by johnnymarin | Oct 16, 2018 | Pigeons in the News
At least 10 pigeons hit an Air Malta plane in a bird strike incident last month which delayed the fight but did not injure anyone.
Malta International Airport had reported at the time that a bird hit the aircraft on departure.
Transport Malta told The Sunday Times of Malta that “according to preliminary reports, between two and 10 pigeons hit the aircraft and its No. 2 engine” that day.
However, sources have put the number of pigeons involved as being at least 10, although only one of them is reported to have got into the engine.
The 7.20am flight to London on September 20 was delayed by about three-and-a-half hours for the aircraft to be examined and cleaned.
The online journal Aviation Voice reported that the Airbus A319-100 was accelerating for take-off when it encountered a flock of birds, causing multiple impacts and prompting the crew to abort take-off at high speed.
Transport Malta said the incident “cannot be considered serious”.
It said that serious accidents were investigated by the Bureau of Air Accident Investigation and explained that according to standards and practices recommended by the International Civil Aviation Organisation, a serious incident is one “involving circumstances indicating that an accident nearly occurred”.
However, one industry source – a pilot – expressed scepticism over this assessment of the incident.
“Any bird strike can have consequences but a bird strike involving that number of pigeons can be a hair-raising experience even for a very experienced pilot,” he said.
He gave his reassurance, however, that “the idea that birds clog an engine is not correct… modern turbofan engines are quite resilient”.
Each strike requires the aircraft to be inspected, leading to delays and inconvenience to passengers
The pilot said any bird strike was taken seriously by airlines because even a small bird could cause damage.
“Each strike requires the aircraft to be inspected, leading to delays and inconvenience to passengers.”
Another pilot, a commercial airline captain, said bird strikes can occur during any phase of flight up to just over 5,000 feet but are most likely to occur during the take-off, initial climb, approach and landing phases. This is because birds are more easily encountered at these lower levels.
“Bird strikes complicate flight operations and pose a real threat to lives, which is why they are, or rather should be, taken very seriously,” he said.
Bird strikes are a global phenomenon in aviation. A total of 48 were recorded at Malta International Airport last year, 19 more than in 2017. The average number of bird strikes between 2014 and 2016 was 33.
The airport has bird-hazard management procedures in place that include bird-presence patrols, harassment through acoustic distress calls, removal of food and water sources at the aerodrome and regular cutting of grass to eliminate shelter.
The MIA declined to comment on the latest strike due to the “ongoing investigation”.
Transport Malta said it expected the investigation to identify any weaknesses in the process being used by MIA to reduce the possibility of bird strikes.
Questions sent to Air Malta early last week remained unanswered.
In response to a passenger who complained on the Air Malta Facebook page about the long wait she had to endure, Air Malta apologised and asked her to “get in touch with Customer Care team for due compensation”.
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 | Oct 15, 2018 | Pigeon Patrol's Services
The psychologist BF Skinner put pigeons in a box to study their responses to stimuli. One cohort were given grain if they pecked a button and they quickly worked out the mechanism by which they were being rewarded. In another group, however, grain was dispensed entirely randomly, with no input from the pigeon having any effect. Rather than clocking this distribution as entirely senseless, Skinner found these pigeons instead contrived ever more elaborate patterns of behaviour to get the desired effect. Some walked in circles, others pecked at the walls, each thinking they had intuited some replicable method of attaining their desire. I think of that second group of pigeons a lot, pacing anti-clockwise round our bedroom, humming as I rub my son’s temple in a desperate attempt to get him to sleep.
The issue of sleep is one I’ve not really broached in this column since – whisper it – my son had previously slept quite well in his early days. We have friends with toddlers who’ve never slept three hours in a single block, so we know how obnoxious that sounds. But for a brief, exalted time that now seems to wave to us from a distant past, he did exactly that. And we held this like a shameful secret, fearing the magic of this particular arrangement would be broken if we said it aloud. Or, like Superman’s parents, feared our beloved Clark would be taken away from us so that his super powers would be studied.
But that was then. Now, we spend our nights pondering over the wisdom of evolution, to have made these small, delicate objects simultaneously so reliant on sleep and so bad at realising this fact. My son resists sleep so enthusiastically, I’m starting to think that being closely cuddled and softly shushed is, for him, roughly equivalent to taking cocaine.
One thing that does help is music. Partly to make it more pleasurable for me and partly because I’m the worst, I feed my son a steady diet of recursive ambient music by people who sell tote bags at their gigs. Autechre’s Vletrmx21 is one of my favourite songs, now slowly curdling in my brain from applying it several times a day like an antiseptic scrub for his waking mind. If you were to look in on me putting him down for a nap, it would be to that track. It sounds like the dying siren of a rescue droid, drifting through the dust of a dead planet, seeking signs of life.
But the abstruse electronica I’ve been peddling turns out to be nowhere near as effective as my wife’s secret weapon. It renders my son unconscious as reliably as chloroform. It’s the strangled tones of Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman straining their way through the Love Medley from Moulin Rouge.
Perhaps, were he to spy our son’s fate, some poor pigeon, tracing futile circles in a distant lab, will thank his lucky stars.
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 | Oct 14, 2018 | Pigeon Patrol's Services
NEW ALBANY, Indiana — When Stephen Price agreed to let one of his tenants bring home a gaggle of pigeons, he didn’t know what he was getting himself into.
To be fair, the tenant, Robert “Painter Bob” Maskalick, warned him.
“He always told me, he said, ‘One day, you’re going to inherit these,'” Price said, sitting in the backyard of a house he owns on the corner of East Main and Vincennes streets in New Albany.
Maskalick built coops for the 40-or-so pigeons, kept them fed and periodically let them fly free. The birds, a mixture of roller and homing pigeons equipped with a natural GPS and survival sense, always came back.
Price thinks the birds helped Maskalick, in his early 60s, live longer than he would have otherwise. Maskalick, who had a heart condition, died about a year ago.
“I think they actually gave him several years longer, because it has a calming effect,” Price said of the pigeons. “If you ever would come out here and sit and watch, it’s like watching an aquarium or something … It calms you down, it mellows you out.”
The soft, rolling coo of the pigeons is something like a lullaby. With strangers around, they cock their heads and perch on edges. Most of Price’s pigeons are white, glistening in the low, late-afternoon sun, peeking through the wire. Others are white with black speckles, or the signature deep blues with small patches of shimmering green.
Price used popcorn — a pigeon favorite — to coax them out one day last week. Each one flapped its wings through the open gate before swiftly changing direction and landing atop the coop. They stayed there — free, but safe. Price said the birds know when darkness is near, and that the setting sun means predators are lurking. So when he releases them in the evening, they stay close, despite their ability to fly hundreds of miles away.
Still, Price has lost pigeons to hawks.
“It’s nature, but it’s very morbid,” he said.
Other than needing protection from harm, pigeons are “durable” birds, Price said. They need little more than food and clean water.
“They’re just really tough birds,” but soft as pillows, he added.
After Maskalick died, Price, who lives a few houses away and owns several nearby properties, took on the role of pigeon caretaker. He admits he’s considered getting rid of the birds, but he’s too attached to go through with it. His adoration is never more evident than when he talks to the pigeons in a steady, high-pitched tone.
“You gotta talk real nice to them,” he explained.
It’s a tactic Price has learned by doing, just like he learned almost everything else about pigeon care-taking. He’s also gotten insight from fellow pigeon people who drop tips here and there. And yes, there are plenty of fellow pigeon people. Later this month, Price and his daughter (who happens to be a longtime bird lover) will go to the National Young Bird Show in Louisville. It’s one of the country’s largest all-breed pigeon shows, according to the event’s website.
Rick Kilgore, president of the Indiana Pigeon Club and owner of more than 100 pigeons, said it’s a well-respected show competition that attracts people from all over the world.
Kilgore has raised pigeons since he was about 6 years old. He likes the challenge of improving a breed (there are hundreds of pigeon breeds) and the friendly competition of a show or race.
The Indiana Pigeon Club has 40 to 50 members and keeps growing, Kilgore said. More 4-H kids are staying interested, and it’s those kids who will keep the hobby alive.
For now, Price just enjoys the company of his pigeons.
“I tell a lot of the guys who rent from me this … in life, stay grounded and you’ll be happier,” he said. “… By living simple and doing really simple things, it’s amazing how happy you can be by doing literally almost nothing.
“You just have to kind of relax and enjoy it.”
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 | Oct 13, 2018 | Pigeon Spikes
The Carolina Waterfowl Rescue is trying to figure out who is poisoning pigeons at a shopping center in Union County.
The organization posted a video on Facebook showing the disturbing effects on one of the birds believed to have eaten poisoned corn at the Wesley Chapel Shopping Center.
“Flushed his stomach essentially got all the poisoned feed out,” said Bayleigh Machaffie with Carolina Waterfowl Rescue.
So far, four birds have been brought to the rescue, most too sick to help.
“So basically when birds ingest the poison seeds, they’re able to fly around a little bit before they start seeing symptoms of the poisoning. So they can get a little ways, but they come from the same intersection,” Machaffie said.
The rescue said the seed is a legal remedy to scare off unwanted birds. But if too much is eaten, it can prove fatal, not just in pigeons, but other pets, even children.
“It’s not good just to have it lying around,” said Machaffie.
Carolina Waterfowl Rescue does not know who is spreading the potentially fatal feed, but the hope is the person will see this story and stop.
“Any animal that is mistreated I don’t think is right,” said Machaffie. “They’re not doing anything to you, like anything bad to you.”
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 | Oct 12, 2018 | Pigeons in the News
In the third floor hallway of the Pentagon, just outside the Army Chief of Staff’s office, there is a pigeon.
Walking the corridors, the lifelike pigeon stands out among the cases of military history that display Revolutionary-era bayonets, Civil War uniforms and replicas of helicopters used in Vietnam. Upon closer inspection, one might notice the pigeon is so life-like because it has been taxidermied. It’s also missing one leg.
That pigeon’s name is “President Wilson” — an unsung hero of World War I that made a daring flight to save U.S. troops exactly 100 years ago on Friday.
President Wilson was a military carrier pigeon, one of many in the U.S. Army Signal Corps that delivered messages between commanders and troops on the front lines. The pigeons were especially useful tools of communication during World War I when the telephone and telegraph were still unreliable new technologies.
According to U.S. military accounts recorded in the U.S. Army Center of Military History and the National Archives, Wilson was born in France and first assigned to the U.S. Army’s newly formed Tank Corps, delivering messages to Tank Battalions commanded by Col. George S. Patton in the Battle of Saint-Mihiel.
But soon afterward, Wilson was assigned to an infantry unit conducting operations near Grandpré during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive.
On the morning of Oct. 5, 1918, his unit came under attack, and Wilson was dispatched to send a message that the unit needed artillery support. During the 25-mile journey, German soldiers spotted him and began firing into his flight path. (It should be noted that some accounts of Wilson’s heroics place the event as occurring on Nov. 5, but multiple historians reached by ABC corroborated the Oct. 5 date.)
Wilson was hit several times, losing a leg and suffering a wound to his chest, but he managed to deliver the message in a record 25 minutes.
Surviving his wounds, Wilson was retired and sent to the U.S. Army Signal Corps Breeding and Training Center at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, where he would live another eleven years.
After his death, Wilson was taxidermied and presented to the Smithsonian Institution before being transferred to the custody of the U.S. Army in 2008. Now, located in the prestigious halls of the U.S. military’s headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, Wilson serves as a reminder that these simple birds — often considered a nuisance by the general public — were once war heroes.
Carrier pigeons were used by both the Allied and Central Powers during World War I and could even provide updates to military commanders when launched in midair from planes.
“Launched mid-mission, the birds would fly back to their coops and update ground commanders on what the pilots had observed,” the National Archives wrote in a blog post in January. “Quick updates like this were essential for leaders to know what the battlefield looked like and what the enemy was doing in its own trenches.”
“Tanks carried the birds in order to relay the advance of individual units. Even after the introduction of the radio, pigeons were often the easiest way to help coordinate tank units without exposing the men to dangerous fire. Without a radio set, the soldiers would have had to leave the relative safety of their tanks to relay or receive orders,” the Archives said.
When the pigeons weren’t in use, they were stored in mobile units, often converted horse carriages or even double-decker buses.
The birds are thought to use low-frequency sound waves to map their environments and find their way from location to location.
Another famous World War I pigeon was known as Cher Ami — his moment of heroism came during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in the fall of 1918.
The German Army surrounded elements of the 77th Division for five days, at one moment confusing the Americans as they accidentally shelled their own men in an attempt to fire at the enemy.
Messages were unable to get to U.S. commanders, so Cher Ami was released as the division’s last hope. Like Wilson, Cher Ami flew through a barrage of gunfire, also sustaining injuries to his leg and chest. But he successfully delivered the message, ending the friendly fire.
The French even awarded Cher Ami the Croix de Guerre with Palm, a military decoration, for his service.
Military carrier pigeons were again used in World War II. In that war, 32 pigeons were awarded the United Kingdom’s Dickin Medal for their heroic actions.
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)
