the pigeons to fly back to his office in Chennai. This was repeated on the day of Mahamastakabhisheka in 1910, and the pigeons left carrying a ‘report’ on the ceremony tied to their legs. The pigeons landed in the office of Chennai Mail and the same evening the news of the Mahamastakabhisheka was published on the front page of the Eveninger.
Historical records preserved in the Jain Mutt of Shravanabelagola throw more light on the incident. “The story of Madras Mail is considered as rare feat in the modern history of the Mahamastakabhisheka,” said Ashok Kumar, a senior writer and head of the cultural committee for the event in Shravanabelagola.
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)
