by Pigeon Patrol | May 3, 2021 | history of pigeons, Pigeon Control, Pigeon Droppings, Pigeon Patrol's Services, Pigeons
There it was, that darned noise again.
Nobody could possibly be happy cleaning pigeon droppings. Yet Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson were being forced to do it. As good scientists they simply could not avoid it, since they had to discount the role of this “white dielectric substance” in the noise that was plaguing their equipment. When they finished with the cleaning and dispatched the pigeons by mail to a faraway place, the noise still did not disappear. And it seemed to come from all directions. The implications of this annoying constant background hum, corresponding to a temperature of only 3 degrees above absolute zero, signified one of the most momentous discoveries in twentieth-century physics, notable even among Nobel Prize-winning discoveries.
Arno Penzias, the German-born physicist who fled from the Nazis with his family in 1939, is at Lindau this year along with his co-recipient Robert Wilson. There are two other physics Nobel laureates this year at Lindau- George Smoot and John Mather. The four men whose work is separated by forty years share a very close connection. Smoot and Mather’s work put the capstone on that of Penzias and Wilson’s. In a way the work of these gentlemen eclipses the work of all Nobel laureates since it deals with something that happened long before any of the others made their discoveries. In fact, it was so long before that it dealt with the beginning of time itself…or so we think. Penzias and Wilson discovered what is called the”cosmic microwave background radiation”, which is nothing less than the notes from the harp that the universe played when it fired up. Just like you can guess the identity of the great conductor Herbert von Karajan from listening to the thundering notes of his performance of Beethoven’s 9th symphony, so can you discern the violent birth throes of the universe from the noise this cosmic cataclysm left behind.
It was noise, quite literally. And it was bothering Penzias and Wilson when they were working on a radio antenna inthe fall of 1964 in a small town called Holmdel in New Jersey. There, Bell Laboratories which owned the instrument had turned it over to Penzias and Wilson for pure science. That was a different age, when companies like BellLabs gave free rein to researchers to pursue their own ideas; in the ensuing decades the institution would produce a steady stream of Nobel laureates,an astonishing feat for an industrial laboratory. But at that point the lab was just getting warmed up.
The antenna was about twenty feet wide and shaped like a horn to minimize reception from the sides. It was originally designed to detect transmitted signals from Echo, the first communications satellite. But now Penzias and Wilson were using it to detect radio waves from celestial bodies. The receiver was tuned to detect only frequencies in the microwave region of the spectrum.
But there it was, that darned noise again. No matter what they did to the antenna, it was steadily humming in the background, like one of those overenthusiastic teenagers deliberately trying to annoy you. Like good scientists, Penzias and Wilson started to eliminate all possible sources of noise they could find. Radio noise could arise from any number of sources. It could come from the ground which was warmed up by the sun. It could arise from the earth’s atmosphere, or from the gas between the stars, or from the emission of molecules in outer space. Noise could be generated by waves bouncing off some of the sharp edges in their antenna. Oneby one the scientists investigated and discounted all these sources. They covered up the sharp edges with aluminum tape. They turned the antenna towards and away from major cities like New York. And of course, finally in desperation, they cleaned up waste from a family of pigeons that was roosting in a small part of the antenna horn. They dispatched these pigeons to the main offices of Bell Labs (like good homing pigeons the birds promptly showed up two days later). The noise still would not disappear. Like constant mumbling from disgruntled voters at a campaign speech, it simply would not die.
The two men were accomplished scientists and they did not doubt their own skills. Penzias had worked with Isidor Rabi (whom we met earlier) and Charles Townes, the inventor of the maser, at Columbia University. Wilson had gotten his PhD. at Caltech a few years ago. Their temperaments also complemented each other. Penzias was a big picture man, trying to tie together facts in an overarching thread. Wilson was much more detail-oriented and could patiently tinker with equipment until he got it right. Together the scientists were confident in their analysis and believed they had discarded all sources of noise. Yet it remained. For the moment they decided to take a break.
It was December of that year, and Penzias was coming back on an airplane from a conference. The “noise problem” was on his mind and he mentioned it to a fellow astronomer named Bernie Burke. A short time later, Burke called Penzias back with some interesting news. He had just seen a manuscript written by a physicist named Jim Peebles at Princeton University along with his supervisor Robert Dicke. The manuscript predicted that because of the intense heat during the birth of the universe, there should exist today a remnant of the Big Bang, which would manifest itself uniformly as steady background radiation. Because of the time elapsed since the Big Bang, the temperature of this radiation should be no more than afew degrees kelvin above absolute zero.
Oh yes, and it should be detectable as constant hiss in a good radio telescope.
I leave it to the students at this year’s Lindau meeting to personally ask Penzias what he must have felt when he heard about the Peebles-Dicke paper from Burke. But it surely must have sent his heart racing. Intrigued, Penzias called Dicke. Dicke’s heart must have raced even more because just then he had been trying to construct his own antenna to detect the cosmic noise that his paper predicted. Dicke promptly got into his car and drove the thirty miles or so from Princeton to check out Penzias and Wilson’s data. When he confirmed its authenticity, he must have felt an intense mix of excitement, amazement and chagrin. He had narrowly missed making the discovery that won Penzias and Wilson the Nobel Prize for physics in 1978.
Penzias and Wilson in front of the Holmdel radio antenna
Sounds from a faraway time
The evolution of the idea of the cosmic microwave background is almost a textbook study of ignorance and triumph, and how experimentalists and theoreticians can sometimes unintentionally delay progress by failing to communicate with one another. The Big Bang theory was proposed by Georges Lemaître, a Belgian Roman Catholic priest, although interestingly the term ‘Big Bang’ was pejoratively coined by a detractor of the theory, Fred Hoyle. Later the theory was developed by the brilliant and colorful Russian physicist, scotch lover and popular science writer George Gamow and his colleagues, Ralph Alpher and Robert Herman. After World War 2, Gamow’s colleagues Alpher and Herman predicted the cosmic microwave background. This was based on their ideas about nucleosynthesis- the formation of elements in the universe.
Robert Herman (left) and Ralph Alpher. In the middle is George Gamow, materializing out of a bottle of ‘Ylem’, the primordial soup from which our universe originated.
Big Bang Theory cosmology is based on Einstein’s theory of gravitation. In 1929 Edwin Hubble had already made the groundbreaking discovery that the universe seemed to be expanding. This meant that at some point back in time it must have been infinitely compressed. Compression means high temperature, in this case, a very high temperature of 10 billion degrees when the universe was only one second old. At this temperature matter as we know it ceases to exist, and the universe consists of a thick boiling broth of subatomic particles and electromagnetic radiation in the form of very high frequency gamma rays. Electromagnetic radiation is emitted and absorbed by all electrically charged particles. When there are a sufficient number of particles, this radiation manifests itself as black-body radiation. Black-body radiation can be defined by a certain value of energy at a given frequency range and thus can be completely fixed by the temperature. At ten billion degrees, there would be massive creation of electrons and positrons from the energy of other moving particles. But after one second, Big Bang theory physics predicts that if the number of photons is larger than the number of matter particles, then the initial black-body radiation will continue to be black-body radiation. The only change in this radiation is that it cools with the expansion of the universe. About 400,000 years after the beginning, an epochal event happened. Stable atoms of hydrogen began to form, and the radiation was ‘decoupled’ from the matter and was left free to wander on its own. Thus, even today, almost fifteen billion years later, space should be filled with black-body radiation left over from the Big Bang. Its temperature should be roughly 3 K.
This at least was what Alpher and Gamow conjectured. But they were not the first ones to think about it. In fact the microwave background had been indirectly observed in the late 1930s and early 40s by American astronomers. These astronomers saw faint signs of light absorption by certain molecules in outer space and concluded that the molecules were somehow being ‘pumped up’ with energy that came from a temperature of 2.3 K. Unfortunately, there was yet no theoretical framework in which this observation could fit, and it became part of the countless number of other details in astronomy. Now, when Gamow, Alpher and Herman formed their ideas, they did not know about this experimental work. Most incredibly, a couple of years later, two Russian physicists published a paper saying that not only should this background exist, but that the best detecting instrument for it would be the radio antenna in Holmdel, New Jersey! As if to cap this circus of ignorance and lack of communication, Penzias, Wilson and Dicke had all not heard of these earlier predictions; somehow unlike the cosmic background, the signal had been lost in the noise. One can only wonder how things would be if this drama were to be enacted today, in the era of the Internet and Email.
Dicke in fact thought he was the first one proposing the cosmic microwave background. His reasoning was fascinating and harkened back to analogies in Hindu and Buddhist philosophies about the creation of the universe. Dicke was a proponent of the ‘oscillating universe’ which posits that the universe has no end or beginning but cycles through time. According to his logic, if the heavy elements had been created through nucleosynthesis, they could not keep on increasing in proportion indefinitely; after all, the observed universe is largely contained of hydrogen and helium and not heavy elements. Thus, at some point the heavy elements would have to be annihilated to make room for the next batch of matter. This annihilation would produce radiation, and it’s this radiation that would manifest itself as the cosmic background. Dicke’s oscillating universe tome is a perfect example of a scientific ‘model’, a conceptual construction that retains some simple aspects of the universe but which can neatly explain a key observation. As with models, Dicke’s prediction of the microwave background does not uniquely depend on the oscillating universe model. In fact it arises perfectly from the modern day theory of the Big Bang.
Dicke was supremely competent for this kind of theorizing. Today he is the underappreciated man in the cosmic microwave background story. Dicke was a genius at electronic devices, working on important radar components at the famous Radiation Laboratory at MIT during the war. In the early 60s, he did a highly accurate measurement proving the equivalence of inertial mass and gravitational mass, a foundational concept of Einstein’s relativity. Dicke’s thirst was not slaked just by doing experiments. He also provided the first quantum theory of the laser. By the mid 60s Dicke was a legend, the Enrico Fermi of his time, highly accomplished in both theory and experiment. As it turned out though, even Dicke could not escape the vagaries of space and time. Robert Henry Dicke died in 1997.
Robert Henry Dicke (1916-1997)
In 1989, a satellite called COBE was launched by NASA that would measure Penzias and Wilson’s microwave background to unprecedented accuracy. Two of the principal scientists in this endeavor were George Smoot and John Mather who are at Lindau this year. The satellite’s measurements of the black body radiation curve were so remarkably accurate that the error bars in the curve which typically extend on top and bottom were almost lost in the signal.
The COBE satellite black-body radiation curve with the data points (red) plotted on the theoretical spectrum (black). The two match up almost perfectly
The COBE satellite followed by the Wilkinson Probe satellite launched in 2001 put the icing on the microwave background cake. The Big Bang theory has attained the status of one of our most highly refined and validated theories, thanks to the work of Smoot, Penzias, Wilson, Mather and many others. It seems only wonderfully fitting that Penzias, Wilson, Smoot and Mather are all attending this year’s meeting, coming full circle and neatly tying together the ends of a story spread over 40 years, which in turn tells the story of moments in time billions of years ago.
George Smoot and John Mather (Physics, 2006)
The story of the microwave background is an exercise in scientific history, demonstrating how ideas can, and sometimes do not, build on top of each other. It would have been interesting to see how the same story would have played out in today’s age, when the barriers to communication have been all but shattered by the availability of hundreds of years of research that can be accessed through the click of a mouse. Scientific ideas are hostage to the same qualities of human fallibility, determination, creativity, and of course, the uncertainties of space and time, as are other aspects of the human experiment. All we can do is persevere.
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 Bird Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products ten years in a row.
Contact us at 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD, (604) 585-9279 or visit our website at www.pigeonpatrol.ca
Pigeon/Pigeon Patrol / Pigeons Roosting / Vancouver Pigeon Control /Bird Spikes / Bird Control / Bird Deterrent / Pigeon Deterrent? Surrey Pigeon Control / Pest /Seagull deterrent / Vancouver Pigeon Blog / Birds Inside Home / Pigeons in the cities / Ice Pigeons/ What to do about pigeons/ sparrows , Damage by Sparrows, How To Keep Raccoons Away, Why Are Raccoons Considered Pests/ De-fence / Pigeon Nesting/ Bird Droppings / Pigeon Dropping/ woodpecker control/ Professional Bird Control Company/ Keep The Birds Away/ Birds/rats/ seagull/pigeon/woodpecker/ dove/sparrow/pidgeon control/pidgeon problem/ pidgeon control/flying rats/ pigeon Problems/ bird netting/bird gel/bird spray/bird nails/ bird guard
by Pigeon Patrol | May 3, 2021 | Bird Law, Bird Spikes, Doves, Pigeon Control, Pigeon Patrol's Services
Officials believe an inmate at a jail in Costa Rica trained a feathered friend to smuggle cocaine and cannabis in a pouch.
A pigeon smuggling cocaine and cannabis into a prison in Costa Rica has been caught by guards.
The bird was seen landing in the central concourse of the medium security La Reforma jail, in San Rafael de Alajuela, where it was taken into custody.
The drugs were contained in a small zipped up pouch strapped to the animals chest.
About 14g of cocaine and at least the same amount of cannabis were inside wrapped in plastic.
Costa Rica’s Ministry of Justice and Peace released the animal’s mugshot under the headline caption “narcopaloma”, meaning “drugs dove”, and listing the date of the animals detention.
Realidad7 reported the drugs had a street value of around £180 ($281).
Prison officials said they believe the drugs were destined for use by an inmate who may have trained the pigeon to act as a courier.
Director of the Penitentiary Police, Paul Bertozzi, told Spanish news agency Efe that it showed the need to be vigilant.
“Drug traffickers are using unimaginable ways to achieve their macabre atrocities,” he said.
“This (use of a pigeon) is nothing new. In the past (the traffickers) have used cats and dogs to pass drugs to prisoners. Now it seems they are using pigeons to carry in their wares from the outside.”
Although it is the first time the Costa Rican authorities said they had come across the practice, it has previously been reported in Argentina in 2013 and Colombia in 2011.
The pigeon was later taken to a zoo where it was expected to remain behind the bars of a cage.
Biologist Oscar Ramirez told Realidad7 that pigeons can be trained to travel several miles with small loads.
During the Second World War, more than 250,000 homing pigeons were used to transport messages between front line Allied troops and top brass, according to the Royal Pigeon Racing Association.
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 Bird Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products ten years in a row.
Contact us at 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD, (604) 585-9279 or visit our website at www.pigeonpatrol.ca
Pigeon/Pigeon Patrol / Pigeons Roosting / Vancouver Pigeon Control /Bird Spikes / Bird Control / Bird Deterrent / Pigeon Deterrent? Surrey Pigeon Control / Pest /Seagull deterrent / Vancouver Pigeon Blog / Birds Inside Home / Pigeons in the cities / Ice Pigeons/ What to do about pigeons/ sparrows , Damage by Sparrows, How To Keep Raccoons Away, Why Are Raccoons Considered Pests/ De-fence / Pigeon Nesting/ Bird Droppings / Pigeon Dropping/ woodpecker control/ Professional Bird Control Company/ Keep The Birds Away/ Birds/rats/ seagull/pigeon/woodpecker/ dove/sparrow/pidgeon control/pidgeon problem/ pidgeon control/flying rats/ pigeon Problems/ bird netting/bird gel/bird spray/bird nails/ bird guard
by Pigeon Patrol | Apr 26, 2021 | Bird Law, Pigeon Control, Pigeon Patrol's Services, Pigeon Predators
Commonly known as Pigeons, Rock Pigeons are often considered a nuisance by some city officials and some farm businesses.
In cities they congregate in large flocks and can create messes with their droppings.
On farms, eating grains and possible harm to livestock through bacteria and viruses are concerns about these birds.
Many pigeon deterents are available online to prevent nesting in areas they’re not wanted.
Introduced into North America from Europe in the 1600’s, these birds have been associated with humans for thousands of years.
Rock Doves are thought to have been the first domesticated bird, raised for meat as far back as the time of the ancient Egyptians.
Description
Pigeons have different colors due to breeding by humans. They are the descendants of the wild Rock Dove of Europe.
About 13 inches in length with a dark gray head, iridescent neck, with a light gray back and 2 dark wing bars.
Mating – Breeding Habits
Like Mourning Doves, pairs are monogamous, often breeding in consecutive seasons for as long as both birds of a pair live.
Most will attempt to raise several broods each year. Sometimes as many as four or five broods will be raised in a single year.
The breeding season of these birds can be all year provided climate conditions allow. There seems to be some slowing down during the winter months.
Nesting Habits
The nesting habits of Pigeons are a bit unique. The male chooses a site in view of the female, selecting one stick and bringing it back, lays it in front of his mate.
The female who stays at the nesting site accepts the sticks the male brings to her and places them underneath her.
The nest of these birds can be found along building ledges, rafters, beams, under bridges or inside barns.
The nest is saucer-like in shape and made of stems and leaves.
The female may sit on the nest a day or two before the first egg is laid. Generally 2 white eggs are laid.
Both the male and female will incubate but the female will spend the most time on the eggs since she will be on the nest from mid-afternoon to mid-morning.
Incubation last for about 18 days. When the eggs hatch the young are covered in yellow down.
Young pigeons in the nest are referred to as “squabs”
Initially, the squabs are fed what is referred to as crop milk. This is a regurgitated thick liquid food that comes from the parents crops.
At about 10 days the squabs are fed increasing amounts of the food types that adults eat and are no longer dependent on crop milk.
The young will double in size in a day and a half. Making them one of the fastest growing vertebrate in the world.
Within 2 weeks the flight feathers begin to emerge and by week 3 the squabs are covered in feathers.
The tail and full feathering is completed by the 28th day and their weight is that of an adult.
The young will now leave the nest and the male will teach them what they need to know to survive.
This is 10 – 15 days longer than most of our backyard birds.
The female will begin a new clutch and this cycle will repeat about every 30 days when weather cooperates.
Do Pigeons Reuse the Same Nest
It’s more accurate to say that the same nest site is used as the second and subsequent nest are built on top of the previous nest.
Nest that are several years old can measure out to be as much as 7 inches high and 19 inches wide.
Feeding Habits – What Pigeons Eat
Rock Pigeons feed on the ground. To prevent seed spoilage and to keep the birds healthy a ground feeder is recommended for all ground feeding birds.
The best types of food to offer these birds are properly mixed seeds specifically made for doves and pigeons.
For more information on seeds and photos of each, please see our
Bird Seed Page.Predators
The primary preadators of pigeons include: man, peregrin falcon, and cats. Nest predators include oppossums, raccoons, crows and owls. Hawks will capture perching birds.
Are Pigeons Smart Birds?
According to Professor Richard J. Herrnstein at the Harvard Psychological Laboratories they are. Pigeons were smart enough to learn all the letters of the english alphabet.
In another study, Pigeons were able to recognize themselves in a mirror. This makes them one of six species and the only non-mammal to be able to do so.
So yes, Pigeons are a pretty smart bird.
What is the Lifespan of Pigeons?
Pigeons may live 3 – 6 years in the wild with the average being 3 – 4 years. In captivity they have lived as long as 15 years depending on the care given to the bird.
Pigeons in History
During the world wars, Homing Pigeons were trained to return to a loft in the UK.
Troops then took the pigeons with them and used them to send messages when radio and written communication were being intercepted.
Pigeon Fun Facts
Pigeons have the ability to see about 26 miles.
When fully feather, adult pigeons have around 10,000 feathers.
There are approximately 400 million pigeons in the world.
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 Bird Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products ten years in a row.
Contact us at 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD, (604) 585-9279 or visit our website at www.pigeonpatrol.ca
Pigeon/Pigeon Patrol / Pigeons Roosting / Vancouver Pigeon Control /Bird Spikes / Bird Control / Bird Deterrent / Pigeon Deterrent? Surrey Pigeon Control / Pest /Seagull deterrent / Vancouver Pigeon Blog / Birds Inside Home / Pigeons in the cities / Ice Pigeons/ What to do about pigeons/ sparrows , Damage by Sparrows, How To Keep Raccoons Away, Why Are Raccoons Considered Pests/ De-fence / Pigeon Nesting/ Bird Droppings / Pigeon Dropping/ woodpecker control/ Professional Bird Control Company/ Keep The Birds Away/ Birds/rats/ seagull/pigeon/woodpecker/ dove/sparrow/pidgeon control/pidgeon problem/ pidgeon control/flying rats/ pigeon Problems/ bird netting/bird gel/bird spray/bird nails/ bird guard
by Pigeon Patrol | Apr 26, 2021 | Bird Spikes, Doves, Pigeon Patrol's Services
The more scientists study pigeons, the more they learn how their brains–no bigger than the tip of an index finger–operate in ways not so different from our own.
In a new study from the University of Iowa, researchers found that pigeons can categorize and name both natural and humanmade objects–and not just a few objects. These birds categorized 128 photographs into 16 categories, and they did so simultaneously.
Ed Wasserman, UI professor of psychology and corresponding author of the study, says the finding suggests a similarity between how pigeons learn the equivalent of words and the way children do.
“Unlike prior attempts to teach words to primates, dogs, and parrots, we used neither elaborate shaping methods nor social cues,” Wasserman says of the study, published online in the journal Cognition. “And our pigeons were trained on all 16 categories simultaneously, a much closer analog of how children learn words and categories.”
For researchers like Wasserman, who has been studying animal intelligence for decades, this latest experiment is further proof that animals–whether primates, birds, or dogs–are smarter than once presumed and have more to teach scientists.
“It is certainly no simple task to investigate animal cognition; But, as our methods have improved, so too have our understanding and appreciation of animal intelligence,” he says. “Differences between humans and animals must indeed exist: many are already known. But, they may be outnumbered by similarities. Our research on categorization in pigeons suggests that those similarities may even extend to how children learn words.”
Wasserman says the pigeon experiment comes from a project published in 1988 and featured in The New York Times in which UI researchers discovered pigeons could distinguish among four categories of objects.
This time, the UI researchers used a computerized version of the “name game” in which three pigeons were shown 128 black-and-white photos of objects from 16 basic categories: baby, bottle, cake, car, cracker, dog, duck, fish, flower, hat, key, pen, phone, plan, shoe, tree. They then had to peck on one of two different symbols: the correct one for that photo and an incorrect one that was randomly chosen from one of the remaining 15 categories. The pigeons not only succeeded in learning the task, but they reliably transferred the learning to four new photos from each of the 16 categories.
Pigeons have long been known to be smarter than your average bird–or many other animals, for that matter. Among their many talents, pigeons have a “homing instinct” that helps them find their way home from hundreds of miles away, even when blindfolded. They have better eyesight than humans and have been trained by the U. S. Coast Guard to spot orange life jackets of people lost at sea. They carried messages for the U.S. Army during World Wars I and II, saving lives and providing vital strategic information.
UI researchers say their expanded experiment represents the first purely associative animal model that captures an essential ingredient of word learning–the many-to-many mapping between stimuli and responses.
“Ours is a computerized task that can be provided to any animal, it doesn’t have to be pigeons,” says UI psychologist Bob McMurray, another author of the study. “These methods can be used with any type of animal that can interact with a computer screen.”
McMurray says the research shows the mechanisms by which children learn words might not be unique to humans.
“Children are confronted with an immense task of learning thousands of words without a lot of background knowledge to go on,” he says. “For a long time, people thought that such learning is special to humans. What this research shows is that the mechanisms by which children solve this huge problem may be mechanisms that are shared with many species.”
Wasserman acknowledges the recent pigeon study is not a direct analogue of word learning in children and more work needs to be done. Nonetheless, the model used in the study could lead to a better understanding of the associative principles involved in children’s word learning.
“That’s the parallel that we’re pursuing,” he says, “but a single project–however innovative it may be–will not suffice to answer such a provocative question.”
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 Bird Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products ten years in a row.
Contact us at 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD, (604) 585-9279 or visit our website at www.pigeonpatrol.ca
Pigeon/Pigeon Patrol / Pigeons Roosting / Vancouver Pigeon Control /Bird Spikes / Bird Control / Bird Deterrent / Pigeon Deterrent? Surrey Pigeon Control / Pest /Seagull deterrent / Vancouver Pigeon Blog / Birds Inside Home / Pigeons in the cities / Ice Pigeons/ What to do about pigeons/ sparrows , Damage by Sparrows, How To Keep Raccoons Away, Why Are Raccoons Considered Pests/ De-fence / Pigeon Nesting/ Bird Droppings / Pigeon Dropping/ woodpecker control/ Professional Bird Control Company/ Keep The Birds Away/ Birds/rats/ seagull/pigeon/woodpecker/ dove/sparrow/pidgeon control/pidgeon problem/ pidgeon control/flying rats/ pigeon Problems/ bird netting/bird gel/bird spray/bird nails/ bird guard
by Pigeon Patrol | Feb 9, 2021 | Animal Deterrent Products, Bird Deterrent Products, Bird Law, Bird Netting, Bird Spike, Bird Spikes, Pigeon Patrol's Services, Pigeon Spikes, Pigeons, UltraSonic Bird Control
Bird control technicians’ nightmare – what to do when we are asked to do the impossible? The straight answer is that there is really nothing we can do when pigeons land on your roof, but there is much more to know.
Many customers ask: “Why? Why my roof, what’s so special about my roof that they have to land there?” Believe it or not you are asking the right question: Why? Once you understand why, you will also understand why is it hard to provide a solution in this situation.
Almost always, the primary cause of such problem is the availability of food nearby, plenty of it on a regular basis. Probably someone is feeding the birds or there are lots of garbage in the area or open garbage bins/containers. They could also nest or roost in close proximity and simply they use your roof as a comfy perching spot having a nice vantage point over their feeding area.
What could we do? Install hundreds of feet of spikes on your roof? Put up scary owls? Maybe speakers on the roof peak? Unfortunately none of them are viable. It is simply not feasible to protect large, flat (horizontal or sloped) roof surfaces, such as the entire roof of a victorian house for example.
Lady feeding the pigeons in College Park – every day.
First, we need to find ways of eliminating food and water sources nearby. Then we must find their nesting/roosting areas – which will most likely be on another property, otherwise you would see them somewhere else on your house/building, (in which case it would be very easy to resolve the issue,– that provides sheltered structural configurations to establish a protected area where they can stay at night. Pigeons don’t see well at night and usually they go to their roosting spots before nightfall and stay there during the night.
If protecting these areas are not possible (because they are on someone else’s property) we can look at strategically installing Bird Spikes or exclusion Bird Netting or the combination of both, maybe Electric Tracks at critical areas to discourage them from landing on your roof.
You can see now that there aren’t any straightforward solutions in the case of house roof tops and that it is very time consuming to address the issue holistically. The best thing you can do is to call up a professional and get an opinion, you might have missed something that a pro will notice that could help resolve the issue.
source
Some other options for bird repellent would be the Ultrasonic Sound Repellent which makes noises that can only be heard by pigeons and scare them off with the sound or the laser beam which can be activated by movement or you can time when these lasers come on. These lasers are too strong for the pigeons vision to handle and they will fly elsewhere. You can purchase these here : https://www.pigeonpatrol.ca/product/laser/
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.
Contact us at 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD, (604) 585-9279 or visit our website at www.pigeonpatrol.ca
Pigeon / Pigeon Patrol / Pigeons Roosting / Vancouver Pigeon Patrol / Bird Control / Surrey Pigeon Control / Pest /
by Pigeon Patrol | Feb 9, 2021 | Bird Law, Bird Netting, Bird Spike, Bird Spikes, Columbidae, Pigeon Patrol's Services, Pigeon Spikes
If you’re looking for the answer to the question “do anti bird spikes reduce pest bird problems?”, then you undoubtedly already have a problem with bird control. Birds are either landing or nesting on your property.
So lets see if bird spikes really work!
You need to look at why the birds are landing and possibly building a nest. Is it because you feed wild birds and other unwelcome species, such as feral pigeons or starlings, are having the lion’s share? Birds go to places where food is most abundant and easy to take. If you want to control what birds you attract to your garden, especially smaller ones, but not pigeons and starlings, make sure you only place food in feeding containers that make it virtually impossible for the larger birds to feed from. If there’s no readily available food, these larger birds will move on to somewhere else.
Secondly, if you have a bird control problem with the smaller birds then anti-bird spikes may not be effective in preventing them from landing and nesting. If you think about it logically, the smaller birds have feet which are designed to grab hold of small branches and twigs – spikes can give them this ideal landing perch.
However, larger birds, such as seagulls and pigeons don’t have feet adapted for landing on fine spiky branches and twigs and therefore anti bird spikes can be a very effective deterrent. If there are a vast numbers of birds, their droppings have been known to build-up on and around the spikes which then forms an ideal platform for them to build nests. SOURCE
Conclusion:
Anti-bird spikes can reduce pest bird control problems if you’re trying to humanely deter larger birds from landing or nesting. On the other hand, the spikes may be the ideal conditions for smaller birds; so you need to take a multi-faceted approach to control unwanted birds from making your property their home or landing site.
Do bird spikes hurt the birds? Bird and pigeon spikes do not hurt birds, they act as a visual and physical barrier. Bird spikes are a humane bird deterrent as the bird doesn’t come into direct contact with the bird spikes.
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.
Contact us at 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD, (604) 585-9279 or visit our website at www.pigeonpatrol.ca
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