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, history of pigeons, Pigeons, Pigeons in the News
I admit that topic is a bit off my usual
Brain Sense
beat, but occasionally a piece of research comes along that is just too intriguing to pass by. Such is the case with a new report out of the University of Kentucky, published this week in the
Proceedings of the Royal Society
(UK). The study’s lead author, psychology professor Thomas Zentall, studied some pigeon gamblers and came up with some intriguing insights into human gamblers.
Zentall and collaborator Jessica Stagner set pigeons up in cages and let the birds peck at lights to obtain rewards of food pellets. If the pigeons pecked on the left, they received a green or a red light; after 10 seconds, the red light yielded 10 pellets but the green light yielded nothing. Because the odds were stacked at 20 percent–which is much more generous than your average casino–the pigeons averaged 2 pellets per peck if they pecked on the left.
If they pecked to the right, however, they saw yellow or blue lights, which both yielded 3 pellets of food per trial. Same every time. Sure thing.
So which would you choose: a guaranteed 3 or the remote possibility of a 10 (with the odds stacked against you)? Seems most pigeons behave like human gamblers. They don’t go for the sure thing. Most of Zentall’s experimental birds consistently chose the left side, apparently motivated by some bird-brained hope that they would receive the 10 pellets, even though 0 was a 4:1 favorite. “It’s more efficient not to gamble, and the likelihood of winning is low, but pigeons do it anyway,” Zentall says. “And so do people.”
“There’s a basic behavioral, biological process involved that probably affects many different species, and it doesn’t require the excitement of a casino, the misunderstanding of the likelihood of winning, social reinforcement or the publicity of winners,” Zentall says. “These factors may help, but that’s not it. Look at the pigeons.”
Zentall is also looking at the pigeons to try to find out why some pigeons, like some people, eschew gambling. (Yes, a few, wise pigeons peck to the right.) “Most of the time, people who aren’t terribly happy with what they’re doing choose to gamble because it’s exciting to them and other things generally aren’t,” says Zentall, and pigeons may be no different. Zentall thinks boredom may be an important motivator for gambling. His pigeons are less likely to gamble after spending time in a room playing with toys and other pigeons.
“We can understand the basis for gambling,” Zentall says, “but why has this evolved in people and in animals?” The answer may lie in the animal’s sense of control. “In nature, probability isn’t constant,” he said. “Animals are attracted to stimuli that make it easy to predict the availability of food and approaching these stimuli often makes their occurrence more likely. In lab conditions, this isn’t the case. . . . In addition, humans remember the wins and not the losses, which has functional value in nature. . . . Animals too, don’t remember where they didn’t find food, but do remember where they did.”
Thus, gambling may have survival value in nature, but not in the casino.
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, Pigeons
Pigeons can categorize and name both natural and human-made objects—and not just a few. The birds in a new study categorized 128 photographs into 16 categories.
The finding suggests a similarity between how pigeons learn the equivalent of words and the way children do, according to Ed Wasserman, professor of psychology at the University of Iowa and corresponding author of the study.
“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, which appears 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.”
PECK THE SYMBOL
Wasserman says the pigeon experiment comes from a project published in 1988 and featured in the New York Times in which University of Iowa researchers discovered pigeons could distinguish among four categories of objects.
This time, the 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, plane, shoe, tree.
The birds 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 also reliably transferred the learning to four new photos from each of the 16 categories.
SMARTER THAN YOUR AVERAGE BIRD
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 do and have been trained by the US Coast Guard to spot orange life jackets of people lost at sea. They carried messages for the US Army during World Wars I and II, saving lives and providing vital strategic information.
The 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 psychologist Bob McMurray, a coauthor of the study. “These methods can be used with any type of animal that can interact with a computer screen.”
HOW CHILDREN LEARN
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.”
National Institute of Mental Health, National Eye Institute, and National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders supported the research.
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 18, 2021 | history of pigeons, Pigeons
Seventy years ago a carrier pigeon performed the act of “heroism” that saw it awarded the animal’s equivalent of the Victoria Cross – the Dickin Medal. It was the first of of dozens of animals honoured by veterinary charity PDSA during World War II.
On 23 February 1942, a badly damaged RAF bomber ditched into the North Sea.
The crew were returning from a mission over Norway, but their Beaufort Bomber had been hit by enemy fire and crashed into the sea more than 100 miles from home.
Struggling in freezing waters – unable to radio an accurate position back to base – the four men faced a cold and lonely death.
But as the aircraft went down, the crew had managed to salvage their secret weapon – a carrier pigeon. The blue chequered hen bird, called Winkie, was set free in the hope it could fly home to its loft in Broughty Ferry, near Dundee, and so alert air base colleagues to their predicament.
During World War II, carrier pigeons were routinely carried by RAF bombers for this very eventuality, though in an era before GPS and satellite locator beacons, rescue was far from certain.
But Winkie did make it home, after flying 120 miles, and was discovered, exhausted and covered in oil by owner George Ross who immediately informed RAF Leuchars in Fife.
The pigeon was not carrying a message, but the RAF were able to calculate the position of the downed aircraft using the time difference between the plane’s ditching and the arrival of the bird – taking into account the wind direction and even the impact of the oil on Winkie’s feathers to her flight speed.
A rescue mission was launched and the men were found within 15 minutes.
Elaine Pendlebury, from the PDSA, said the carrier pigeon had been released as a “last ditch stand” when the crew realised they had no other options.
“I find it very, very moving really. These people would have died without this pigeon message coming through,” said Ms Pendlebury.
Winkie became the toast of the air base, with a dinner held in her honour. A year later, she became the first animal to receive the Dickin Medal – named after PDSA’s founder Maria Dickin – for “delivering a message under exceptional difficulties”.
More than 60 animals have since received the award, including 18 dogs, three horses and one cat. But pigeons still rule the medal roost, with 32 being given medals, all between 1943 and 1949.
Top secret messages
“It’s very hard for us with mobile phones and emails and things like that to think about the way communication would have happened in the 1940s in wartime,” Ms Pendlebury told BBC Scotland.
“It was very difficult and the pigeons certainly saved numerous lives by flying through really dreadful situations.”
One pigeon, called GI Joe, was an American bird which saved more than 1,000 lives when it got a message through that a village about to be bombed had actually been recaptured by British forces. Another – Mary of Exeter – was used to send top secret messages and received 22 stitches after being injured in the course of her duties.
“I’ve been a veterinary surgeon for quite some time but I find the ones that have won the PDSA Dickin medal, the stories are quite inspiring – above and beyond really,” Ms Pendlebury added.
“The message that’s on the medal is ‘We Also Serve’, which sums it up really.”
Source
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 18, 2021 | history of pigeons, Pigeons
Authorities in the Spanish city of Cádiz have come up with a plan for their booming pigeon population – relocating some 5,000 birds.
The city is plagued by thousands of the birds and their associated waste – but officials did not want to poison them.
Instead, the plan is to capture thousands of pigeons and relocate them hundreds of miles away in a different region – and hope they do not return.
Local officials said it was a “more respectful and sustainable” solution.
Speaking to local newspaper Diario de Cádiz, councillor Álvaro de la Fuente said “managing the population of existing pigeons does not imply the eradication of them within the urban area.”
Instead, he said a “logical balance” between the birds, humans, and other city-dwelling species was the goal.
The common pigeon is known for its location awareness – the famous homing pigeon used to carry war-time messages is a variant of the species.
But unlike their trained counterparts, the wild birds are often happy to settle in one local area – and officials in Cádiz hope that will be the case when all 5,000 pigeons are placed in their new home.
The thousands of birds to be relocated will be trapped, catalogued, and tested before being carried at least 170 miles (275km) away for release. Every bird will also get a health check along the way.
But pigeons breed quickly – so the city plans to print thousands of leaflets reminding the public not to overfeed the remaining flock, which helps to inflate the population.
In London’s Trafalgar Square, where the tradition of deliberately feeding the birds was immortalised in Disney’s Mary Poppins film, the birds flocked in great numbers until the early 2000s.
A combination of banning the feed sellers and a hefty fine on those who feed the flock anyway was part of the solution – while the introduction of hawks was another.
Today, a professional falconer accompanies a Harris hawk or peregrine falcon to Trafalgar Square several times a week – a natural predator which warns off the less welcome, smaller bird.
The same technique is used at a number of other London landmarks including BBC Broadcasting House and the Wimbledon tennis complex. It scares the birds away from one area and disperses them more widely – but does not affect the actual population much.
Source
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, Pigeons, Raccoons
What Bird Are Considered To Be A Pest?
Pest Bird
The Canada goose, pigeons, starlings, seagulls and house sparrows are the most common pest birds in our area. Pest birds are responsible for millions of dollars of damage every year. Bird droppings are highly caustic and eat away at roofing and other structural material. They contaminate food, water, and anything they touch. They release airborne spores that can be inhaled by customers, workers and family members. They also carry disease-causing parasites, fleas, ticks, mites, lice and other biting insects.
Are They Dangerous
Pigeon’s droppings and nests are of medical concern because they have over 50 diseases associated with them. Some of these include histoplasmosis, chlamyiosis, and salmonella. Their droppings are also acidic and may mar many different surfaces. The Canada goose is aggressive at protecting its territory and airport safety is jeopardized as many airport bird strike collisions result from geese roosting in open areas near airports. House sparrows and starlings can be a major nuisance in urban areas due to their nesting, eating, and living habits. Gutters and drainage pipes clogged with sparrow or starling nests can back up and cause extensive water damage. Furthermore, numerous fires have been attributed to electrical shorts from machinery housing sparrow or starling nests.
How To Get Rid Of Them
Controlling these birds can be difficult. That’s why our services may include a combination of products and techniques. Corrective landscaping, barriers, and exclusion methods may all be used to rid your home or business of these nuisance birds. source
Can You DIY?
Due to the complexity of treatment and the time required, pigeons, Canada geese, and house sparrows are generally not a pest many people have success in eradicating on their own. Beware when purchasing products online, as many are not effective. Pesticides are not typically effective against birds and can be harmful to people and pets if they are misused or mixed improperly.
How Soon Can We Come?
Our customers are our top priority. The Pigeon Patrol team will help you as soon as we can
Are These Treatments Safe?
Pigeon Patrol uses the least amount of materials possible while still resolving the problem. We utilize natural products, baits, and mechanical means as a form of treatment whenever possible keeping you, your family, employees, and customers safe.
How To Prevent For The Future
Pest bird problems can be difficult to prevent. Many of our clients choose year-round service against pest birds for the protection of their home or business.
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 / Vancouver Pigeon Blog / Birds Inside Home / Pigeons in the cities / Ice Pigeons/ What to do about pigeons/ most common types of sparrows , Damages Caused by Sparrows, How To Keep Raccoons Away, Why Are Raccoons Considered Pests?de-fence, Pigeon Nesting and Breeding Patterns and Behavior What Do I Do With a Bird Trapped in My Wall? Professional Bird Control Company Keep The Birds Away From Your Business Why Are Raccoons Considered Pests?
