Vancouver Island woman reunited with pet pigeon

Vancouver Island woman reunited with pet pigeon

Today, a Vancouver Island woman got the feathered reunion she’s been waiting six weeks for.

Sandy Bird lost her pet pigeon, Tweetie, in October, when the bird flew away, as it does, and landed on the wrong truck. The truck drove away and Bird was left without her pigeon.

To Bird’s distress, her bird wound up in a wildlife centre. The centre’s rules prohibited staff from releasing the pigeon back into Bird’s care. She tried to get her pigeon back, but instead it was released into the wild. The centre couldn’t tell Bird where or when Tweetie was being released.

This morning, Tweetie was spotted in a mall parking lot.

Bird said she looked for hours since the break of dawn for the bird in shopping centres and parks throughout Nanaimo.

Staff at a Chemainus office were keeping an eye out for the bird. Office worker Anita Morrill saw Tweetie through the window.

“He jumped down as soon as I saw him,” she said.

Staff called Sandy and told her to come collect her pet pigeon.

Bird said the pigeon is like a son to her.

“I am the happiest woman in the world. If I won the lotto I couldn’t be happier,” she said.

Bird said she would like to thank the viewers and listeners of CHEK TV and CBC radio.

“They’re the reason and you’re the reason he’s back,” said Bird.

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.

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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Feral pigeons cause damage to property. pigeons roost on ledges and sloping roofs.

Feral pigeons cause damage to property. pigeons roost on ledges and sloping roofs.

Feral pigeons roost cause damage to property. Pigeons roost on ledges and sloping roofs.

They:

  • destroy insulation
  • deface surfaces
  • block pipes and gutters with droppings. Their droppings are acidic and eat away at buildings and machinery, which can lead to secondary damage such as wet rot

Pigeons also carry diseases which can prove fatal for humans and pose serious risks to public health, with the young and the old being especially vulnerable, such as:​

  • psittacosis, a type of pneumonia, which can kill
  • candida albicans which can be the cause of skin diseases
  • shigella species causes vomiting and diarrhoea
  • ornithosis, a flu-like disease borne by birds
  • chiamdiosis, a virus similar to influenza
  • campylobacter coli, which may cause food poisoning
  • pigeons roost with droppings and dead carcasses can contain a variety of mites and insects which can cause allergic reactions in humans

A pigeon’s perspective

Although feeding pigeons might appear to be a kind act, it is not. Food such as bread and cake gives them diarrhoea and induces vitamin B and calcium deficiency. Vitamin B deficiency can cause paralysis in pigeons. Pigeons are scavengers and are well equipped to find their own sources of food.

Food supplied by the public leads to the arrival of more pigeons and increased breeding rates. Feral pigeons deprive other birds of food and spread mites and other parasites throughout their ever-increasing number of breeding sites.

Licensed pest control contractors need to be hired to exterminate and control pigeons. The kindest and most economic way of achieving this is to allow pigeons to continue their natural feeding habits by taking away their dependence on food from people.

Rats

When food is left out for pigeons it is also left for rats. As with pigeons, the more food rats have access to, the more they will breed. Rats are a major health hazard. They contaminate human food with:

  • their droppings
  • urine
  • hair

They are the carriers of many diseases eg. Weil’s disease and salmonellosis. Rats also cause structural damage. They burrow under the foundations of buildings and damage drains and sewers. They also gnaw through electrical cables which is a fire hazard.

What can you do?

  • avoid feeding pigeons and allow them to pursue a natural life of foraging for food
  • food litter should never be left on the ground
  • ensure that all food waste is contained within enclosed waste bins
  • if you wish to feed birds, prepare birdseed and place on bird tables where a variety of species can gain access
  • it is sometimes possible to scare pigeons away letting them know that a location is not a suitable nesting site. Placing a piece of string with silver foil attached in the allotted area has worked in some instances

Professional pest controllers may be able to prevent pigeons landing on roofs, balconies and other areas by utilizing many of the products available in pigeon proofing.​

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.

Contact us at 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD, (604) 585-9279 or visit our website at www.pigeonpatrol.ca

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Why Do Woodpeckers Like To Hammer On Houses?

Why Do Woodpeckers Like To Hammer On Houses?

Woodpeckers usually hammer on houses for one of four reasons:

  1. Because it makes a satisfyingly loud noise that proclaims the bird’s territory and attracts a mate. If the birds are drumming for these reasons, they will most likely stop once breeding has begun in the spring (they don’t drum when looking for food).
  2. Because the bird wants to excavate a nest or roost hole. If the woodpeckers are creating a nest cavity, the hole will be round and large. Nesting holes are usually built in the beginning of the breeding season between late April and May. If you need to evict woodpeckers from your home, aim to do so either before or after the nesting season.
  3. Because it is feeding on insects living in the siding. If the birds are looking for insects, the holes will be small and irregular. You may have to call an exterminator to get rid of the underlying insect problem. Woodpeckers are particularly fond of the larvae of carpenter bees, leafcutter bees, and grass bagworms. .
  4. Because they are storing food. If you are located in the West, Acorn Woodpeckers peck dozens or hundreds of acorn-sized holes into large trees or houses, and stash a single fresh acorn into each one.woodpecker

Source

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.

Contact us at 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD, (604) 585-9279 or visit our website at www.pigeonpatrol.ca for any woodpeckers hammer problems

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Hollywood’s pigeon lady hunted

Hollywood’s pigeon lady hunted

The dossier spills over into two drawers of files full of hand-scribbled notes, maps marked with sharp black dots – and snapshots of a shadowy lady figure, scattering pigeon seed.

This is Laura Dodson’s nemesis.feeding pigeon

There was a time when Dodson went after the crack dealers in her Hollywood neighborhood with such a vengeance that city officials honored her with a plaque. Now, she has declared war on another urban scourge. For three years, she has enlisted snitches, set up overnight stakeouts, appealed for help from city leaders and the police.

Her quarry? Pigeon lady Susie Kourinian, the furtive form in the photos.

Kourinian is no ordinary bird lover. She earns her seed money as a seamstress to the stars; she appeared in InStyle magazine tweaking Cate Blanchett’s hem and is said to keep actresses such as Megan Mullally in finery.

That glittery occupation gives Kourinian the wherewithal to make a lot of pigeons happy. Kourinian once told police she spends $65,000 a year on bird feed – enough to dump 500 pounds of birdseed every day, a lifeline for the more than 5,000 pigeons who now populate the two square miles of this neighborhood northwest of downtown Los Angeles.

Kourinian is reputedly so crafty that within moments, she can pop the trunk of her black sport utility vehicle, scatter 75 pounds of pigeon feed and disappear into the night.

She has been doing this for a decade, police say, but neither they nor Dodson’s small band of pigeon patrollers – dubbed “Citizen Pigeon” – have been able to stop her.

“When you realize how many hours and manpower it takes to catch the pigeon lady … ,” Dodson said. “She’s got the perfect crime because who else would have the resources to do this?”

Across the nation, a virtual war on pigeons has been waged in many ways: poisonings, electric wires, robotic falcons and even bird relocations to pigeon farms. In some places the mere mention of feeding bans has raised the ire of legions of pigeon fanciers who ridicule efforts to levy fines for tossing birds a handful of bread crumbs.

But pigeons will reproduce based on the amount of food available. In Hollywood, they have.

Stephanie Boyles, a wildlife biologist with the Humane Society who has developed pigeon control programs around the country, said she’s never seen anything like it. To get a sense of how bad the problem was, she once scattered some bread in a Hollywood parking lot.

Within moments, the bread was gone and thousands of eyes were upon her. An eerie cooing suggested they wanted more.

“I’ve traveled in Europe, I’ve been to New York City many, many times, Washington D.C. and Chicago … places that claim to have pigeon problems. They do, but compared to Hollywood, it’s not even a fair comparison,” Boyles said.

Critics maintain that pigeons do millions of dollars in damage a year nationwide. Their guano is caustic, and has been blamed for all sorts of problems, from poor water quality in Pismo Beach to the collapse of the Minneapolis bridge.

In Hollywood, critics say, the pigeons conflict with a beautification program aimed at reviving the famed neighborhood, for years blighted by dingy sex shops along the Hollywood Walk of Fame. When officials took down the marquee of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre to refurbish the building, pigeon guano had completely corroded the metal.

Legions of pigeons sit waiting for food on rooftops, under freeways and telephone lines, prompting business owners to put up canopies and umbrellas to protect customers.

“If I were to feed 5,000 cats a day, you know how many cats we’d see a year from now?” said Thaddeus Smith, who once used a jackhammer to get guano off the roof of his Music Box nightclub. “When we walk to lunch we see bird seed everywhere and thousands of pigeons sitting on wires saying `hmmm.”‘

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.

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Contact us at 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD, (604) 585-9279 or visit our website at www.pigeonpatrol.ca

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Do pigeons recognize faces?

Do pigeons recognize faces?

If you shoo a pigeon, that bird is likely to remember you and know to stay out of your way the next time you cross paths, according to a new study. Researchers found that wild, untrained pigeons can recognize individual people’s faces and are not fooled by a change of clothes.

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Previous research in this arena had only focused on the perception abilities of pigeons that were trained in a lab environment, but the new study was conducted on untrained feral pigeons. At a park in Paris, two researchers of similar build and skin color, but wearing different-colored lab coats, fed a group of pigeons.

One researcher ignored the pigeons after feeding them, allowing them to eat the food, while the other was hostile and chased them away. This was followed by a second session when neither researcher chased away the pigeons. [Pretty Bird: Images of a Clever Parrot]

The experiment was repeated several times, with the pigeons continuously recognizing the individuals faces and avoiding the researcher who had first chased them away even when the participant no longer did so. Swapping lab coats during the experiments did not confuse the pigeons, and they continued to stay away from the researcher who had been initially hostile.

“It is very likely that the pigeons recognize the researchers by their faces, since the individuals were both female and of a similar age, build and skin color,” study researcher Dalila Bovet of the University of Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense said in a statement.

“Interestingly, the pigeons, without training, spontaneously used the most relevant characteristics of the individuals (probably facial traits), instead of the lab coats that covered 90 percent of the body,” Bovet added.

The researchers noted that the birds appear to be able to differentiate between humans and are aware that clothing color is not a good way to tell humans apart. They theorize that this recognition ability may have come about over the long period of association with humans, from early domestication to many years of living in cities.

Previous research supports the findings, as the memory and recognition skills of certain bird species have been demonstrated by other studies. In May 2011, Seoul National University researcher Won Young Lee noticed that when he returned to an area where he had previously installed cameras into the nests of magpies, the birds recognized his face and began dive-bombing him.

A 2009 study showed that jackdaws, which are the smaller cousins of crows and ravens, can interpret human eye cues and even follow human gestures such as pointing. University of Oxford researchers noted that hand-raised jackdaws could find food when a familiar person’s eyes looked back and forth from the food to the bird. The birds also responded when the person pointed to the food’s location. However, the jackdaws took longer to approach food when an unfamiliar person was watching.

“I think they can generalize to human eyes somehow, and interpret human eyes as eyes,” said Auguste Bayern, a cognitive biologist at the University of Oxford and lead author of the 2009 study.

source

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.

Contact us at 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD, (604) 585-9279 or visit our website at www.pigeonpatrol.ca

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