Homing pigeon still missing after release from police custody

Homing pigeon still missing after release from police custody

EPPING – The fate of a homing pigeon that stopped by the Epping police station after getting lost on a flight home to Massachusetts is unknown.

The 4-month-old bird hasn’t been seen since it was released from police custody earlier this month.

The pigeon first arrived outside the police station on Sept. 29. Worried about its safety, police took the bird into custody and held him over night.

Police learned that his owner was Gerry Gaumond of New Braintree, Mass., and that he became lost during a pigeon race that began in New York. He was expected to return home with the rest of Gaumond’s pigeons participating in the race, but it’s believed that he lost his way because he’s young and inexperienced.

Police released the pigeon on Sept. 30 and assumed he would make it home by the end of the day. However, he was found a short distance away and returned to the police department.

A second attempt to send the bird home on its own was made on Oct. 3 when Animal Control Officer Bill Hansen brought the pigeon to Depot Road in the area of the Exit 6 on-ramp to Route 101 and let him go.

The bird didn’t immediately take off. It flew up onto the roof of a house nearby and perched itself there.

Hansen didn’t hang around to see if the pigeon would leave. He assumed it would get its bearings and take off when it was ready.

“The last time I saw him he was sitting on that roof,” Hansen said Thursday.

Police received sightings of the pigeon in the area where it was released days later, but no one seems to know where he ended up.

Gaumond said it’s possible the pigeon could still fly home, but unlikely.

“Every day the chances get slimmer, but you never know. There’s a one in a million chance,” he said.

Gaumond, who races pigeons with his daughter through a club, said he’s had pigeons arrive home two months after they disappeared.

But their chances of survival diminish the longer they’re in the wild as they become easy prey for other animals.

Gaumond will soon begin breeding more pigeons to fly in races next year.

Source

Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor or 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


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Pigeons begin returning to Mosul as militants retreat

Pigeons begin returning to Mosul as militants retreat

MOSUL, Iraq – For the first time in over two years, flocks of white and grey pigeons can be seen circling Mosul’s rooftops.

Among the many rules imposed by the Islamic State group when it seized the northern Iraqi city was a ban on breeding or flying the birds, which many Iraqis keep as pets or raise for food. The extremists feared young men practicing the hobby would neglect their religious studies or spy on female neighbours from the rooftops.

Many Mosul residents slaughtered their flocks or confined them to cages, fearing detention or death if they were found out – but 17-year-old Mustafa Othman couldn’t bring himself to do it.

“I couldn’t bear locking them up, my heart wouldn’t allow me to do it,” he said. “They were created to fly.”

Othman would sneak upstairs to feed his birds. He couldn’t clap or yell to fly them in formation, but he left the hatches open so they could come and go.

“Every time he came up here, he risked his life,” said his brother, Afan. “It’s crazy, but he loves them.”

Othman’s father gave him his first birds when he was just 11 years old. He always loved animals, and the pigeons were one of the few pets his family allowed him to have in their small home.

Their rooftop and the balconies betrayed other secrets kept from Islamic State militants, who overran Mosul in the summer of 2014 and imposed their harsh version of Islamic law.

The Othmans threw a blanket over a satellite dish near the pigeon coop, so they could keep up with the news. They hung thick curtains across balconies so that women in the family could water plants and hang laundry without wearing the all-encompassing veils mandated by the extremist group.

When Iraqi forces at last drove IS from the neighbourhood earlier this month, Othman celebrated their liberation by releasing his birds into the smoke-filled sky. “All I felt was happiness,” he said.

Today, the birds share the skies with U.S.-led warplanes and Iraqi helicopters, as Iraqi forces work to drive IS out of the remainder of the city. Over the last three months, they have fought their way from the east to the Tigris River, which divides the city in two, but IS still rules western Mosul.

“Sometimes, birds we don’t know land on our roof and they have cigarettes tied to their ankles,” said Younis Fathi, Othman’s uncle. He assumes the birds are used by smugglers to reach IS-ruled neighbourhoods, where smoking is forbidden.

The streets below Othman’s rooftop betray the heavy toll the war has taken on the city. Buildings are flattened, walls are pockmarked and bridges destroyed. Just across the street, the bodies of two IS militants have been left to rot in a building destroyed by an airstrike.

But Othman mostly looks upward where the birds wheel overhead in formation.

“I would have died for them,” he says. “But we survived.”

Source

Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor or 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


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How Do Homing Pigeons Find Home?

How Do Homing Pigeons Find Home?

How do you like to communicate with your friends? Do you pick up the telephone to talk to them? Or would you prefer to send them text messages? Perhaps you have fun sending short messages and pictures via smartphone apps?

What if you had a bird that would deliver a message to your friend? Your friend could then write a response that your bird would bring back to you. Sound a bit like sending owls in the wizarding world of Harry Potter? That type of magic isn’t entirely the stuff of books, especially if you have a homing pigeon!

Homing pigeons are a type of domestic pigeon descended from the rock pigeon. Wild rock pigeons have an innate ability to find their way home from long distances. Today’s homing pigeons have been carefully bred to do the same, including carrying messages over those long distances.

Unlike the owls in the Harry Potter books, homing pigeons can’t be given an address or a person to fly to. If taken a ways from home, though, they can find their way back home in a remarkably short period of time. In fact, homing pigeons have been known to find their way home from as many as 1,100 miles away, and they can travel an average of 50 miles per hour with bursts of up to 90 mph!

This ability has made them valuable as messengers since at least the time of the ancient Egyptians. Homing pigeons were used extensively in both World War I and World War II. Several birds even received medals for their service in delivering critical messages during wartime!

But how do they find their way home over such long distances? Could you imagine being dropped off 1,000 miles away and having to find your way home? You might reach for a map, smartphone, or Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver to guide you home. What do homing pigeons do?

Despite many scientific studies over the years, no one yet fully understands how homing pigeons navigate home across long distances. There are several theories that experts believe explain at least part of the processes at work.

Scientists now believe that homing pigeons have both compass and map mechanisms that help them navigate home. The compass mechanism helps them to fly in the right direction, while the map mechanism allows them to compare where they are to where they want to be (home).

A homing pigeon’s compass mechanism likely relies upon the Sun. Like many other birds, homing pigeons can use the position and angle of the Sun to determine the proper direction for flight. The map mechanism, however, remains a bit of a mystery.

Some researchers believe homing pigeons use magnetoreception, which involves relying on Earth’s magnetic fields for guidance. Researchers have found that homing pigeons have concentrations of iron particles in their beaks that would allow them to detect magnetic fields easily.

More recent research, however, suggests that homing pigeons may instead rely upon low-frequency infrasound to find their way home. These low-frequency sounds are inaudible to human ears, but they’re created by nearly everything, including the oceans and Earth’s crust.

Homing pigeons may listen to these sounds until they recognize the signature sounds of their home roost. Of course, researchers also note that, once homing pigeons get closer to home, they may also be guided, in part, by familiar landmarks, just like humans use when navigating.

Source

Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor or 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


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Pigeons, Rats with Wings?

Pigeons, Rats with Wings?

Though they may look cute from a park bench, pigeons are filthy birds.  Like rats they carry diseases and can cause damage.  In addition to being unsightly and stinky, droppings from pigeons can damage buildings, statues, equipment, and other outdoor structures.   Their droppings are also known for triggering people to slip and fall, which makes it especially important to rid the birds from highly trafficked areas.

Pigeon droppings, especially when dry and airborne, can expose humans to many diseases, including aspergillus, Newcastle disease, candidiasis, encephalitis, ornithosis, and toxoplasmosis.  In addition, they can also carry cryptococcosis, and coccidiodomycosis, which cause meningitis.  The droppings may also harbor growth of fungus, which causes histoplasmosis.  Fleas, lice, mites, and other pests often live on these birds, hitching a ride to where ever they want to jump off. Pigeons may also attract other pests, such as rats, which feed on dead pigeons and food that well-intentioned bird lovers may scatter for them.

Prolific breeders, pigeons hatch several broods a year, sometimes even laying a new clutch before the previous have even hatched.  They are creatures of habit and highly social.  Once they have found a cozy spot the will return again and again, bringing along more of their pigeon pals.  Often our buildings and structures have architectural features such as drain spouts and eaves that make perfect nesting spots for these birds. Pigeons are comfortable around humans and they’re hard to scare away or deter.  Once a flock of stubborn unwanted pigeons have set up shop in/on your building, it can be stubbornly resistant to removal, often requiring the services of a pest control or animal control professional. As is true of many pests that invade our homes and businesses, the first step to controlling feral pigeons is to remove their food source.

Tips to deter pigeons:

1.       Screen drains and gutters to make your property less attractive to pigeons

2.       Encourage children to pick up spilled food – and teach them NOT to feed rats with wings

3.       Keep areas around trash bins and outdoor dining areas clean

4.       Eliminate water sources such as bird baths, over-watered lawns, or kiddy pools.

Source

Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor or 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


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Chicago a bird death trap of glass and light

Chicago a bird death trap of glass and light

Chicago ranks as the deadliest city in the United States for birds, according to a recent study by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

People might think that a larger city like New York would be guilty of more bird-window collisions than Chicago, but an unfortunate combination of building structures and geographical placement proves to be deadlier than size.

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“It’s not just the size of the city, it also has to do with how bright the city is and also where the birds are flying themselves.” said Kyle Horton, the lead researcher on the study which evaluated 125 cities for their bird-killing potential.

Every fall, billions of birds will fly from the northern United States and Canada to the tropics and in the spring those birds return from their tropical vacation, according to the Cornell Chronicle.

Chicago is positioned on one of the primary flight paths, Horton said. It is the nation’s deadliest city for birds during both the spring and fall migrations. Other Great Lakes regional cities in the study’s top 20: Minneapolis (sixth spring, seventh fall), Detroit (13th spring, 15th fall), Indianapolis (16th spring, 13th fall).

Annette Prince witnesses this flight and its casualties firsthand. She is the director of the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors, a volunteer-based conservation project that has been protecting and recovering birds that are killed and injured in downtown Chicago during these mass migrations since 2003.

“They’re birds that certainly cannot afford to be having collisions as an additional reason to have their species reduced,” Prince said.

The decline of these species doesn’t only affect local populations and ecosystems. Migratory bird populations are an important part of a global environment, she said.

“Chicago is in the fortunate position to enjoy a huge migration of birds every spring and fall,” Prince said. “They’re following a pathway that they’ve used for thousands of years, before there was ever a city here.”

What was once a lakefront that travel-weary migrating birds could easily navigate and find pitstops offering food and rest is now a maze of lights, reflections and invisible yet deadly obstacles. This results in 5,000 dead birds per square-mile in Chicago, Prince said.

And that’s a low estimate. The volunteers at Chicago Bird Collision Monitors can’t find every crime scene when there are so many, and there are plenty that could be tampered with by passing pedestrians, cars, or a wandering cat or dog, Prince said.

Windows are often the perpetrator of these deaths, but lights act as a productive accomplice.

“It’s not necessarily that the lights are killing birds,” Horton said. “It’s that the lights seem to attract birds, it disorients them and elevates their risk of colliding with structures.”

To reduce the risk of bird-window collisions, Horton encourages those who live in or work in buildings to turn off or dim unneeded lights. This is especially relevant at 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. for three to four weeks of spring and fall, which is when the majority of birds would be moving through the city, said Horton.

Reducing lights can decrease bird-window collisions, but building-designers and homeowners can also make changes to the windows themselves without living in a building devoid of natural light.

“The glass has to have some sort of visual noise, something that alerts the birds to the presence of a surface instead of an opening,” Prince said.

This visual noise could be decorations such as hanging banners, cords, ribbons, or sunshades in front of the window. It could also be modifications to the window itself like window films, decals, etchings, or use of glass that isn’t as reflective or transparent. Further information on measures and products that can be used to make windows less susceptible to bird-window collisions can be found on the websites of the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors and the American Bird Conservancy.

“We have the tools to make things safer for birds,” said Prince. “It’s just a question of people saying that it matters enough that we will do it.”

Migratory birds have been declining for decades and the lack of awareness of the importance of these options is a major setback in their use, said Pamela Rasmussen, an assistant professor in Michigan State University’s College of Natural Science.

“Everyone just wants nice shiny skyscrapers,” she said. “They have no idea what they’re doing to the bird population.”

Researchers are developing a glass with nanotechnology that birds can see but people can’t, she said.

Local ordinances could increase awareness. To make downtown Chicago safer for birds, Alderman Brian Hopkins introduced the Chicago Bird-Friendly Building Ordinance earlier this year.

It would limit the amount of transparent or reflective glass on the exterior of buildings and specify glass that provides visual noise in situations that are proven hazardous for birds. It would also limit the amount, location and timing of exterior lighting and reduce the interior lighting visible from outside for all newly constructed buildings and any buildings that undertake a major renovation. More information can be found at the bird-friendly Chicago website.

Representatives of the Illinois Environmental Council, American Bird Conservancy and the Lincoln Park Zoo recently testified in support of the measure, according to the Office of the City Clerk.

But high-rise buildings within large urban centers aren’t the only bird hazards out there.

“A skyscraper certainly will on average kill more birds than a single residential home,” Horton said. “But…if you sum up all of the mortality that happens at low-rise buildings it’s substantially more than what would happen at a city level.”

So consider turning that porch light out or making your security lights motion-activated. It might save more than just electricity costs.

Source

Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor or 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


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Large pigeon lost to science for 140 years rediscovered in Papua New Guinea

Large pigeon lost to science for 140 years rediscovered in Papua New Guinea

A team of scientists and conservationists has rediscovered the elusive black-naped pheasant-pigeon, a large, ground-dwelling pigeon that only lives on Fergusson Island, a rugged island in the D’Entrecasteaux Archipelago off eastern Papua New Guinea. Like other pheasant-pigeons, the black-naped pheasant-pigeon has a broad and laterally compressed tail, which along with its size, makes it closely resemble a pheasant. The photographs and video are the first time the long-lost bird has been documented by scientists since 1882, when it was first described. Ornithologists know very little about the species but believe that the population on Fergusson is very small and decreasing.

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The research team photographed the pheasant-pigeon with a remote camera trap at the end of a month-long search of Fergusson.

“When we collected the camera traps, I figured there was less than a one percent chance of getting a photo of the black-naped pheasant-pigeon,” said Jordan Boersma, postdoctoral researcher at Cornell Lab of Ornithology and co-leader of the expedition team. “Then as I was scrolling through the photos, I was stunned by this photo of this bird walking right past our camera.”

The expedition team–which included local Papua New Guineans working with Papua New Guinea National Museum, Cornell Lab of Ornithology and American Bird Conservancy–arrived on Fergusson in early September 2022. They spent a month traveling around the island, interviewing local community members to identify locations to set up camera traps in hopes of finding the pheasant-pigeon. The steep, mountainous terrain on Fergusson Island made searching for the bird extremely challenging.

“It wasn’t until we reached villages on the western slope of Mt. Kilkerran that we started meeting hunters who had seen and heard the pheasant-pigeon,” said Jason Gregg, conservation biologist and a co-leader of the expedition team. “We became more confident about the local name of the bird, which is ‘Auwo,’ and felt like we were getting closer to the core habitat of where the black-naped pheasant-pigeon lives.”

The expedition was the first-ever camera trapping study conducted on Fergusson Island. The team placed 12 camera traps on the slopes of Mt. Kilkerran, Fergusson’s highest mountain, and deployed an additional eight cameras in locations where local hunters had reported seeing the pheasant-pigeon in the past.

“When we finally found the black-naped pheasant-pigeon, it was during the final hours of the expedition,” said Doka Nason, the member of the team who set up the camera trap that eventually photographed the lost bird. “When I saw the photos, I was incredibly excited.”

A local hunter named Augustin Gregory in the village of Duda Ununa west of Mt. Kilkerran provided a breakthrough lead on where to find the bird. Gregory reported seeing the pheasant-pigeon on multiple occasions in an area with steep ridges and valleys and described hearing the bird’s distinctive calls, which is similar to other species of pheasant-pigeons.

Following Gregory’s advice, the team set up cameras in an area of dense forest. A camera placed on a ridge at 3,200 feet (1000 meters) near the Kwama River above Duda Ununa eventually captured the black-naped pheasant-pigeon walking on the forest floor two days before the team was scheduled to leave the island.

Several members of the team have attempted to find the black-naped pheasant pigeon before. A two-week survey in 2019 by Boersma, Gregg and Nason didn’t find any traces of the bird, though it did gather reports from local hunters of a bird that could have been the pheasant-pigeon. The results from that survey helped to determine locations for the team to search in 2022.

“The communities were very excited when they saw the survey results, because many people hadn’t seen or heard of the bird until we began our project and got the camera trap photos,” said Serena Ketaloya, a conservationist from Milne Bay, Papua New Guinea. “They are now looking forward to working with us to try to protect the pheasant-pigeon.”

The team’s findings suggest that the pheasant-pigeon is likely to be extremely rare. The rugged and inaccessible forest where they rediscovered the species could be the last stronghold for the black-naped pheasant-pigeon on Fegusson.

The expedition was supported by American Bird Conservancy and the Search for Lost Birds, a collaboration between BirdLife International, American Bird Conservancy and Re:wild. The Search for Lost Birds identified the pheasant-pigeon for an expedition after a global review revealed it was one of a few bird species that have been lost to science for more than a century.

The full expedition team consisted of Jason Gregg; Jordan Boersma; Doka Nason of Porotona village; Serena Ketaloya of Porotona village; Elimo Malesa of Basima village; Bulisa Iova from Papua New Guinea National Museum; Cosmo Le Breton, University of Oxford; and John C. Mittermeier from American Bird Conservancy. The expedition was funded by a grant from Cosmo Le Breton to American Bird Conservancy and the Search for Lost Birds.

Source

Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor or 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


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