by Pigeon Patrol | Oct 26, 2023 | Bird Spike, Pigeon Predators, Pigeon Spikes, Pigeons, Pigeons in the News, Raccoons, Sparrows, UltraSonic Bird Control
Why do species die out? This is the overarching question being asked by many leading researchers. Knowing more about what leads to a species’ becoming extinct could enable us to do something about it. The passenger pigeon is a famous example and the species has been studied extensively.
The passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) was once found in huge numbers in North America. Records tell of passing flocks that darkened the skies for several days at a time. The species may have peaked at five billion individuals. A more conservative estimate is three billion.
Within a short time, the species disappeared completely.
“Given the huge size of the population, it’s simply amazing that the species disappeared so quickly,” says Tom Gilbert.
Gilbert is a professor at the University of Copenhagen’s Centre for GeoGenetics, but he also has a part-time position as an adjunct professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).
The human role
The history of the passenger pigeon is interesting, partly because it can tell us something about how and why species become extinct.
Native Americans also relied on passenger pigeons for food. But at least in parts of the passenger pigeons’ range, people had learned to harvest the species at a sustainable level that didn’t threaten to eradicate it.
It was common in some parts of North America to only eat young pigeons that were hunted at night, since this did not seem to scare away the adult birds or prevent them from re-nesting.
But starting around 1500, a more aggressive variant of humans came to the continent with the arrival of Europeans. The hunt for passenger pigeons grew and culminated in a massive hunt for the species throughout the 1800s, before the species finally collapsed and disappeared.
So were the Europeans then really the ones to blame for the collapse?
Already headed to oblivion?
In 2014, a study in published in the scientific journal PNAS strongly suggested that humans were simply the final straw in destroying a species that was already vulnerable and headed to oblivion.
The researchers asserted that despite their enormous numbers, the passenger pigeons were already in trouble. The population of the species varied greatly, similar to lemmings, but over a longer period of time.
When the Europeans arrived, the species was already in a strong decline. The population was plummeting long before Europeans arrived, and perhaps Europeans even contributed to a short-term increase in numbers.
Studies of the genetic variation of the species using an investigative method called PSMC formed the background for these assertions. And now we have to concentrate a bit.
From one to many
All of an individual’s genes are called a genome. You have a genome, your mom has her own genome, your dog has one and the neighbour’s cat has yet another. These can be broken down into chromosomes and genes and base pairs, but you only have a single genome.
So, all of your chromosomes and genes are found in this one genome, but at the same time this genome is unique to just you and only you. Unless, that is, you have an identical twin or are a termite or belong to another species where the individuals are largely identical clones. (In the last case, it’s remarkable that you can read this.)
Here is the crux of the matter:
The PSMC method can use the information in the genes of a single individual of a species to map the history of the species.
You should therefore be able to see how the species developed over many generations, and estimate how many individuals there were at any given time, all based on a single genome.
Humans partially off the hook
Using this method, researchers found that the number of passenger pigeons was in free fall even before the arrival of the Europeans.
Although the species might not have become extinct, it would have shrunk significantly in any case, maybe to only a few hundred thousand individuals.
People were just the final factor in their demise. We may have pushed the passenger pigeons off the cliff, but the species was already on its way there.
So — according to the researchers behind the study in PNAS — it wasn’t just the Europeans’ fault.
It sounds almost too good to be true that you can come up with something so definitive based on information from just one or a few individuals. And in this case it is — at least if we’re to believe a new study that has recently been published in the journal Science.
Ineffective for passenger pigeons
The problem is that the PSMC method can’t be used on passenger pigeons. The new research in Science provides completely different results.
Leading molecular biologist Beth Shapiro is the main author of the Science article, and Tom Gilbert is one of the study’s contributors.
PSMC is based on the assumption that genetic variations occur relatively evenly all along the chromosomes that constitute the genome. That is, genetic changes are equally likely to occur at the ends of a chromosome as in the middle. But this turns out not to be the case for this species.
“Passenger pigeons don’t have the variation patterns that we’d expect, because of the strong selection on genes that appear to have been important throughout the species’ history. So it doesn’t work to use PSMC in this case,” said Gilbert.
In passenger pigeons, most of the genetic diversity was found at the ends of the chromosome. The middle of the chromosome showed little variation from one generation to the next as a result of the selection on these genes.
This fact may not sound revolutionary, but it yields completely different results if you try to read the history of the species based on the genome of a single individual.
You have to take into account that variations are greatest in certain parts of the chromosome rather than evenly distributed throughout. This makes the PSMC method unusable in this context.
Used another method
The researchers behind the article in Science didn’t use the PSMC method. Instead, they used mitochondrial DNA from 41 passenger pigeons as their starting point. Now we have to concentrate again.
Your DNA is not your only inheritance. Mitochondrial DNA is a distinct, separate inheritance found in certain cells called mitochondria.
Regular DNA is a combination of the inheritance from your father and mother. But mitochondrial DNA is only transmitted from your mother. Variations in mitochondrial DNA also occur due to mutations, and happen relatively consistently over time.
This is a different point of departure for understanding how a species develops over time, and the results can be quite different from those generated using the PSMC method.
In addition, the study presented in Science analysed the entire genomes from four passenger pigeons and compared them with two genomes from band-tailed pigeons (Patagioenas fasciata), one of the closest relatives of the passenger pigeon.
The final result was that the new study ended up with completely different answers about the passenger pigeons and why the species met its demise.
Genetic diversity
The new study is interesting for several reasons. It tells us about the genetic diversity of the passenger pigeon, but also supports an entirely different explanation for the species’ extinction.
Scientists previously believed that the larger the population of a species is, the more genetically diverse it will be. But this theory has turned out to be wrong, as the recent passenger pigeon research has shown.
According to the article in Science, the large population size appears to have enabled passenger pigeons to adapt and evolve more quickly and thus remove harmful mutations.
In species with fewer individuals, chance can cause a less beneficial mutation to persist, but chance plays less of a role in species with greater numbers of individuals.
“Mutations that provide a major evolutionary benefit would spread rapidly,” says Gilbert.
The fact that beneficial mutations became incredibly dominant so quickly simply led to the disappearance of other genetic variants.
This in turn led to the genetic diversity in the passenger pigeon being surprisingly low in relation to the number of individuals. This may have made the species more vulnerable to changes.
But that was not why the passenger pigeon died out.
Our mistake
“The passenger pigeon died out because of people,” is Gilbert’s short version.
The passenger pigeon wasn’t in trouble prior to Europeans arrival in North America. Nothing suggests that the species was struggling in any way.
Perhaps this isn’t that surprising. In the 19th century passenger pigeons were so numerous that there were contests to shoot as many of them as possible during a certain period of time. In one competition, the winner had shot 30 000 birds.
If nothing else, the story of the passenger pigeon has contributed to a greater understanding that even prolific species can become extinct.
Something to learn
The large grasshopper Melanoplus spretus from the western United States suffered the same fate. It went from a population of several trillion to zero in a few decades, possibly because farmers destroyed its breeding grounds. In Norway and across the whole of the North Atlantic, the great auk (Pinguinus impennis) died out after people harvested them in large numbers.
People ate passenger pigeons in huge amounts, but they were also killed because they were perceived as a threat to agriculture. As Europeans migrated across North America, they thinned out and eliminated the large forests that the pigeons depended on. The pigeons lived primarily on acorns.
As the species was already dying out, 250,000 birds — the last big flock — were shot on a single day in 1896. That same year, the last passenger pigeon was observed in Louisiana. It was also shot.
The pigeons were probably dependent on a large flock size to reproduce. Their instincts didn’t work when only a few individuals remained here and there.
The last passenger pigeon died in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914.
Source
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 Bird Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
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by Pigeon Patrol | Oct 17, 2023 | Bird Spike, Pigeon Droppings, Pigeon Patrol's Services, Pigeon Predators, Pigeon Spikes, Pigeons, Pigeons in the News
For those not familiar with the world of pigeon racing, the idea that a bird can be sold at an auction for thousands of dollars might sound almost ludicrous.
But even people within the industry were taken by surprise this week when New Kim, a two-year-old racing pigeon raised in Antwerp, Belgium, was auctioned for a record $1.8 million.
“We did not expect the pigeon (price) would go so high,” said Nikolaas Gyselbrecht, the CEO of Pigeon Auction House (PIPA), where New Kim was auctioned.
The price offered for New Kim beats the one paid for the former most expensive pigeon in the world, Armando, sold to a Chinese buyer for $1.48m in 2019.
“We can already say that these record prices are unbelievable because this is a female,” said Gyselbrecht. “Armando was a male. Usually a male is worth more than a female because it can produce more offspring, more children. So it’s very exceptional to have a female for this price.”\
New Kim was bred by Flemish trainer Gaston van de Wouwer, who raised many prize-winning racing pigeons and now, at 76, is retiring and selling all his 400 birds.
The online bidding on New Kim started on November 2 at a bit more than $200 but quickly went up to the thousands as the bidder “Hitman” held off competitors to lead the pigeon. On Tuesday, he stood unchallenged with an offer of $1.5m.
On Sunday, 30 minutes before the end of the auction, a frantic bidding war between Hitman and a bidder named “Super Duper” raised the price for New Kim to $1.8m
Belgium is considered the traditional heartland of pigeon racing, which became very popular in the country in the 19th century.
“There is no country in the world where so many pigeon fanciers live (in) such a high density with each other, like in Belgium,” says Gyselbrecht. “So you have 20,000 pigeon fanciers in a very small country competing (with) each other on a very high level. It’s like the Champions League.”
Why are racing pigeons so expensive?
Pigeon racing’s popularity has steadily dropped since the 1800s, when it found a fertile ground in Belgium.
After World War I, the sport was a common hobby for the working class, but amid higher costs of living and criticisms by animal welfare activists, pigeon racing became less of a common pastime affordable to many and more of a highly competitive sport practiced by a few.
The rising popularity of the sport in China has led to billionaires investing increasingly high amounts of money in pigeons, and driving up the prize money for races.
The most expensive birds in the history of the sport, mostly Belgian pigeons, were all recently bought by Chinese bidders, as in the case of Armando and New Kim.
Source
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 Bird Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Canada’s top wholesaler for bird deterrent products for twelve consecutive years.
Contact us at 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD, (604) 585-9279 or visit our website at https://www.pigeonpatrol.ca/
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by Pigeon Patrol | Oct 17, 2023 | history of pigeons, MBCA, pet bird, Pigeon Control, Pigeon Droppings, Pigeon Patrol's Services, Pigeon Predators
Look! Up in the sky! It’s … not as much as there used to be. Three billion wild birds have vanished from North America’s air in 50 years; a new study calls that loss “staggering.” Three billion is as many as 1 bird in 4 — birds of the forests, birds of the grasslands, gone. And 50 years is about the same time that it took North America to send the passenger pigeon — once the most abundant bird on the continent, flying by the billions in flocks that blocked the sun for hours at a time — to send it into extinction. These creatures who evolved from the dinosaurs, who delight us with color and song — humans are crowding them out, plowing up and chopping down their habitat, poisoning them with pesticides, installing windows that they smash into, allowing domestic cats to kill them. And just over a century after the nation began protecting its native birds with the landmark Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the Trump administration is ready to weaken its enforcement. Steve Holmer heads the American Bird Conservancy, whose motto is “Bringing back the birds.” Can it be done, and how?
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Three billion birds in 50 years in this country. Why are they disappearing?
We believe it’s a combination of things. Migratory birds spend the majority of their year in the south, either the southern U.S. or in Central or South America. And so there’s all kinds of habitat issues there. And then when they actually migrate, they have what’s called stopover places, where they basically need to stop and fuel up again. If that habitat isn’t in good condition, or if they face threats there, then that could affect their migration.
Some new studies indicate that pesticides might prevent migrating birds from gaining sufficient weight. On these stopover points, they typically will gorge themselves and gain a bunch of weight so that they can fly — in some cases all the way up to the Arctic where they have their chicks. And then they come all the way back. It’s quite a gantlet that they go through. We think all of this is adding up into these declines.
Make the case for why bird life matters. People think aah, it’s just sparrows, aah, it’s just pigeons.
They’re actually a very good indicator of the overall health of the environment. When we see these bird declines, it’s an indication that in a sense there’s something out of balance. And we’ve seen certain habitats removed to a degree that the birds would become endangered. At the same time, we’ve had some very successful conservation efforts. We’ve brought the bald eagle back, for example. Its population is now increasing 10% a year, the result of banning DDT and other efforts to protect it.
Seventy years ago, Communist China crusaded against sparrows as “public animals of capitalism,” and killed billions. Without the sparrows to eat them, insects flourished, crops were destroyed and millions of Chinese starved. The earth needs birds. People need birds.
Birds play a crucial role within the ecosystem in terms of eating insects and other things and then also being eaten by other things. Part of the reason why the loss of the 3 billion birds is so significant is, that’s a huge loss of biomass that used to be in the system. We need to think about doing some things to try to restore balance.
What kinds of birds were foremost among those 3 billion that aren’t around anymore?
Really common birds, meadowlarks; grassland birds in particular seem to have taken a really huge dip. There have been some new studies showing significant impacts from pesticides. And an ongoing process called intensification with agriculture, where they’re using more and more of the land in a much more intensive fashion. And the result is there’s just less available for wildlife.
It really gets down to the price of corn in some ways. And then the subsidies for corn ethanol have actually been pretty bad for birds because they’re leading to the sod-busting and we don’t have a whole lot of original prairie left.
About a year ago the Natural Resources Management Act was signed into law by the Trump administration — a bundle of bills, and a lot of conservation groups had campaigned for them. Isn’t that something of a step forward?
It wasn’t a perfect deal, though. There was still a rider in there that prevents protection for the greater sage grouse, which right now is in severe decline. The sage grouse is a bird that lives all across the Great Basin, a little bit in northern California. That kind of desert country is where you’ll find sage grouse. They actually will eat the sagebrush and hide in it. They’re an excellent indicator for basically pristine, wide open spaces. They like big areas. They like it quiet.
As energy development and other things have descended upon that region, we’ve actually seen the grouse population decline by as much as 90%.
When we see species like the meadowlark start to disappear, species that were so common, that’s not a good harbinger for rarer species in more endangered habitats, is it?
No, that’s exactly the issue. We do carefully look at all the bird populations. There is a lot of focus on the birds that might become endangered; there’s a big effort to head that off.
But we’ve also found that once the bird is listed [as endangered], recovery efforts tend to be successful. We did an analysis a couple of years ago and found out that the biggest need for the Endangered Species Act was to increase this funding for recovery.
A number of birds have just been delisted. One of them was the Kirtland’s warbler up in Michigan, and that’s just a result of successful conservation efforts. There are some good success stories — the interior least tern and the Kirtland’s warbler and a few others are definitely at a point where they seem to be safe and stable in terms of avoiding extinction and on their way to recovery.
But others worry you.
Well, changes to the law itself are worrying me. There’s been some rule-making that can make it very difficult to get protection for new species or provide for adequate habitat protection.
I do think that the process has become politicized and we’re feeling it’s a real challenge to get a level of protection that the birds really need.
People know the phrase “canary in the mine shaft,” meaning an early harbinger of something bad about to happen. Now it seems like our whole wild bird population is the canary in the mine shaft.
That’s right, and they also are showing that they are a big indicator for global warming and climate change. You’re seeing range shifts; because it’s a little warmer, the birds are actually much further north and they’re literally following the climate band as it as it changes.
They’re fortunate in the sense that they can fly to the to a new ideal environment for themselves. Not every critter has that luxury.
As we expand, as our population gets bigger, our agricultural needs are bigger, people cut down forests for wood for myriad purposes, the birds— they gotta give.
We really do need to provide incentives to landowners to grow trees and to maintain their forests. If property values shift too far, they might go into real estate and all that land gets developed.
If we need to grow trees for climate [change purposes], we should make it a real lucrative thing for the landowner to do.
How successful is that?
We’re seeing some success. The California carbon market is really probably the greatest example where it allows for forest conservation projects. Most of them have either longer rotation, forestry or reforestation. And so either way, the environment is winning, because we’re growing trees and absorbing that carbon and providing for that habitat. The California market is something that we probably need to make national.
There was a conflict in the Pacific Northwest in the 1990s over loggers versus habitat and the endangered northern spotted owl; I think one bumper stickers said something like, “Save a logger, eat a spotted owl.” Is that the way our relationship with the natural world in general and birds and in particular is going?
It is kind of ironic because birds in general are very popular, but a couple of birds like the greater sage grouse and the spotted owl have been the flashpoint for these huge land use issues, whether it’s conservation of the many millions of acres of public lands in the sagebrush country or the old-growth forest in the Pacific Northwest.
The fact that these birds declined so far is really kind of an indication that the habitat was not being used and not being properly conserved.
There’s been, I think, a very successful effort to protect the old-growth forest under the Northwest Forest Plan, but it’s by no means a perfect plan. But it has brought an end to the worst type of old-growth logging that used to happen.
And we are actually seeing some real benefits in terms of improved water quality. The forests in the region are now a big carbon sink where they absorb carbon instead of being a source of emissions every year or so.
So the public has seen some real side benefit in addition to the conservation of the forests.
Unfortunately, we have some policymakers who are trying to open up the old-growth forest again to logging, whether it be in Alaska or in the Pacific Northwest or Northern California. And we’re trying to counter that.
A lot of the work that we do is in partnership with other conservation groups. We manage a coalition called the Bird Conservation Alliance, which has over 200 groups doing public outreach and events to raise awareness about our program.
People like the idea of birds — they just don’t perhaps make the connection between, Oh, that’s a bird, and I like to hear it, I like to see it … and what it takes to keep that bird alive.
And sometimes people don’t see how their actions might affect things. A couple of the biggest sources of mortality for birds are window collisions and cats.
With windows, it’s estimated about a billion [birds are killed] a year, and it tends to be on the glass facades and ground-level windows that reflect foliage. There are ways, despite how the landscape is designed or where the windows are themselves; there’ve been windows tested that reduce the number of collisions. We’re working on various pieces of legislation that encourage the use of bird-safe building designs and materials.
There’s actually solutions for homeowners. There’s glass products and films that they can put on the windows to treat them so that the collisions can be greatly reduced.
The same with cats. Keeping cats indoors is safer for the cat. And it greatly reduces the predation that would happen if they were outdoors.
Many people let their cats outside to roam around, not thinking about the devastation that cats can wreak by killing birds — not a pleasant thing for bird lovers or for cat lovers.
In the West, there’s there is a big problem for cat owners seeing their cats outdoors having all kinds of issues, whether it’s fights with other cats, getting hit by cars and that kind of thing.
But the big issue lately is coyotes. If you’re leaving your cat outside, particularly at night, it’s a huge risk to them.
How many birds are cats killing?
Well, it is estimated it’s in the billions. Particularly when you think about the fledgling birds, they tend to be very vulnerable for their first couple of months, before they’ve really gotten to be full size and full strength. There’s just a tremendous toll every year.
What about windmills? President Trump says windmills kill a lot of birds.
Windmills do kill birds. We estimate as many as a million birds a year are killed by wind turbines and associated infrastructure. There are guidelines in place right now that can reduce this mortality. Unfortunately, they’re not being used that consistently. We’re working on a [proposed] piece of legislation called the Migratory Bird Protection Act that we think eventually could lead to these guidelines getting into use more often.
The changes that are happening to the [landmark 1918] Migratory Bird Treaty Act by the administration right now — one of the biggest problems is the fact that it won’t encourage us to solve these problems any longer. The law was intended to encourage industry to find ways to stop killing birds accidentally. So whether it be [birds] falling into oil pits or running into communications towers, there has been a lot of effort over time to reduce that mortality.
As a result of this change that’s been proposed by the administration and already put in effect through a legal opinion a couple of years ago, we’re actually no longer seeing enforcement that we used to have.
So at the same time bird populations are declining, we’re actually seeing weaker enforcement and weaker protection.
With wind and also with oil and gas and pretty much on any aspect, they’ve basically said that they’re no longer going to enforce the law.
And this could even be in extreme worst cases of oil spills where, in the past, there would have been big fines applied. Now they’re basically saying there’s no law any longer.
We’re already fighting, as is the state of California. We’re hopeful to overturn their efforts to weaken the law.
The Migratory Bird Protection Act, sponsored by Rep. Alan Lowenthal from California, would actually kind of bring about these best management practices that I was just talking about. The bill has gone through a House committee and is awaiting a vote on the House floor. And people can express their support to their lawmakers to pass the Migratory Bird Protection Act.
It sounds like California’s doing a pretty good job of getting on top of this.
California has an outstanding legislature in terms of passing bills to protect the environment and fill in the gap while the federal government is kind of dithering about right now.
One area where California took the lead was in the phase-out of toxic lead ammunition. There’s now nontoxic alternatives available.
Most Americans live in suburban or urban areas now. I’m wondering about the urban bird population.
There’s actually a lot that we can do in our urban areas. Urban forests are very important. And each homeowner can do things with their own landscaping, things that that could actually really benefit wildlife, just in our own back yard.
Are you a birdwatcher? Is there a species that speaks to you?
Right now, I’d have to say the marbled murrelet is the species that really speaks to me. It’s right on the coast of northern California and Oregon and Washington state. And it’s a neat little seabird that goes out and forges on little fish and then it nest in the tops of old-growth trees. Those tend to be the very biggest trees that are like 200 years old or older. So there’s a huge overlap between the marbled murrelet and these really high-carbon forests that are valuable in terms of the fight on climate change. There’s all kinds of habitat protection and recreation.
Source
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 Bird Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Canada’s top wholesaler for bird deterrent products for twelve consecutive years.
Contact us at 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD, (604) 585-9279 or visit our website at https://www.pigeonpatrol.ca/
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by Pigeon Patrol | Oct 3, 2023 | Bird Spike, Pigeon Droppings, Pigeon Patrol's Services, Pigeon Predators, Pigeon Spikes, Pigeons
A Thai district chief has clipped the wings of his town’s pigeon population by paying residents to trap the birds and organising a cook-off to build support for the cull.
The campaign to go after hundreds of thousands of pigeons started earlier this week in a district of Lop Buri province – a region better known for its monkey menace.
“The number of pigeons increases four to five times each year, if we don’t do anything the problem will get worse,” said Plaek Thepparak, the highest government official in Mueang district, who came up with the idea.
The birds were a nuisance and defecated on government offices, historical sites, temples and houses while ravaging local crops, he added.
“Before people can drink rain water but now they have to buy drinking water because rain water is dirty from bird droppings,” he said.
Residents will get 10 baht (about $0.30) per trapped birds, which will be transferred to a quarantine centre in a nearby province.
But cooking them up is also on the menu.
“We also urged residents to eat the dead pigeons but only if they are hygienic and cook them well,” Plaek said, adding the town hosted a “pigeon menu” cooking competition earlier this week with cash prizes.
The dishes whipped up included a simple fried pigeon, knocked back with a side of Thailand’s classic papaya salad.
Two hours north of the capital Bangkok, Lop Buri is on Thailand’s tourist circuit and is better known as a haven for monkeys, but even they are being outnumbered by the birds.
“There are about 3,000 monkeys but there are hundreds of thousands of pigeon,” Plaek said.
Source
Pigeon Patrol
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by Pigeon Patrol | Oct 3, 2023 | Bird Spike, Pigeon Predators, Pigeon Spikes, Pigeons, Pigeons in the News, Raccoons, Sparrows
A FALCON and a pigeon have been killed in Co Tyrone in what has been described as “one of the most serious incidents of peregrine persecution in Northern Ireland for several years”.
The PSNI were last night continuing to investigate after the birds were found dead at around 10pm in the Scraghey area, near Castlederg on July 10.
It is thought those behind the attack tied up the pigeon and covered it with poison, using it as bait to trap a peregrine falcon.
DUP MLA Jim Wells, also a member of the NI Raptor Study Group, described the incident as “cruel”.
“The vigilance of several members of the Raptor Study Group and the very quick response by the PSNI has revealed what is likely to be one of the most serious incidents of peregrine persecution in Northern Ireland for several years,” he told the Ulster Herald.
“The use of poison on a pigeon to kill a protected bird of prey is cruel, dangerous and totally irresponsible. The peregrine falcon once faced extinction due to the use of pesticides and now it’s recovery is threatened by those who seek to kill adults and young using totally illegal and reckless methods”.
He added:”The research has revealed that illegal prosecution remains a problem in some parts of the county. There are those who want to prevent people living in this area from seeing the fastest bird in the world”.
Source
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 Bird Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Canada’s top wholesaler for bird deterrent products for twelve consecutive years.
Contact us at 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD, (604) 585-9279 or visit our website at https://www.pigeonpatrol.ca/
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