Columbidae Archives - Page 11 of 15 - Pigeon Patrol Canada

Messenger / Homing Pigeons & Their Applications

by Pigeon Patrol | Jul 19, 2021 | Bird Netting, Bird Spikes, Columbidae, Doves, pet bird, Pigeon Control

Homing pigeons are called messenger pigeons when they are used to carry messages. Messages have to be written on light, thin paper (such as cigarette paper) and rolled into a small tube that is attached to the bird’s leg. This is called “pigeon post.”

They have also been used to carry small light-weight packages, in including smuggling drugs into prisons.

RACING

In recent history, they are mainly used for the sport of pigeon racing. They have been bred for racing and can reach speeds between 60 – 80 miles per hour. They can fly up to 80 to 600 miles in one single day.

In 2010, Jose Ledesma’s pigeons finish a personal racing season in Canary Islands with amazing resultss. Two young birds raced 3 times each from African coast in Morocco. Long Distance Races + 1st Regional Price against 1312 pigeons (National race equivalent in Belgium). Jose made an amazing movie of these pigeons flying over mountains, seas and deserts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAGKflxwxwI … Further information can be found on his website: http://www.joseledesma.com/ – J. Ledesma, Tenerife – Canary Islands

THE CARRIER OF MESSAGES

During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, the Prussians had surrounded the city of Paris preventing mail from entering or leaving the city. During the course of the siege, pigeons and mail were regularly taken out of Paris by hot-air balloons. The letters that were sent to Paris were first reduced in size by photography, so that 30,000 letters could be carried on film placed inside a canister. These canisters were attached to pigeons and these birds then flew into Paris. Thirty-five birds carried the same letters, so that if any were shot down, at least one would reach Paris. In Paris, the film was projected on a screen, and the letters were copied by hand and delivered to homes in the city.

These birds have been used to transport short messages across long distances. In fact, historically well-known leaders, such as Julius Caesar and Genghis Khan, have used them to carry important messages across long distances.

One of the world’s best known news agencies, Reuters, started its European business by using 45 trained birds to carry financial news on the continent in 1850. They carried the latest news and stock prices from Aachen in Germany to Brussels in Belgium, travelling the 76 miles in a record-breaking two hours – beating the railway by four hours.

The Chinese used them to deliver mail as long ago as 1000 B.C.

Source

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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’.”

Source

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Pigeon droppings cited in bridge collapse

by Pigeon Patrol | Jul 12, 2021 | Bird Deterrent Products, Bird Law, Bird Netting, Bird Spikes, Columbidae, Doves

ST. PAUL, Minn.–Pounded and strained by heavy traffic and weakened by missing bolts and cracking steel, the failed interstate bridge over the Mississippi River also faced a less obvious enemy: Birds, specifically pigeons.

Inspectors began documenting the build-up of pigeon dung on the span near downtown Minneapolis two decades ago.

Experts say the corrosive guano deposited all over the bridge’s framework helped the steel beams rust faster.

Although investigators have yet to identify the cause of the bridge’s Aug. 1 collapse, which killed at least 13 people and injured about 100, the pigeon problem is one of many factors that dogged the structure.

“There is a coating of pigeon dung on steel with nest and heavy build-up on the inside hollow box sections,” inspectors wrote in a 1987-1989 report.

In 1996, screens were installed over openings in the bridge’s beams to keep pigeons from nesting there, but that didn’t prevent the build-up of droppings elsewhere.

Pigeon droppings contain ammonia and acids, said chemist Neal Langerman, of the American Chemical Society. If the dung isn’t washed away, it dries out and turns into a concentrated salt. When water gets in and combines with the salt and ammonia, it creates small electrochemical reactions that rust the steel underneath.

“Every time you get a little bit of moisture there, you wind up having a little bit of electrochemistry occurring and you wind up with corrosion,” said Langerman. “Over a long term, it might in fact cause structural weaknesses.”

Langerman emphasized that he wasn’t saying absolutely that pigeon dung factored into the collapse of the bridge, but the problem is familiar to bridge inspectors everywhere.

The Colorado Department of Transportation spent so much time cleaning pigeon manure off bridges that it’s researching new ways to keep the birds away from its spans.

Source

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Pigeons at risk of starvation over coronavirus empty streets

by Pigeon Patrol | Jun 28, 2021 | Bird Deterrent Products, Bird Law, Bird Netting, Bird Spikes, Columbidae, Doves

A German animal rights group is warning that pigeons are struggling to find enough food amid the coronavirus lockdown. Empty city centers mean no leftovers for them to feast on and thousands may die.

A German animal rights charity on Tuesday called for a campaign to save pigeons from starvation during the coronavirus pandemic.

The Bonn-based German Animal Welfare Association has warned that while the nationwide lockdown may have cleared the country’s city centers of humans, thousands of pigeons are not self-isolating but are struggling to find enough food.

The birds, which normally feast on tiny leftovers dropped by residents leaving cafes and takeaways, are now going hungry.

Leonie Weltgen, the charity’s specialist for species protection, told the Express newspaper that thousands of pigeons could die unnecessarily.

“Pigeons are very loyal to their local habitat. They will not leave the city centers and will starve to death if they are not provided with food soon,” she told the paper.

Read more: Cologne Cathedral fights pooing pigeosn with birds of prey

“Since it is the breeding season, many young animals will die in their nests if parents can no longer feed them.”

Weltgen has called for feeding points to be set up to ensure the birds can continue to feed on corn, grain or seed. She says animal rights activists and other volunteers could distribute the food.

Weltgen acknowledged that several German cities have trouble controlling the pigeon population but said it was important not to let the birds die painfully.

“The ancestors of the city pigeons were once bred by humans, so we have a special responsibility for these animals.”

Source

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Odors as navigational cues for pigeons

by Pigeon Patrol | Jun 14, 2021 | Bird Spikes, Columbidae, Doves, history of pigeons, MBCA, Pigeon Droppings

Odors are known to be essential for navigation during homeward orientation and migration of some bird species. Yet little was known about their chemical composition. An international team has now identified volatile organic compounds that can be used for olfactory navigation by homing pigeons and proved the existence of suitable regional chemical gradients in the air on a landscape-scale in Tuscany.

Many bird species can find their way home even after being brought to remote or unfamiliar locations. Over 40 years of research on homing pigeons have shown that environmental odors play a crucial role in this process. Yet the chemical identity of these odors has remained a mystery. An international team of scientists from the Max Planck Institutes for Chemistry (Mainz) and of Animal Behavior (Radolfzell), and the Universities of Konstanz, Pisa and Mainz has now identified potential chemical navigational cues that could be used by homing pigeons. Based on the collected data, the researchers were also able to create regional olfactory maps for marine emissions, biogenic compounds, and anthropogenic mixed air and to establish the existence of regional navigable chemical gradients in the air.

During the scientific mission, which took place in 2017 and 2018 in the Italian region of Tuscany, the researchers measured a suite of airborne volatile organic compounds (VOCs) over a period of months at the pigeon’s home aviary. Some of these compounds are emitted by trees, the pine fragrance one smells during a walk in the forest. Other pungent natural emissions come from the sea, while still further VOCs can be emitted from industry. The measurements enabled regional maps to be constructed connecting chemicals with wind direction and speed. Additional measurements were taken in selected regional forest environments and by air using an ultralight plane flying at 180 meters – the average altitude of flying pigeon. The scientists merged the information they had gathered during the field campaigns with GPS tracks obtained from released birds. Thus, they generated multiple regional, horizontal and vertical spatial chemical gradients that can form the basis of an olfactory map.

Olfactory maps based on environmental odors

“Ornithologists from Germany and Italy have shown in more than 40 years of experiments, that pigeons use airborne odors to navigate home,” explains Nora Zannoni, post-doctoral researcher at Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and the study’s first author. Those results have shown that pigeons construct an olfactory map based on the distribution of environmental odors they have perceived over several months at the home aviary. This knowledge is then used as a compass at the point of release to return back home from unfamiliar sites. “By proving the existence of regional chemical gradients in the air around the experimental site we provide support for the olfactory navigation hypothesis and with atmospheric measurements we have found which chemicals can be used for navigation,” adds Zannoni. Some compounds come from forested areas (monoterpenes) or the sea (DMS) while others are emitted from cities and industrial complexes (trimethylbenzene), spots that act like chemical lighthouses.

One of the biggest challenges during this research campaign was its multidisciplinary character. “We had to combine the different approaches of several scientific disciplines – atmospheric and analytical chemistry, ornithology and animal behavior, computer science and statistics,” says Martin Wikelski, managing director at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior.

“It’s amazing really,” adds Jonathan Williams the project leader at the MPIC’s Atmospheric Chemistry Department in Mainz. “We uncovered these chemical gradients using several tones of ultrasensitive scientific equipment, but the same complex odor information can be analyzed and converted to a regional map by a 400-gram pigeon.”

Source

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Pigeon Control: How To Get Rid Of Pigeons

by Pigeon Patrol | Jun 14, 2021 | Bird Spikes, Columbidae, Doves, Pigeon Predators, Pigeon Spikes, Pigeons, Pigeons in the News

Getting rid of pigeons on your own isn’t easy. These pest birds have an inbred homing instinct that makes them feel attached to their established roosting and nesting sites. Plus, mating pairs can hatch as many as four broods a year, so a small pigeon problem can quickly turn into a disaster. Pigeons will resort to laying eggs on bare surfaces if need be, so getting rid of pigeons isn’t as simple as removing their nests. Fortunately, Bird Barrier offers a number of high-quality pigeon control products that can effectively resolve any type of pigeon problem.

Problems Caused by Pigeons Sitting and Nesting

Pigeons are the most common type of pest bird in North America and they cause a variety of problems at all kinds of buildings, from airports to manufacturing facilities to power plants and the rooftops of stores, offices, and homes. Because pigeon droppings contain uric acid, which is highly corrosive, pigeons can cause a great deal of damage in a short amount of time. Feral pigeons are responsible for untold millions of dollars of damage each year in urban areas. Here are a few of the other most common pigeon roosting problems (and reasons why people need effective pigeon deterrents):

Pigeons (and pigeon waste) can hurt the image of a business or commercial enterprise as they leave a bad impression
Collected debris from roosting pigeon flocks can cause water damage by blocking up gutters and drains
Roosting pigeons often cause extensive damage to air conditioning units and other rooftop machinery
Droppings create hazardous surfaces that lead to slip and fall liability
Bacteria, fungal agents, and ectoparasites found in pigeon droppings can pose a health risk.

Tell us about your pigeon problem and we’ll point you to the solutions you need.

Pigeon Control Solutions: Pigeon Spikes, Netting, Birth Control and More

Because pigeon prevention can be easier than pigeon removal, we at Bird Barrier always recommend proactive use of deterrent products that will cause these birds to roost elsewhere, so their homing instinct isn’t bringing them back to your property!

If you already have a flock of pigeons on your property, the first line of defense, as with all pest birds, is removing all sources of food and water from the site. However, you will need to take additional steps to control an established pigeon problem. Bird Barrier offers a number of solutions to deter and repel pigeons, from pigeon spikes to exclusion netting to birth control and beyond. With the right pigeon control products, you can solve any pigeon problem for good.

How to Select the Right Pigeon Deterrents For Any Situation

The most effective approaches to pigeon control and prevention include:

Exclusion Netting
Electric Shock
Spikes, Optical Gel, Coil
Pigeon Reproductive Control
Audio, Visual, and Taste Deterrents

To determine how to best solve your specific pigeon problem, we must first know the answer to two questions:

1. What is the bird pressure at the site?

Heavy: Pigeons are nesting, extremely committed to the site
Medium: Pigeons are eating nearby, really like this site
Light: Pigeons are hanging out here from time to time, not really committed

2. What structures are the pigeons sitting on?

Roof peak
Narrow ledge
Wide ledge
Pipe
Flat surface
Signs
Protected nook
Underside of loading dock roof, on pipes and beams

How to Install and Use Pigeon Control Products and Systems

Our library of videos will help you learn how to install our pigeon control products.

A very large manufacturing facility or airport will have very different pigeon problems than a small business or home. Give us a call or email. We’ll provide customized support on how to plan, order, and install a bird control system designed for your pigeon problems.

Pigeon Identification and Behavior

Being able to identify feral pigeons and understanding their behavior can help you to choose the right pigeon deterrent.

Identifying Pigeons

The feral pigeon is the number one urban pest bird. Large numbers exist in every city across the country. Not a native bird, feral pigeons are descendants of domestic homing pigeons brought over from Europe and released here in the 1600s. They were domesticated from the wild rock doves from the sea cliffs of Europe by the Romans over 2,000 years ago. Several traits have allowed them to dominate the urban landscape. Because of their history, pigeons are not afraid of people; they roost and nest readily in manmade structures and they have a diverse diet.

The standard pigeon has a short neck with a small head. Their short legs with the level front and hind toes allow them to perch on branches as well as walk on flat surfaces.

The feral pigeon is generally blue-gray with a white rump; has iridescent feathers on head and neck; two broad black bars across each wing and a broad dark band across the end of the tail. They also can display white, brown, or gray plumage.

Info on Pigeon Nesting and Breeding Patterns and Behavior

Pigeon Nesting

Nest building is very simple and often consists of a few stiff twigs. The male will pick the site. They prefer small flat areas away from the ground. Look for nests along building ledges, bridge supports, air conditioning units, window sills, and the like. In crowded flocks, pigeons will even forgo nest building and lay eggs directly on a protected ledge.

Pigeon Breeding

Pigeon are monogamous and a mating pair will typically have three or four broods a year. The female will usually lay two or sometimes three eggs at a time. The eggs are a solid bright white color. The eggs take roughly 18 days to hatch and then another 35 days before the fledglings leave the nest.

Pigeon Cycles

Pigeons are not migratory. Their natural instinct is to stay near their birth site. This trait gives the pigeon a very determined personality when it comes to roosting at a particular site, much to the dismay of the inexperienced pest control technician. The daily cycle of a pigeon is to roost at night, feed in the morning, and loaf in the afternoon. The seasonal cycle begins with courtship in the early winter, then nest building in late winter and breeding in the spring. However, in warm climates, breeding will occur year round. Pigeons molt once a year in late summer.

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Next Entries »

Messenger / Homing Pigeons & Their Applications

Pigeon flies past broadband in data speed race

Pigeon droppings cited in bridge collapse

Pigeons at risk of starvation over coronavirus empty streets

Odors as navigational cues for pigeons

Olfactory maps based on environmental odors

Pigeon Control: How To Get Rid Of Pigeons

Problems Caused by Pigeons Sitting and Nesting

Pigeon Control Solutions: Pigeon Spikes, Netting, Birth Control and More

How to Select the Right Pigeon Deterrents For Any Situation

1. What is the bird pressure at the site?

2. What structures are the pigeons sitting on?

How to Install and Use Pigeon Control Products and Systems

Pigeon Identification and Behavior

Identifying Pigeons

Info on Pigeon Nesting and Breeding Patterns and Behavior

Pigeon Nesting

Pigeon Breeding

Pigeon Cycles

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