That pigeon in your neighborhood may not be your typical bird. Seattle Animal Control Officer Kevin Mack reports several “banded” pigeons found in the city recently.
“We’ve received at least two banded racing pigeons in the last couple weeks,” said Mack. “And I’ve had at least three sightings of banded birds that were moving through the city.
“These birds are essentially identical to local feral pigeons you see in the city, Rock Pigeons. But they really are domesticated birds and they usually have owners that want them back.”
People who race pigeons usually have a coop at their residence. They raise the birds, register them with their organization of choice, and then race them.
The race consists of driving the pigeon a pre-determined distance from their coop, setting them loose, and then seeing how long it takes them to return. Some pigeons are better at homing than others so sometimes they get lost on their way back. Other times they get injured or just plain tired.
The American Racing Pigeon Union is one of the most popular pigeon racing groups. You can tell the pigeons belong to someone who belongs to the group because they have bands on their legs with the letters “AU” on them. If you find an AU-banded pigeon
The site also has good information about how to read the information on the band and some links to other organizations for birds with other types of bands.
The pigeon that is being sheltered at the Seattle Animal Shelter is from Jeanerett, Louisiana because its band includes the local club code. “2022” is the bird’s hatch year and the long number found on the other side of the band is the bird’s unique identifier.
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Alarm bells were sounding in the United Kingdom in October. Nope, it wasn’t another economic crisis, but a bout of the so-called “zombie pigeon” disease.#
Pigeons were making odd movements and behaving strangely. They were twisted their necks to unnatural angles, were unable to eat, wandered aimlessly around in circles… Something was happening.
Experts pointed towards the cause: paramyxovirus. The disease, while not fatal to humans, is lethal to aviary animals that contract it.
A number of pigeons had to be euthanised on the Channel island of Jersey. As of October there were no recorded cases of paramyxovirus on the British mainland.
The birds, in addition to the twisted neck, lost weight due to the physical impossibility of eating and walked in circles with clear neurological signs of the brain, as confirmed by the veterinary analyses.
Seagulls in the Snow by Ron Hill Two Gulls loving the snow in an Uckfield Garden !!!
What is paramyxovirus?
The British government last updated their disease guidance for paramyxovirus back in 2018. It states that the disease does not usually affect humans though does affect pigeons, as the images suggest.
Signs of paramyxovirus infection in pigeons may include:
nervous signs, including trembling wings and heads, and twisting of the neck
partial paralysis of wings and legs (birds may fall over on landing and be unable to feed)
They also became thin from not being able to eat and not being able to sit still while they produce green feces.
How can the disease spread?
The disease is spread by direct contact between pigeons and through:
pigeon transporters that have not been adequately cleaned and disinfected
drinking water in lofts and transporters
pigeon fanciers carrying infection on their clothes, hands and feet
JSPCA Animal Shelter told the Mirror that the illness has no treatment “and many birds die within a few days”.
“Any that do survive will continue to shed the virus and be a risk to other birds,” a spokesperson added. “At the JSPCA, affected birds are humanely euthanased.”
This disease cannot affect humans, but it can cause conjunctivitis in those who handle sick birds.
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor or 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
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Researchers led by members of Oxford University’s Department of Biology have found rare colonies of the wild ancestors of common domestic and feral pigeons.
Already extinct in England and Wales, the wild Rock Dove (Columba livia) has been found on secluded Scottish and Irish islands, providing insights into how the domestic pigeon came to be.
“Feral” pigeons originate from escaped domestic birds and can be seen in towns and cities all over the world. These domestic pigeons are descended from wild Rock Doves, who nest in sea caves and mountainous areas.
Despite the success of feral pigeons, the Rock Dove has been declining throughout its global range—which once encompassed vast areas of Africa, Asia and Europe. University of Oxford DPhil student and lead author Will Smith says that “studying the decline of the Rock Dove has been challenging for researchers because of such extensive interbreeding and replacement with feral pigeons.”
Rock Doves now persist in only small, relict populations where feral pigeons have not yet been able to colonize. In fact, due to the interbreeding of feral pigeons and Rock Doves, and their resulting hybrids, many ornithologists believe that there are no truly wild Rock Doves left. However, there are potential colonies in certain places, including, in Europe, the Faroe Islands, parts of the Mediterranean and parts of Scotland and Ireland.
The researchers studied populations of birds thought to be Rock Doves in Scotland and Ireland by analyzing DNA to determine whether the birds were truly wild, and to estimate how much genetic influence from feral pigeons different wild populations had experienced.
Through a combination of expeditions and collaboration with British Trust for Ornithology bird ringers, the research team caught both feral pigeons and putative Rock Doves in places like North Uist (Uibhist a Tuath) in the Outer Hebrides, Orkney, and Cape Clear Island.
The team took feather samples from the birds for DNA analysis. By sequencing the pigeons’ DNA, they were able to show the differences between feral pigeons and Rock Doves, and also measure the degree of interbreeding between the two forms of the species.
The results confirmed that the Rock Doves of the UK and Ireland descended from the undomesticated lineage from which all feral and domestic pigeons originate, with varying degrees of interbreeding. Rock Doves in Orkney have experienced extensive interbreeding with feral pigeons and are at risk of getting hybridized to the point of their extinction as a distinct lineage. In contrast, Rock Doves in the Outer Hebrides remain almost free of feral pigeon influence.
“We identified feral pigeon ancestry in most of the Scottish and Irish Rock Dove populations we sampled, and there have been feral pigeons in Europe for hundreds of years. It was therefore really surprising to discover that the Outer Hebridean Rock Doves showed negligible signs of hybridization,” explained Will Smith.
However, feral pigeons have been reported on these islands with increasing frequency, so it might be that the distribution of wild Rock Doves in the UK continues to shrink as a result.
Recording their distribution and genetic status will help to monitor the remaining Rock Dove populations, and encourage efforts to understand potential relict populations elsewhere.
In the wider context of conservation, increasing understanding of “extinction by hybridization” will help efforts to prevent many other plants and animals, such as the Scottish wildcat, from undergoing the same fate as the Rock Dove.
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor or 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
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A September expedition to Papua New Guinea confirmed via video the existence of the black-naped pheasant pigeon, a critically endangered species that has not been reported for 140 years.
“For much of the trip, it seemed like we had no chance of finding this bird,” said Jordan Boersma, co-leader of the expedition and a postdoctoral researcher at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. “We were just two days away from the end of our time on Fergusson Island in Papua New Guinea when one of our remote cameras recorded the bird walking around and fanning its tail.”
The group captured the first-ever video and still photos of the bird, a large ground-dwelling species with a rust-colored back, a black head and body, and a bobbing pheasant-like tail. It may only exist far inland on Fergusson Island in hot, extremely rugged geothermal terrain laced with twisty rivers and dense with biting insects and leeches.
“After a month of searching, seeing those first photos of the pheasant pigeon felt like finding a unicorn,” said John C. Mittermeier, director of the Search for Lost Birds project at American Bird Conservancy and a core member of the expedition team. “It’s the kind of moment you dream about your entire life as a conservationist and birdwatcher.”
Almost nothing is known of the black-naped pheasant pigeon apart from two specimens collected in 1882. There are no recordings of its sounds. The researchers think it would likely sound similar to a different pheasant pigeon species on mainland Papua New Guinea—a sound locals compare to the despairing cry of a woman ostracized by her community.
Tapping into Indigenous knowledge was key to the expedition’s success. Doka Nason, a local bird expert, joined the search and advised the team on where to look. Nason set up the camera that eventually recorded the bird. “When I saw the photos, I was incredibly excited,” he said. “I was jumping around yelling, ‘We did it!'”
“It was an experience of a lifetime working with Fergusson Islanders to find the pheasant pigeon and giving talks at schools and villages about our search was a highlight,” said Jason Gregg, a co-leader of the expedition. “Kids were whispering the local name of the bird—Auwo—and everyone was talking about it. I’m so happy we know this species survives, and it opens opportunities to learn even more about the bird and its incredible home.”
But conservationists are concerned. The principal landowner where the bird was found told the search team he’d just signed a deal with a logging company—a move that could threaten the black-naped pheasant pigeon and its habitat. The team is pursuing funding so they can go back to Fergusson and try to find out how many of the species are left.
“The reason I care, why I think we should all care, is that this bird has meant something and continues to mean something to the local people,” Boersma said. “It’s part of their legends and culture. If we lose this species, then its cultural importance will be lost along with the role it plays in this fantastic ecosystem.”
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor or 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.
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Contact us at 1 877-4-NO-BIRD,(604) 585-9279 or visit our website at www.pigeonpatrol.ca
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A raving lunatic beheaded two pigeons in Bryant Park, proclaimed he was a “vampire” — and guzzled their blood in front of a horrified crowd, witnesses told The Post.
“He was holding up the pigeons and drinking their blood, letting the blood drip down his shirt,” recalled shocked onlooker Dominic D.
“He did it twice,” the 32-year-old said. “He was covered in blood. He said he was a vampire. It was pretty disgusting.”
Witnesses told The Post that the man threw one of the dead bird heads and splattered blood all over the shirt of a person who was eating lunch. He then calmly waited for cops to arrive.
“He was very calm when the police came,” explained Clarissa Plair, a 26-year-old Theology student who spends a lot of time in Bryant Park and has seen the pigeon perp before.
“He’s always here, yelling at people on the street,” she said. “He was telling [police] he’s a vampire.”
Authorities took a man into custody about 15 minutes later and transported him to St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital for a pysch evaluation, according to officials.
Photos and video posted on Twitter showed the bloody aftermath, with several pigeons swooping in to mourn their fallen bird brethren.
While the man behind the fowl fatalities is known to sit in the Bryant Park fountain drinking beer, witnesses said he’s never gone after any of his feathered friends before.
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor or 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
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Homing pigeons may share the human capacity to build on the knowledge of others, improving their navigational efficiency over time, a new Oxford University study has found.
The ability to gather, pass on and improve on knowledge over generations is known as cumulative culture. Until now humans and, arguably some other primates, were the only species thought to be capable of it.
Takao Sasaki and Dora Biro, Research Associates in the Department of Zoology at Oxford University, conducted a study testing whether homing pigeons can gradually improve their flight paths, over time. They removed and replaced individuals in pairs of birds that were given a specific navigational task. Ten chains of birds were released from the same site and generational succession was simulated with the continuous replacement of birds familiar with the route with inexperienced birds who had never flown the course before. The idea was that these individuals could then pass their experience of the route down to the next pair generation, and also enable the collective intelligence of the group to continuously improve the route’s efficiency.
The findings, published in Nature Communications, suggest that over time, the student does indeed become the teacher. The pairs’ homing performance improved consistently over generations — they streamlined their route to be more direct. Later generation groups eventually outperformed individuals that flew solo or in groups that never changed membership. Homing routes were also found to be more similar in consecutive generations of the same chain of pigeon pairs than across them, showing cross-generational knowledge transfer, or a “culture” of homing routes.
Takao Sasaki, co-author and Research Fellow in the Department of Zoology said: ‘At one stage scientists thought that only humans had the cognitive capacity to accumulate knowledge as a society. Our study shows that pigeons share these abilities with humans, at least to the extent that they are capable of improving on a behavioural solution progressively over time. Nonetheless, we do not claim that they achieve this through the same processes.’
When people share and pass knowledge down through generations, our culture tends to become more complex over time, There are many good examples of this from manufacturing and engineering. By contrast, when the process occurs between homing pigeons, the end result is an increase in the efficiency, (in this case navigational), but not necessarily the complexity, of the behaviour.
Takao Sasaki added: ‘Although they have different processes, our findings demonstrate that pigeons can accumulate knowledge and progressively improve their performance, satisfying the criteria for cumulative culture. Our results further suggest that cumulative culture does not require sophisticated cognitive abilities as previously thought.’
This study shows that collective intelligence, which typically focuses on one-time performance, can emerge from accumulation of knowledge over time.
Dora Biro, co-author and Associate Professor of Animal Behaviour concludes: ‘One key novelty, we think, is that the gradual improvement we see is not due to new ‘ideas’ about how to improve the route being introduced by individual birds. Instead, the necessary innovations in each generation come from a form of collective intelligence that arises through pairs of birds having to solve the problem together — in other words through ‘two heads being better than one’.’
Moving forward, the team intend to build on the study by investigating if a similar style of knowledge sharing and accumulation occurs in other multi-generational species’ social groups. Many animal groups have to solve the same problems repeatedly in the natural world, and if they use feedback from past outcomes of these tasks or events, this has the potential to influence, and potentially improve, the decisions the groups make in the future.
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor or 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
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