A pest control company went to St James’s Hospital in Dublin more than 100 times to deal with recurring infestations of rodents, insects and other pests in the past two years.
Pest activity was reported in areas including a dialysis room, an endoscopy theatre, and on bedside tables in hospital wards, documents released under the Freedom of Information Act revealed.
Among the creepy-crawlies reported at St James’s Hospital during 2015 and 2016 were mice, ants, cockroaches and woodlice.
Black clock beetles – large, carnivorous insects with sharp jaws – were also found by pest-control technicians in a specialised unit for patients undergoing bone-marrow transplants last August.
In 2015, the company attended St James’s Hospital Sterile Services Unit (HSSU) four times in response to reports of rodents.
On one occasion, a mouse was caught in the HSSU kitchen, while another was suspected to have scuttled into an autoclave.
The pest-control firm was also called to the hospital’s Breast Care Clinic four times during the two-year period in response to complaints that included a rodent in a staff tearoom, an infestation of flies in the reception area, and a “bad smell” in the clinic, which staff said was “a common occurrence”.
Last October, the company responded to an emergency call-out and attended a kitchenette on a private ward where they found a mouse “actively feeding off bait”.
The mouse was “caught and bagged and removed”, according to the inspection report.
Towards the end of last year, a sighting of a rodent was reported in an endoscopy theatre at the hospital.
Traps were set and, three days later, a mouse was caught in the theatre’s observatory room.
The company was also called to inspect droppings found in a cupboard beside an operating theatre.
“Old, very dried-up, dead woodlice” were found in the same location upon inspection.
On two occasions last August, stubborn pigeons that had entered Mercer’s Institute for Successful Ageing (MISA) at the hospital refused to leave in spite of the pest control company’s best efforts.
“Could not remove pigeon,” the technician noted in his inspection report. “May leave eventually.”
Two days later, the pigeon appears to have been joined by a friend.
“Two pigeons flying around atrium,” it was reported. “Technician couldn’t remove them due to height and area involved… Door left open to assist pigeons out.”
In April 2015, two dead birds in a ceiling cavity were found to be the source of an infestation of bluebottles in a meeting room in the CEO building of the hospital. Insecticide treatment was carried out.
Ants were a recurring problem during the two-year period.
Up to 150 of the insects were found behind a locker in the Department of Clinical Nutrition, while others were found in different locations including a dialysis room and on a bedside table.
More than €35,000 plus VAT was spent on pest-control services by the hospital in the past two years.
This included an outlay of €275 in February 2016 for a plastic hawk to scare away pigeons and gulls.
A public relations company contracted by St James’s Hospital was contacted for comment in relation to pest control at the facility.
It acknowledged the correspondence but did not provide a response.
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.
When several children took turns releasing about two dozen homing pigeons, most onlookers rejoiced in the celebratory atmosphere, but everyone knew the birds hadn’t flown the coop.
“They’ll fly back to Franklin and beat us home with the tailwind today, so when we get home, they should be home,” said Bill Baker of Franklin, Pa., who, along with his wife, Cheri, brought about 25 of the 100 white birds they raised to Sunday morning’s Release of the Doves gathering at First Presbyterian Church, 3654 S. Main St. (state Route 46).
The couple runs Pa. Doves of Love, a Franklin-based organization that trains the birds to return to their loft from locations up to 100 miles away. In addition, Doves of Love, which serves northwest Pennsylvania and Northeast Ohio, conducts such releases for weddings, funerals, Relay for Life events and other special occasions, Bill noted.
First Presbyterian Church is about 70 air miles from the couple’s home, he added.
For many years, such birds have represented peace, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, love and tranquility, which makes the release a highly fitting celebration between Sunday’s two Easter church services, noted the Rev. Jamie Milton, pastor.
“This is our gift from God,” he said.
After the Rev. Mr. Milton’s homily, the youngsters opened the nine baskets individually, which allowed one to three birds at a time to start their airborne trip to the Bakers’ home.
One of the youngsters who gave several of the pigeons a good send-off was Mason Meyers, 6, of Warren, who was on hand with his parents, Valerie and Jeff Meyers.
“He really, really enjoys it,” said Valerie, who has been a First Presbyterian Church member for more than 20 years.
The Meyers family’s holiday dinner plans, however, were to include a different bird: a turkey, along with carrot cake and homemade Easter bread, she said.
Also doing her part to release a few birds was 5-year-old Natalie McMullen of Berlin Center, who came to the gathering with younger sister Hailey, 3, and the girls’ mother, Nicole McMullen.
The first step in training the birds for the feat is to get them to fly to a designated spot a half-mile away, then increase the distance in increments of one, five, 30 and 50 miles, Bill Baker explained, adding that it took about a year to fully train his pigeons.
“It takes a relatively short time to get them out to 50 miles,” he noted.
A core piece of their training is ensuring the birds receive their vaccines consistently. Also, Baker said, he mixes apple cider, water and vinegar, because such a combination keeps their systems healthy.
It remains a mystery how the pigeons can find their way to a given location many miles away, but part of the answer could be that they identify and memorize certain landmarks along their journey, he said.
Baker said he and his wife derive great pleasure by having their pigeons as a main attraction for special occasions such as the Easter celebration.
“We really enjoy it,” he added. “We enjoy the services as much as they do.”
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.
CINCINNATI — When the most famous bird in the country died at the Cincinnati Zoo, it was more than the extinction of a species: an American way of life was gone.
Every local schoolkid thinks they know the story of Martha, believed to be the world’s last passenger pigeon: She was born in captivity, then lived with a flock here until her death on Sept. 1, 1914.
Found on the floor of her cage that afternoon, the zoo had her carcass frozen into a 300-pound block of ice, then shipped her to the Smithsonian Institution to be preserved.
“By the time she arrived, the ice I think was pretty much gone,” said Dan Marsh, the zoo’s director of Education and Volunteer Programs. “That’s the best they could do in those days. It can still be pretty hot in September.”
Marsh became the zoo’s in-house expert on passenger pigeons leading up to the 100th anniversary of her death. Martha became one of the Smithsonian’s “most treasured possessions” because of how she’d shape the future of American conservation.
She’s now part of a new exhibit at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, chosen from 145 million artifacts and specimens to show how they help scientists understand nature and human culture.
For Martha, the story is much bigger than many people realize.
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.
BIRDS of a feather not only flock together, but learn together too – according to Oxford University research.
Boffins from the university have discovered that homing pigeons may share the human capacity to learn from others and improve their navigational efficiency over time.
Until now it was thought that being able to pass on and improve knowledge down the generations was something only humans and possibly some other primates could do.
But Takao Sasaki and Dora Biro, who are both research associates in the Department of Zoology, conducted a study testing whether pigeons could improve their flight paths over time.
The pair gave groups of birds a specific navigational task and then replaced birds familiar with the route with inexperienced birds which had never flown the route before.
They found that, over time, the student became the teacher as the pairs’s homing performance consistently improved, with later ‘generation’ groups eventually outperforming birds that flew solo or in groups that never changed membership.
Dr Sasaki said: “At one stage scientists thought that only humans had the cognitive capacity to accumulate knowledge as a society.
“Our study shows that pigeons share these abilities with humans, at least to the extent that they are capable of improving on a behavioural solution progressively over time.”
When humans share and pass knowledge down through generations our culture tends to become more complex over time.
By contrast when homing pigeons do it the end result is an increase in efficiency, in this case navigational.
Dr Biro said: “One key novelty, we think, is that the gradual improvement we see is not due to new ‘ideas’ about how to improve the route being introduced by individual birds.
“Instead, the necessary innovations in each generation come from a form of collective intelligence that arises through pairs of birds having to solve the problem together – in other words through ‘two heads being better than one’.”
The findings of the study are published today in the journal Nature Communications.
Dr Sasaki and Dr Biro now intend to build on the study by investigating if a similar style of knowledge sharing happens in other species’ social groups.
Lots of animal groups have to solve the same problems repeatedly and they may use feedback from past outcomes to help them make better decision in the future.
But Keith Shipperley, assistant secretary of City of Oxford Racing Pigeon Club, said he was sceptical of the findings.
The Headington resident, who has raced pigeons since 1965, said: “It would surprise me greatly. There are not many pairs where one is a winner and they breed a winner.
“You would have a great difficulty convincing me.
“Winners are rare, if you want to buy the babies of a champion pigeon you are talking about £25,000 to £30,000.
“These champion pigeons are few and far between”
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.
Homing pigeons may share the human capacity to build on the knowledge of others, improving their navigational efficiency over time, a new Oxford University study has found.
The ability to gather, pass on and improve on knowledge over generations is known as cumulative culture. Until now humans and, arguably some other primates, were the only species thought to be capable of it.
Takao Sasaki and Dora Biro, Research Associates in the Department of Zoology at Oxford University, conducted a study testing whether homing pigeons can gradually improve their flight paths, over time. They removed and replaced individuals in pairs of birds that were given a specific navigational task. Ten chains of birds were released from the same site and generational succession was simulated with the continuous replacement of birds familiar with the route with inexperienced birds who had never flown the course before. The idea was that these individuals could then pass their experience of the route down to the next pair generation, and also enable the collective intelligence of the group to continuously improve the route’s efficiency.
The findings, published in Nature Communications, suggest that over time, the student does indeed become the teacher. The pairs’ homing performance improved consistently over generations – they streamlined their route to be more direct. Later generation groups eventually outperformed individuals that flew solo or in groups that never changed membership. Homing routes were also found to be more similar in consecutive generations of the same chain of pigeon pairs than across them, showing cross-generational knowledge transfer, or a “culture” of homing routes.
The necessary innovations in each generation come from a form of collective intelligence that arises through pairs of birds having to solve the problem together – in other words through ‘two heads being better than one’.
Dora Biro, Associate Professor of Animal Behaviour at Oxford University
Takao Sasaki, co-author and Research Fellow in the Department of Zoology said: ‘At one stage scientists thought that only humans had the cognitive capacity to accumulate knowledge as a society. Our study shows that pigeons share these abilities with humans, at least to the extent that they are capable of improving on a behavioural solution progressively over time. Nonetheless, we do not claim that they achieve this through the same processes.’
When people share and pass knowledge down through generations, our culture tends to become more complex over time, There are many good examples of this from manufacturing and engineering. By contrast, when the process occurs between homing pigeons, the end result is an increase in the efficiency, (in this case navigational), but not necessarily the complexity, of the behaviour.
Takao Sasaki added: ‘Although they have different processes, our findings demonstrate that pigeons can accumulate knowledge and progressively improve their performance, satisfying the criteria for cumulative culture. Our results further suggest that cumulative culture does not require sophisticated cognitive abilities as previously thought.’
This study shows that collective intelligence, which typically focuses on one-time performance, can emerge from accumulation of knowledge over time.
Moving forward, the team intend to build on the study by investigating if a similar style of knowledge sharing and accumulation occurs in other multi-generational species’ social groups. Many animal groups have to solve the same problems repeatedly in the natural world, and if they use feedback from past outcomes of these tasks or events, this has the potential to influence, and potentially improve, the decisions the groups make in the future.
Dora Biro, co-author and Associate Professor of Animal Behaviour concludes: ‘One key novelty, we think, is that the gradual improvement we see is not due to new ‘ideas’ about how to improve the route being introduced by individual birds. Instead, the necessary innovations in each generation come from a form of collective intelligence that arises through pairs of birds having to solve the problem together – in other words through ‘two heads being better than one’.’
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.
