by johnnymarin | Sep 2, 2018 | Bird Deterrent Products
Cheating their way to a one million yuan prize, two Chinese competitors in a domestic homing pigeon race smuggled their birds on a high-speed train, taking home the top prize.
The racers, surnamed Gong and Zhang, took part in the annual competition held by Shanghai Racing Pigeon Association (SRPA) last May, Chinese news outlet Legal Daily reports. The race invited people to send their one-year-old birds in a long distance flying challenge starting from central China’s Henan Province to Shanghai in east China, a course covering over 600 kilometers.
A total of 5,850 pigeons took off from the start line in Henan’s Shangqiu City in the morning of May 1. Gong’s and Zhang’s birds were among the competitors. All participants were tagged with a tracking device that timed their flight, and their results would be announced online once the birds reached the destination.
Participating pigeons were required to wear a tracking ring. /Shanghai Morning Post Photo
At around 4:30 p.m., the first pigeon touched the finish line, with the winner breaking the existing record. The bird belonged to Zhang. Within the next hour, another three birds arrived at the goal, all belonging to either Zhang or Gong.
Shocked and baffled, many pigeon racers soon started questioning the results, especially after they discovered that Zhang’s and Gong’s birds covered longer distances with shorter times, Shanghai Morning Post reported last year.
Receiving complaints from multiple participants, SRPA initiated an investigation towards the first 1,000 birds returning to Shanghai and reported the case to the police.
Pigeons qualified for the race were stamped after SRPA’s investigation. /Shanghai Morning Post Photo
When the organization contacted Gong and Zhang, both racers claimed that their birds were already lost or dead. They later voluntarily gave up the cash prizes which totaled over a million yuan (approximately 146,000 US dollars).
The two were later arrested by the police for investigation and confessed they had cheated during the race and killed the winner pigeons.
Gong told police that they had trained the pigeons before the race to fly to a rally point near the starting line. Their plan was to collect the birds during the race and smuggle them back to Shanghai via high-speed train.
Their plan worked. But fearing their fowl play would result in serious legal consequences, Gong and Zhang chose to give up the prizes.
The duo each received a three-year suspended sentence, Legal Daily reported the court’s decision on Monday. A district-level court in Shanghai fined Gong, the criminal mastermind 30,000 yuan (4,400 US dollars) and Zhang 20,000 yuan (2,900 US dollars).
About 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 Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products four years in a row.
Contact Info: 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD (www.pigeonpatrol.ca)
by johnnymarin | Sep 1, 2018 | Pigeons in the News
Martha died Sept. 1, 1914. She was the last of her species, the last passenger pigeon.
Passenger pigeons were once the most numerous bird in North America. Estimates range from 3 billion to 5 billion passenger pigeons in North America when the Europeans first reached the New World.
The scientific name Ectopistes migratorius combines the Greek word for wander and the Latin word for the one who migrates.
This species wandered over a huge range of eastern and midwestern forests and western prairies — from Texas into Canada, almost to Hudson’s Bay. It roamed from the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi River Valley and up along the Missouri River to the Rocky Mountain Front, as well as north into Canada. A few even crossed the Rocky Mountains.
Members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition recorded in their journals seeing the passenger pigeon, even eating a few, along the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers in what became Montana.
While pairs and small flocks were once common in Montana, in the East and as far west as Minnesota and Missouri, the bird once roosted and nested in the hundreds of thousands, even in the hundreds of millions.
“When these roosts are first discovered, the inhabitants from considerable distances visit them in the night, with guns, clubs, long poles, pots of sulphur, and various other engines of destruction,” bird illustrator Alexander Wilson described the scene of a slaughter in Kentucky in the first decade of the nineteenth century.
As settlers pushed westward, cutting the trees and draining the wetlands, the pigeons lost nesting and roosting sites. No matter where the birds migrated, local people and market hunters tracked and slaughtered them.
The railroad and telegraph made it easy to learn where the birds were and to bring the market hunters, both shooters and netters. The market hunters shipped the product — barrels of pigeon or coops of live pigeons — by train on a national market.
Pigeons were here in Montana when beavers still built dams that created the pools and meadows moistened the plains; before trappers removed the beavers. Pigeons were here when the trees lining the Missouri River and tributary streams were cut to fuel steamships moving up and down the river. Removing beavers and trees exposed soil to drying and eroding, and destroyed habitat used by the pigeons.
In September 1881 “numerous” pigeons were reported in several locations in Custer County, and the following September the Army telegraph operator at Fort Benton returned from a day’s hunt with 12 passenger pigeons.
Then the birds disappeared from Montana.
In 1892 the state’s largest newspaper, The Anaconda Standard, reported that the passenger pigeon had been “utterly exterminated” in Montana.
Market hunters get a lot of the blame. But accessories were the organizers of shooting competitions who bought pigeons by the coop off the national market, up to 25,000 live birds, for major shoots out East. Organizers in Montana bought fewer birds, but they bought live passenger pigeons; for example, the Montana Territorial Fair of 1873 featured a trapshoot with live birds.
As the passenger pigeon declined in number, gun clubs turned to shooting newly invented glass balls and later clay pigeons, particularly Remington’s popular “blue rock” brand, as well as live pigeons raised in coops rather than wild passenger pigeons.
Extinction is forever. As The Anaconda Standard reported in 1899, “Gone, forever gone — the wild pigeon, a fable and a romance.”
Let’s conserve the remaining wild flora and fauna of Montana. Let’s do it for ourselves and future generations.
About 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 Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products four years in a row.
Contact Info: 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD (www.pigeonpatrol.ca)
by johnnymarin | Aug 31, 2018 | Pigeon Patrol's Services
The borough mayor of Mercier–Hochelaga-Maisonneuve says there are no plans to remove a family of pigeons living inside a traffic light outside a bustling Metro station.
The birds have built their nest in the window of the traffic light that alternately flashes the walking sign and the stop sign. The traffic light is in between a Metro station and a bus station and attracts a lot of foot traffic.
It’s unclear how many pigeons are living in the nest, however, they have been there since at least July 2. The nest appears to have grown so large that some of the materials used to build the nest are spilling out onto the sidewalk.
The borough mayor says there are “no specific plans” to remove the birds.
“I like [the nest] quite a lot,” Mayor Pierre Lessard-Blais told CBC via text message.
About 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 Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products four years in a row.
Contact Info: 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD (www.pigeonpatrol.ca)
by johnnymarin | Aug 30, 2018 | Pigeon Patrol's Services
Chicago pigeon racing fans won’t see their birds come home to roost as fast as they hoped.
An ordinance to let breeders of homing pigeons keep them in lofts in Chicago was held in committee Monday. The measure’s sponsor, Northwest Side Ald. Gilbert Villegas, 36th, said opponents of the idea made their voices heard after he introduced it last month.
“I’m going to have a meeting with both sides and hopefully come up with a compromise,” Villegas said.
Pigeon racing is “deeply loved in Poland,” Villegas said when he brought forward the plan. He was joined in sponsoring it by fellow Northwest Side Aldermen Ariel Reboyras, 30th, and Nick Sposato, 38th.
The ordinance would let breeders of “pedigreed rock doves” keep the birds at their homes in lofts “that are inspected and certified on a regular basis to ensure the birds are kept in clean, sanitary and healthy conditions.”
The City Council outlawed homing pigeons in residential areas in 2004 after people living near residents who kept the birds complained about getting “splattered” when they tried to hang out laundry or sunbathe. At the time, pigeon supporters said their pets are unfairly derided as “rats with wings.”
Members of Chicago racing clubs went to federal court, but in 2005 the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judge upheld an earlier district court ruling that found the city was within its rights to ban racing pigeons as pets.
About 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 Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products four years in a row.
Contact Info: 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD (www.pigeonpatrol.ca)
by johnnymarin | Aug 29, 2018 | Pigeon Patrol's Services
Thousands of Teesside racing pigeons took flight for an unusual commemoration of the end of the First World War .
During the 1914-18 conflict, pigeons were used to fly crucial messages back home from the fields of conflict.
And at the weekend, about 9,000 North-east pigeons – including 2,500 from Teesside – recreated those journeys by winging their way from Ypres in Belgium to their home lofts back in Britain.
After being “liberated” at 6.30am on Sunday, July 22, the fastest of all 9,000, flying home in 6hrs 45 minutes, was a pigeon belonging to the Bowden brothers, Mick and Trevor, of Skelton Green . And the winning bird’s name? Brexit – of course!
The race was organised by the Hartlepool-based Up North Combine, which is the UK’s largest racing organisation.
And president John Thompson said the Ypres event was a fitting way to recognise the invaluable contribution pigeons made in the First World War.
He said: “Thousands of pigeons played a crucial role in the Great War – carrying life-saving messages over enemy lines and later even being awarded medals for bravery.
“A number of pigeons were honoured, including one of the most well-known, Pigeon 2709, who, in 1917, was sent to deliver a crucial message back to headquarters when he came under enemy fire and was shot in the leg. A 20 mile flight took 21 hours, but he got the message home before dying the next day.
“With the advantages of communication technology today, it is easy to forget that homing pigeons were often the difference between life and death for First World War service men and women.”
Said to be one of the toughest birds on the planet – voluntarily flying more than 20,000 miles a year – the birds used their natural instincts, following landmarks by aerial recognition, as well as their sense of smell, to ensure messages were safely delivered.
And it was that natural instinct which ensured about 80% of those taking part at the weekend reached home the same day, with the rest landing on Monday.
Sunday’s race came four years after a similar event held to mark the centenary of the start of World War One.
Winners, nationally and regionally, were awarded medals and diplomas symbolising the Dickin Medals for gallantry handed out to 62 animals – including 32 pigeons – during World Wars One and Two.
About 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 Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products four years in a row.
Contact Info: 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD (www.pigeonpatrol.ca)
