by Pigeon Patrol | Sep 19, 2024 | Bird Netting
AINESVILLE, Fla. — A Florida Museum of Natural History gallery exhibit opening Sept. 1 illustrates how human actions can lead to the extinction of a species—even those considered common just a century ago.
“A Shadow Over the Earth: The Life and Death of the Passenger Pigeon” marks the 100-year anniversary of the bird’s extinction, and features illustrations, artwork and poetry from famed naturalists who documented the pigeon’s biology and its decline. Visitors may also learn about related Florida Museum research and view a well-preserved pair of Passenger Pigeons mounted in the 1890s.
Prior to its extinction 100 years ago, the Passenger Pigeon was one of the most abundant birds in the world, with population estimates ranging from 3 billion to 5 billion.
“James Audubon witnessed a flock that took three days to fly over a locality in north central Kentucky,” said Jessica Oswald, a former Florida Museum ornithology graduate student.
The populous pigeons couldn’t survive large-scale commercial hunting and habitat loss, however. The world’s last Passenger Pigeon, named Martha, died in the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden on Sept. 1, 1914, at 29 years old.
“Museum scientists have been studying endangered and extinct birds around the world for 20 years,” Florida Museum exhibit developer Tina Choe said. “We’re very excited to highlight the Passenger Pigeon story because understanding the past is one key to a better future.”
Baby pigeons with mother (wood pigeon), born in a flower pot, on the windowsill, in Paris, France.
The exhibit explains how the loss of the Passenger Pigeon changed social attitudes and spurred new legislation protecting migratory birds, which played a part in saving other species from the same fate. It takes more than laws to conserve wildlife, however, so visitors may learn in the exhibit what small, easy steps they can take to protect Florida’s native birds.
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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.
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by Pigeon Patrol | Sep 19, 2024 | Pigeons, Pigeons in the News, Raccoons
The New York Pigeon is a photography book that reveals the unexpected beauty of the omnipresent pigeon as if Vogue magazine devoted its pages to birds, rather than fashion models. In spite of pigeons’ ubiquity in New York and other cities, we never really see them closely and know very little about their function in the urban ecosystem. This book brings to light the intriguing history, behavior and splendor of a bird that we frequently overlook.
The result of eight years of passionate inquiry is a photographic study of the birds’ power and allure (as seen on the cover of New York magazine and the New York Times). The dramatic, hyper-real individual studio portraits capture the personalities, expressiveness, glorious feather iridescence and deeply hued eyes. High-speed strobe photography illustrates pigeons’ graceful flight and dramatic wing movements (as featured in Audubon magazine).
While The New York Pigeon is primarily a photography book, it also tells the five-thousand-year story of the feral pigeon. Why are pigeons so successful in cities and not in the countryside? Why do they have such diverse plumage? How have pigeons adapted to survive on almost any food? Why are pigeons able to fly up to 500 miles per day but rarely do?
How did Harvard psychologist B.F. Skinner teach pigeons to do complicated tasks, from tracking missile targets to recognizing individual human faces? Why can pigeons see in the ultraviolet light spectrum and half of their brain is used for visual perception?
The New York Pigeon lovingly describes and illuminates the beauty of nature that is alive in our midst. With this book, the beautiful, savvy, graceful, kind pigeon will be invisible no more.
Andrew Garn is a native New Yorker who grew up surrounded by pigeons, he has been photographing, rehabilitating and observing Columba Livia for eight years. Since 2008, when he exhibited photographs, video installations and sculptures of pigeons at A.M. Richard Fine Art in Brooklyn, NY, he has continued to photograph them. Documenting the entire spectrum of development, including full-grown pigeons, newborns, babies and “squeakers”, he has grown to love these birds.
Mr. Garn is a fine art and editorial photographer whose work has been widely exhibited and appeared in the pages of numerous magazines including the New York Times Magazine, Fortune, Forbes, Interview, Vogue, Vibe, Time, Newsweek, Der Spiegel, French Photo, Elle Décor, New York and Bloomberg LP. He is also the recipient of grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, the Graham Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the J.M. Kaplan Fund, among others.
Singapore, Singapore – April 2, 2024. Pigeons standing on wire in Chinatown, Singapore
His previous books include Exit to Tomorrow: The History of the Future (Rizzoli, 2007), Subway Style: Architecture and Design of the NYC Subway (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, and the MTA 2005), winner of New York Society Book Award, The Houseboat Book (Rizzoli/Universe 2003), and Bethlehem Steel (Princeton Architectural Press 2000).
Emily S. Rueb is an editor for the New York Times metropolitan section. She writes regularly on avian subjects and was the creator of Bird Week and the “Hawk Cam” which chronicled the lives of a red-tailed hawk family in Washington Square Park.
Rita McMahon is the founding director of New York City’s only wildlife rehabilitation facility the Wild Bird Fund. The non- profit facility, operated by
volunteers and vet science trainees helps over 4,500 injured birds per year.
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 | Sep 19, 2024 | Bird Spike, Pigeons, Sparrows
Homing pigeons with their cryptic inborn GPS systems have been reliably delivering messages for at least three millennia. Pigeons announced the winners of ancient Olympiads. They delivered military messages for Genghis Khan and were the first to reach England with the outcome of the Battle of Waterloo. They’ve brought home the mail in war and peace. Many were awarded medals for distinguished service in World Wars One and Two.2 (No less amazing, of course, are the enormous migratory feats of other birds, but homing pigeons are easier to study because they travel on cue and not in response to the seasons.)
Pigeon With Egg in the nest photography. Birds Photography. Pigeon Hatching Eggs
And while “the magnetic sense of pigeons provides an excellent compass for orientation,” writes Hagstrum, “the geomagnetic field makes a poor map.”
Homing pigeons likely rely on a number of sensory cues to find their way home. While vision may be valuable locally, birds with frosted contact lenses manage to arrive after long trips to within 500 meters of their destination, so sight doesn’t seem to be the key.3 And while “the magnetic sense of pigeons provides an excellent compass for orientation,” writes Hagstrum, “the geomagnetic field makes a poor map.”4
The June 1997 pigeon disaster was one of four pigeon races disrupted in 1997 and 1998 in Europe and the northeastern United States. The only common element, as Hagstrum reported back in the year 2000, was the intersection of the racecourses with the path of an accelerating Concorde supersonic transport.5 This finding supported the idea that pigeons don’t achieve their precision long-distance navigation through reliance on vision or the earth’s magnetic field, since sonic booms disrupt neither. Yet the question remained: how do sonic booms disturb the birds’ natural abilities?
Hagstrum said, “When I realized the birds in that race were on the same flight path as the Concorde, I knew it had to be infrasound.” Infrasound is extremely low frequency sound generated by deep ocean waves. These waves cause tiny vibrations of planetary surfaces and atmosphere, called microseisms and microbaroms, respectively. Because of variations in terrain, infrasonic characteristics can form a map of the landscape.
Hagstrum’s latest study, published 15 February 2013 in the Journal of Experimental Biology, sorted through data on pigeon flights in upstate New York between 1968 and 1987 and confirmed that sonic boom disruption of the “sounds of silence” was likely responsible for the 1997 loss of over 60,000 trained birds. Moreover, his study represents a major piece for the how-birds-navigate puzzle.
The New York birds were part of a Cornell University experimental program. For nearly two decades researchers recorded that birds released from one of three standard sites—Jersey Hill—generally failed to make it home. Those from the other sites could find their way. Only once in those two decades did the Jersey Hill birds make it home to Cornell: on August 13, 1969. Meteorological records demonstrated that the area on that day experienced a temperature inversion. Hagstrum believes, based on acoustic modeling, that the terrain of the path between Jersey Hill and Cornell normally creates a “sound shadow,” obscuring the home loft by directing the infrasonic signals associated with it high into the atmosphere. On the one good day, differing atmospheric conditions would have made the infrasonic signals detectable to birds from Jersey Hill.6
Hagstrum believes that infrasonic signals from a home loft normally act like a homing beacon for birds to get their bearings as they orient using other signals such as the sun or stars, the earth’s magnetic field, and visual or olfactory clues.7 Ill-timed sonic booms, earthquakes, and terrain that coincidentally misdirects the sound waves as they propagate through the air all have the potential to disrupt infrasonic signals that normally bring these birds home.
You may listen to these subtle sounds yourself in amplified recordings from the University of Hawaii Infrasound Laboratory.8 As you listen, marvel at the ways God designed for birds to find their way using an earthward-directed GPS-like system for more than 6,000 years since creation.
by Pigeon Patrol | Sep 19, 2024 | Bird Netting
It’s a modern mystery: how did 60,000 homing pigeons get lost between France and England on June 29, 1997, during the race commemorating the hundredth anniversary of the Royal Pigeon Racing Association? Unraveling the cause of this bizarre event, Jonathan Hagstrum of the U.S. Geological Survey may have finally filled in the pieces to the more ancient question of how these remarkable birds normally find their way home from distant unfamiliar places in all weather, day or night, in the first place.
Feral pigeons (Columba livia domestica) in love.
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 | Sep 19, 2024 | Bird Spikes, Columbidae, Doves
Passenger pigeons, so abundant during the early 19th century that skies darkened with passing flocks, may often have been nothing special in numbers during much of their last million years.
DNA from the extinct species, coaxed from toe pads of three museum specimens, suggests that population numbers fluctuated in the long term. The breeding population could have been at times only roughly several hundred thousand or even just tens of thousands of birds, says Chih-Ming Hung of National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei.
That’s a surprise. A survey of various other animals suggests that the size of the breeding population, like that pulled from the pigeon DNA, is typically about one-tenth of the whole population, Hung says. Yet the estimates of breeding populations in the new study are only one ten-thousandth of the 3 billion to 5 billion birds estimated in 19th-century eyewitness reports.
Hung doesn’t dispute those huge 19th century estimates. The DNA tells a story of bird numbers that soared and sank over time, he and his colleagues argue June 16 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He would need more analysis, he says, to see if an extreme crash during the most recent Ice Age would have produced such a skewed ratio in the last century. Or, in a more controversial scenario, he proposes that passenger pigeons may have had population booms and busts repeatedly on much shorter time scales.
Hung became curious about genetic trends of the passenger pigeon after a pivotal conversation several years ago regarding the 100th anniversary this September of the death of Martha, a passenger pigeon in the Cincinnati Zoo and the last known individual of the species.
Museum specimens’ toe pads provide the best picture yet of passenger pigeon genetics, Hung says. From the amount of variation the researchers found in the specimens’ DNA, they could work out an approximate number for the birds that were passing on their genes, called the effective population size.
Over the last million years, Hung and his colleagues found, the typical number of breeding birds could have averaged something like 330,000. Another method found lower numbers but a similarly small order of magnitude: 170,000 at the population’s height to perhaps 50,000 at its worst. The ups and downs over deep history fit with the timing of glacial cycles and with computer simulations of the niches available for the birds as climate changed.
Genetic tests can’t detect population ups and downs at the scale of a mere century. But Hung and his colleagues speculate that pigeon populations might have fluctuated in the short term too, perhaps shrinking drastically during times of skimpy acorns.
In theory, a species that surges in mind-boggling numbers certainly can go extinct quickly, says entomologist Jeffrey A. Lockwood of the University of Wyoming. The Rocky Mountain locust (Melanoplus spretus) is an example that savaged wide swaths of cropland during its booms but abruptly went extinct at the end of the 19th century when farmers took over the very specific habitats it needed to breed.
But passenger pigeons couldn’t have boomed in huge numbers quickly, says conservation biologist Stanley Temple of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The birds tended just one nest a year and raised one chick. “There is absolutely no way these birds could rapidly increase their numbers,” he says. “It would take them probably centuries to increase their population even tenfold, let alone several orders of magnitude.”
Hung and critics agree that natural cycles, either short- or long-term, do not mean that the passenger pigeon would have eventually cycled into oblivion on its own. David Blockstein, senior scientist at the National Council for Science and the Environment in Washington, D.C., has described how intensive shooting at breeding colonies contributed to the species’ demise by disrupting its reproduction. And ecologist Stuart Pimm of Duke University says, “The basic cause for the passenger pigeon’s decline was the destruction of the Eastern forests.” The message of the paper, Hung says, is that “the passenger pigeon had repeatedly recovered from population lows throughout its history.” Then came 19th-century humans.
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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