The sad lives of a pigeon

Saturday night, whilst most people sit cosily at home or at the cinema and those with money in these days of recession wine and dine in a fancy restaurant there are actually many people out there whom give up their evenings/weekends time after time to save wildlife.  To be a voice and saviour for creatures without a voice  [applause].

I was invited to go to a “rescue” by someone who is an incredible amazing lady in her own right.  She has gone head on to help animals with little money, no personal transportation, learning on the job,  but a full on “active” passion to make a difference. There were a couple of other remarkably experienced people there too. They rescue pigeons and pigeons nests from pretty much anywhere.  It was a cold night, may 2 to 3 degrees C and raining.  These guys worked in a shift between them to overlook railway workers working on a bridge.  Under this bridge were a few male and female pigeon pairs (like most birds, they mate for life) and some had eggs there were incubating.  Most of us drive daily under bridges at night but would not think twice there is a family of pigeons with their young just above.

As it was night-time, the pigeons were trying to sleep(like most birds, they are active during the day).  They had trains running above their nests and vans/buses/lorries driving below them.  Not pleasant but this is all they have.  One wrong move and their baby would die a painful death.

These pigeons rescuers were making sure that if the workers had to disturb the pigeon nests, they would actually hand the eggs over to them, so they could keep it warm in an incubator and let it hatch when nature calls. If this happened, the parent pigeons would fly off as they would be scared by the workers getting too close. Without these rescue teams looking on and being present for the entire night, the railway workers would simply discard the eggs and/or the flightless babies with no further thought.  But in the pigeon kingdom that would be one life dead, who reports these ?  We hear so many human deaths, related to drug overdose or other self-inflicted ways, why…sometimes who cares!

That evening to see these people was an eye opener.  I learnt so much about pigeons including the number of times they mate(pigeons that is 🙂 ), since their survival rate is extremely low as 10%.

Ken Livingston has destroyed what attracted visitors to Trafalgar square.  What a fool!  This definitely brought in tourism.  This would have employed seeds sellers, this would have employed cleaners, in turn would have given more revenue to seed producers. Humans have WC facilities and sewers underground, wildlife Mr Livingstone and Boris the clown Johnson, do not have a choice, that is nature.

On a recent event dated 7th Jan 2013, people actually saw a hawk killing a pigeon and would not return back to its owner when called.  Is that safe ?

“When the BBC spent tens of thousands of pounds on three Harris Hawks to protect staff from pigeons and gulls at its new £1billion headquarters in London, it promised that no birds would be harmed.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/

“In 2009 a total of £354,829 has been spent on hawks and 130 pigeons have been killed. This equates to £2,729 spent per dead bird”  What is the figure now, since the cost has risen ?  But ofcourse we tax payers foot the bill blindly.  The promise was no pigeons would be killed, yet there have been. Whats action to understand the root cause has taken place ?  Um none, its only a rat in the sky, right ? Wrong!  These pigeons helped during the war, to save lives and this is their pay back,  thanks humans!

We get told of all the diseases pigeons spread, what diseases ?  What have people actually died off die due to pigeons ?  It would be interesting to know rather than badly informed people making poor decisions.

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/