Killing Pigeons in my part of the country

[Lady Tarheel]

There isn't much I can say about this article which appeared today in our local paper except shame on them. I am beginning to think that it is only a matter of time before the ferals go the way of the passenger pigeons.

http://www.newsobserver.com/102/story/518010.html

[Rooster2312]

Oh How awful Maggie! I hate to read news like this. It's just like reading the UK Kingston pigeon proposed cull all over again.

It angers me that these articles are written with pigeon-hating 'humour' with the wrong assumption that everybody hates pigeons (apart from the animal rights activists) and nobody gives a damn about these poor birds.

It seems the writer takes great delight in seeing these birds ripped apart by hawks. Makes me sick to the stomach

Lindi

[kittypaws]

Maggie,

I sympathise... I have a cull beginning in Kingston where I work this month - nothing can stop it..... ( marksmen apparently....)

I feel as though I am going to be depressed for the next 3 years whilst there are people killing the pigeo ns.

My little flock at Teddington are just so lovely and sweet - I don't know how people can kill them... it has made me very, very sad...

Tania

[Lovebirds]

Maggie.......I don't know what to say. This is so awful. I'm truly at a loss to find words. So sad..........

[Trees Gray]

That is just awful. I'm so sorry to hear this.

[arnieismybaby]

It really distresses me reading these stories. When will these officials realise that we they are doing does not help!!

I wish I could gather up all these unwanted birds and take them home with me. Hmmmm ... better than that I wished I lived and owned vast acres of land, so that the birds could live in peace and harmony forever.

Michelle.

[ken_sturrock]

You know. This is hard for me to write.

I hate to be the voice of dissent, and the caviler attitude of the article sickens me, but this isn't necessarily bad. Although I am a pigeon lover and I like to feed them: ultimately, huge flocks of pigeons draw people's ire and cruelty.

Planned, or not, what appears to be happening is that a number of uncoordinated "pigeon control efforts" be they naturally occurring hawks, anti-pigeon spikes, sleeker architecture and ordinances on feeding (Which, unfortunately, is often reckless) are keeping the numbers down to a smaller level and they are therefore less likely to attract the above mentioned attention and persecution.

As a naturalist, I can't say that I totally object to pigeons fitting into an urban eco-system that keeps their flock sizes down to a smaller and healthier number. What I despise is when governments choose to pursue a determined cold-blooded campaign of slaughter against our Rock Dove friends without even thinking about changing the very environment that has allowed their numbers to grow to almost unsustainable numbers.

Smaller numbers of birds are less likely to cause the municipal authorities to call in the sharp-shooters, the poisoners and bird "abductors" that might cart them away to a worse fate as living shot gun targets out in the country. If the current status quo remains, Pigeons will not vanish, but will stabilize in their niche in the environment.

Considering what Pigeons have done for us throughout history, if we were a fair species, we wouldn’t worry about pigeons defecating on buildings and statues. Instead we would erect statues to commemorate our ancient bond to these birds and let them “crap at will”. Nevertheless, that day will probably never come and we must find a way to build a balance.

Look folks, as Pigeon advocates, we have to find ways to not only educate people about the beauty of pigeons, but to find ways for them to be integrated with “people society” in a healthy and sustainable manner. While the attitude in the article is disgusting, from a technical and cruelty angle, this is about the best “Pigeon Control” article I’ve read since David Roth’s work in Arizona.

[Lady Tarheel]

Hi Ken

Thank you for your comments. You know, the sensible side of me knows that pigeons create problems with their sheer number but the soft side of me knows that more humane efforts can be made to control those numbers. I think the part in the article that hurts me most of all is the so-called "critter control" guy bragging about the almost 300 he "bagged". What people don't understand is how they accomplish this - through traps, goop, poison, to name a few methods. They also don't realize that protected species like sparrows, wrens, redbirds, finches, etc. can either be caught in these traps, or stuck to the glue or even poisoned. There would probably be an outcry if they knew songbirds were being killed.

We are in a "catch 22" situtation. I want, so desperately, to write a letter to the editor about this, but my husband and I have discussed this almost every day since the article came out and have decided that we will not write anything. We have to protect the ones we have and also be able to pick up any that need help in the future and we do not want to draw attention to this fact. Even tho we don't live in Raleigh, we are near enough that it could impact our rescue work because other areas are becoming just as eager to kill pigeons.

I still believe that eventually humans will destroy the feral pigeon and it breaks my heart.

PS - On a lighter note, I forgot to get up yesterday morning early enough to see the planets lined up. Did you get to see them?

[ken_sturrock]

You are absolutely right. Recently there was an article in the Palm Beach Post about Pigeon control efforts at the Court House Building. The article claimed that Avitrol was a hallucinogenic and essentially gave the Pigeons a “bad trip” which scared away other members of the flock. The down-played concern was that this “hallucinogenic” might work its way up the food stream and hurt the popular resident hawk.

I wrote a letter to the editor explaining that Avitrol was actually a potent neurotoxin and that it would certainly affect other birds exactly as it has everywhere else it has been used. I ended with the usual “rah rah” about how wonderful pigeons are and that the sustainable, specific, less cruel and ultimately less expensive approach was to modify the building to discourage roosting and to limit the amount of “available” food in the area.

Naturally, people would rather poison birds then pick up after themselves at lunch.

In the end, my letter was never printed; however another pro-pigeon letter was printed – so that was worth something. As far as I know, the slaughter continues. Bastards.

No - I didn't see the alignment, or the Shuttle launch. The clouds were too heavy.

-Ken

[Feather]

Well Maggie...we (humans) have destroyed everything else.

Which dear creature can survive us? In the bible in Revelations 11:18, it states that when the Almighty takes up his wrath, that he will destroy those who destroy the earth.

A couple of years ago when I was walking out to the parking lot after visiting my mother in the hospital, a large flock of wild parrots flew over head. They were squawking up a storm. The hand full of people that were scattered in the parking lot all gravitated to one spot and talked about what we had just witnessed. We were all so excited.

Last week I picked up a local paper and in the public forum a lady wrote about her experience with seeing the migrating parrots this year. She said that it was a rare and beautiful sight. She also stated that she could not believe her eyes when two of her neighbors brought out a gun and started to shoot at them.

Why is there this urge to stop a life force in another breathing being?

Ken, I really like your issues, and your letter. Who can dispute your presentations and not sound ignorant?



Feather

[ken_sturrock]

As I write this, I have a wall full of Passenger Pigeon pictures looking at me with their unflinching red eyes, demanding justice.

"The pigeon was a biological storm. He was the lightning that played between two opposing potentials of intolerable intensity: the fat of the land and the oxygen of the air. Yearly the feathered tempest roared up, down, and across the continent, sucking up the laden fruits of forest and prairie, burning them in a traveling blast of life. Like any other chain reaction, the pigeon could survive no dimunition of his own furious intensity. When the pigeoners subtracted from his numbers and the pioneers chopped gaps in the continuity of his fuel, his flame guttered out with hardly a sputter or even a wisp of smoke." - Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

I understand the analogy of humanity's carelessness with both the Feral Pigeon and the Passenger Pigeon. Both are, and were, so numerous that few can, or could, understand that they could be wiped from the face of the Earth. It is an analogy that should never be forgotten. However, please remember that there are some key differences in these two Pigeons.

The Passenger Pigeon relied on an ecological survival strategy of mass numbers. Everything that the Passenger Pigeon did was synchronized precisely to the other members of its flock. Because the Passenger Pigeon was so plentiful, it had evolved into a creature that laid a single egg per paired mates only once per year. Additionally, the Passenger Pigeon had evolved to eat a specialized diet and the huge flocks of birds required tremendous amounts of food. After a flock of Passenger Pigeons left a particular wooded location the area was decimated by their activities and they would typically not return for many years to come. When humans began to destroy the Passenger Pigeon's environment by creating farms they set in force ecological change that significantly damaged the bird's ability to sustain the flock sizes that were necessary. When humans mercilessly, tirelessly with no respite persecuted the Passenger Pigeon it pushed it the rest of the way over the edge to extinction. The Passenger Pigeon knew no rest and groupings of Pigeon hunters would assault a nesting flock and very few squabs would survive the massacre. No more squabs from that flock would be hatched that year either. Once the Pigeon's numbers fell below a certain critical mass the Passenger Pigeon was doomed.

Rock Doves, however, are not nearly as vulnerable ecologically. They don't have the specialized requirements of Passenger Pigeons and, like Mourning Doves, get along quite well in small numbers. Rock Doves also typically lay 2 eggs per clutch and may do so five or six times a year in the right environment. Unlike Passenger Pigeons, Rock Doves have successfully spread to virtually every part of the world that is the least bit urbanized. There is also no market for Feral Pigeons - so aside from the money to be made killing them as a "pest" there isn't the economic drive that motivated the hunters of the Passenger Pigeon. Lastly, due to their urban nature, Feral Pigeons are actually more protected than Passenger Pigeons who were caught and slaughtered far in the woods, away from notice. Feral Pigeons have evolved to live with people, Passenger Pigeons could never live with large numbers of people.

I am in no way saying this to minimize the horror of killing Feral Pigeons, I'm simply saying that while there is a valuable lesson to be learned from the Passenger Pigeon, we can't take the analogy too far or it will logically break down and we will lose another conceptual tool that can help us protect Pigeons and Doves as a whole.

"For the old bird there was a flash of brilliant light as the tiny round pellet slammed through his eye and came to rest in his brain. And in that fractional instant before he died, the old passenger pigeon may have heard the gust of wind which swept through the tops of the trees with a sound not unlike the murmur of a million distant wings" - Allan W. Eckert, The Silent Sky

We must never forget the Passenger Pigeon, but we lost that round. We are now facing a long public relations campaign to win hearts and minds of the uninformed and undo decades of propaganda started by greedy people who have no soul.

-Ken

[Pigeonpal2002]

Hi Ken,

Great post about the passenger pigeon...I was just going to add that these birds were strictly inhabitants of North America. I see that you've included that notion pretty much in comparing how ferals have spread out all over the world and the passenger pigeon hadn't at the point of extinction. I really do believe we've learned from this fairly recent "event" and that humans won't continue on that same path they did over 100 years ago now.

The only way I see the feral being wiped out worldwide, is if there is all out nuclear war or a devastatingly large asteroid hits the planet, killing everything.

I guess I'm a bit of an optimist when it comes to the feral pigeon today and I think it's future is pratically secured. The "Rock Dove" is definitely persecuted in many large cities, but these birds have set up homes in nearly every region on earth, except for the poles but I truly believe that they aren't going down without a fight and one that us humans PROBABLY won't survive.

[pigeonkid1046]

That angers me. These people don't realize that we all need to share this earth.

[TerriB]

Interesting post, Ken, and very well written.