OMG are you kidding me,well why would the maintnence people want to take the blame when they can pass it off on poop.

Thanks Sarah!

FYI, I just merged Donna's thread in here too.

Well if this was the case, the inspectors should have caught this long ago.
Missing bolts, Here in Minnesota we use Salt during the winter on the roads, if it rusts our car just think what it does to bridges.
Use...well...this bridge was a major artery, use is an understatement...again these bridges are suppose to be check every so often to assure they can withstand such USE....
Pigeon Poop....The poop from the Pigeon is no more corrosive than any other bird droppings, what is a factor is, the amount.
Since the Pigeon dwells in man made structures, there will be a poop issue.
About a year ago a apartment complex up here began poisoning Canadian Geese, why?, because of there droppings, so it is safe to say all colony birds are frowned upon concerning the poop issue.
That bridge was a rust bucket, one can see that clearly in the pictures.
Missing Bolts, Now how does this happen?....maybe the pigeons removed them.
You have investigators who have to report all there findings, then the media gains access to these reports and blows it all out of porportion.
This will do nothing but open the door to mass pigeon killings.
This is where I become involved and send out e-mails, and hopefully others will help me.
Just how stupid are we made out to be concerning this issue, A human dropped the ball concerning this issue, even if there was an issue with pigeon droppings the folks responsable for inspecting these bridges should have caught it many many years ago, not when the bridge is laying in the river..
Lets blame the Pigeons...hmmmmmm, the public is fairly stupid....hmmmmm yep...it will work....
I don't buy it...I wasn't born during yesturdays snow storm...

Soooooo, take a close look at this bridge




Nothing less than a rust bucket missing bolts...so lets blame Pigeons...

& just one more thing.
In every case were folks do there best to justify mass poisonings of Pigeons or any colony bird, its do to the droppings.
Every building has what they call Buiding Maintenance Personel, you know the folks that earn 15 bucks an hour to sit around drinking coffee hoping the phone doesn't ring to go and unclog a toilet stool, these people are responsable for keeping the grounds clean, the same with city employees...
Its just easier to Kill the animals deemed at fault then it is to get the workers to actually do there job.
A pigeon...A.....pooped on a person entering the bank, so lets poison 60 of them....
A flock of Pigeons makes there home in a historic bell tower the supervisor of bldg maintenance says as he leans against the wall drinking his coffee, god forbid I have to get my workers to do ther job and get out a hose and clean the bell, this might take an hour...can't allow that to happen.....they might break a sweat....OMG....
So we hired a exterminator to kill all the Pigeons....they were falling from the sky miles away, flopping around on the ground, folks thought we were under a nerve gas attack.....,....stupidity at its best....
How about taking that precious bell and move it indoors where it will be safe from mother natures ways...DING....anybody home?????
Our elders enjoy sitting outside and feeding the Pigeons, this offers them a sense of "worth", Caring for "Mothers Creations as they near death themself", so what does the nursing home facility manager do, poisons the pigeons deeming them a nuisence, and our seniors stand in the window watching the birds die a horrible death, what does this say to our senior citizens????????
& there's no need "what so ever", for sharp needle pointed spikes, there are spike strips on the market that do not harm any bird but deters them from roosting.
NO need to run a sharp as a needle spike into any bird....PERIOD.
Or any animal...
Arty

Hey can one of our "higher up" members move this thread one more time Pweeeeeez...into the "Pigeons in the news Thread", located at the top of the forum...its kinda sticky......

Kill those Pigeons
In Daphne du Maurier's story and Alfred Hitchcock's movie, The Birds, it is the birds that go berserk and attack man. Last week in New York City, it was man who, after generations of meek submission to fowl indignities, turned upon the birds. The city government was considering exterminating the pigeons that drop their excrement on park benches, statues and hurrying pedestrians. City officials are convinced at last that the pigeons — up to 5,000,000 of them, by some of the wilder estimates — are an intolerable menace to health.
At least two deaths this year have been definitely traced to infection by pigeons.
In its natural habitat on European cliffs, the rock dove (Columba livid), with its grey coat, white rump and iridescent head and neck, is an attractive bird. Bred and trained by man, it has become a valiant message carrier, famed for its speed and homing instinct. It has also become a multicolored pest, appealing mainly to snapshooting tourists and aging lonelyhearts who get solace of a sort from feeding the flocks.
Hot Blood. The pigeons of St. Peter's in Rome, St. Mark's in Venice and St. Paul's in London are so entrenched that no public official would dream of killing them. The French have prohibited the feeding of pigeons in Paris, but they don't enforce the law. Moscow is attacking its pigeons surreptitiously to avoid exciting the pigeon lovers.
Pigeons carry the infectious agents of a dozen diseases. They may reward the owner of the hand that feeds them with a dose of ornithosis (better known as psittacosis or parrot fever). In New York and probably in most U.S. cities, pigeons are also the principal carriers of the fungus Cryptococcus neoformans, or CN. The fungus does not seem to make the birds sick, perhaps because their blood heat is too high, but they drop it all over the place in their excreta.
And while desecrated, defecated-on statues are immune, live human beings are not. For them, cryptococcosis may be a severe or even fatal illness, usually caught by inhaling dust from pigeon droppings.
When the fungus goes no farther than the windpipe and lungs, it may touch off what seems like a bad cold. More severe cases are often mistaken for bronchitis and tuberculosis. But the deadliest form of the disease is inflammation of the brain covering. Cryptococcal meningitis was always fatal until the antifungal drug, amphotericin B, came into use six years ago. Now the death rate is down to about 30% of meningitis victims. But nobody knows exactly how many cases of CN lung disease there are because the vast majority are not diagnosed correctly. New York City records about 20 cases of CN meningitis each year, with several deaths.
Roost No More. In other U.S. cities, many health authorities pooh-pooh the idea that pigeons are a common cause of illness. But downplaying the danger is a mistake. CN meningitis is increasing in Chicago, and one suburban doctor has had five cases this year.

Some cities have wasted tens of thousands of dollars on futile efforts to keep pigeons away from public buildings with electrified grids, netting, dummies of cats or snakes, and supersonic howls. They might as well have put up a sign, "No Pigeons Allowed"—which is said apocryphally to have happened in Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Square. The most effective columbifuge so far seems to be a gooey chemical trade-named Roost-No-More, which is smeared on the cornices of buildings. It gives the pigeons a mild hotfoot, and they
avoid its smell.
At least two cities have declared open war on pigeons and are winning. Cincinnati, where eleven city workers became ill, and one died, after cleaning out pigeon droppings from an abandoned water tower, has started strict enforcement of an anti-feeding ordinance. Fines up to $50 for violators have made the pigeon rara avis there. Authorities in Buffalo are also making a fight to the finish. They employ five fulltime exterminators, who trap pigeons wherever they can and unobtrusively kill them by wringing their necks. The exterminators are also crack marksmen and shoot pigeons downtown in the early morning.
New York City sentimentalists raised such a howl last week that authorities did not know how to get rid of the birds without losing the pigeon-fancier vote. To trap and kill the birds, they would probably need an amendment to the state conservation law. A few do-it-yourselfers were reported baiting the pigeons with corn, then clubbing them to death with baseball bats. A more scientific and humane though admittedly long-range remedy was proposed by an ornithologist: let the city feed the pigeons all they will eat, but have the corn treated with chemicals that will make the birds sterile.


Dated;
Friday, Oct. 18, 1963

Kill Those Pigeons? - TIME


Arty

Venice to ban rice at weddings over pigeons
Mon Sep 17, 2007 1:43pm BST

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[-] Text [+] VENICE (Reuters) - Throwing rice at newly-weds will soon be banned in Venice as the city steps up its fight against pigeons soiling its squares and chipping away at monuments.

The mayor of the canal city is preparing a measure to stop pigeons banqueting outside the central Palazzo Cavalli, where civil weddings are celebrated, municipal police chief Marco Agostini said on Monday.

"Throwing rice at the bride and groom brings hordes of pigeons who then wait around until the next ceremony. The situation has become unbearable," Agostini told Reuters.

Another measure in the pipeline is a ban on the sale of grain to feed the pigeons in St Mark's Square, the only place in the city where it is still allowed. But the 18 licensed sellers do not want to go and animal rights activists have also expressed concern.

"The square is not a hen-house and you can't have pigeon's droppings all over the place," Agostini said. "The square is washed and cleaned up weekly but it's not enough."

Droppings are only part of the problem.

Authorities say the pigeons are chipping away at the city's marble statues and buildings by pecking at small gaps in the facades to reach for scraps of food that have been blown inside.

A recent study estimated that cleaning up monuments and repairing the damage caused by pigeons cost each Venetian taxpayer 275 euros (191 pounds) a year.

The battle against pigeons is part of a broader campaign to improve decorum and cleanliness in the city, a Unesco World Heritage Site which received nearly 20 million visitors last year.

Since June, stewards have been patrolling St Mark's Square and other historic sites to slap a 25-euro fine on tourists found laying out a picnic, walking around bare-chested or dropping food wrappers.
Venice to ban rice at weddings over pigeons | Top News | Reuters

Arty

The battle of Trafalgar Square's pigeons
Tue Feb 6, 2007 5:10pm GMT

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[-] Text [+] By Natalie Armstrong

LONDON (Reuters) - Shortly before dawn at one of Britain's most famous city landmarks, 27-year-old Magic is playing his part in a battle to the death -- with a bag of bird seed.

He opens his gym bag and starts spraying corn feed left and right near the imposing portico of the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square, surrounded by flocks of hungry pigeons.

He is one of a small but dedicated band of bird-lovers who have vowed to stop London Mayor Ken Livingstone starving the birds out of the 160-year-old square.

Livingstone says pigeon droppings have caused thousands of pounds worth of damage to Nelson's column and has vowed to get rid of them, to the dismay of bird-lovers who say the pigeons are part of the square's appeal.

"If we stop, they will starve and they will die," said Magic, who uses only his nickname.

The 27-year-old from Poland has been feeding the pigeons almost every morning for the past two years before going to his construction job. His girlfriend and his brother also help.

Another ally is nearby with a bag of seed.

"Pigeons are part of Trafalgar Square," said Vera Petrovic, a grocery cashier who has fed the pigeons every Wednesday morning for the past two years.
Somebody must care for them. They deserve to be here. They are part of London tourism," she said.

Petrovic moved to Britain in 1996 during the post-Yugoslav war in her native Croatia. She says the pigeons remind her of Ban Jelacic Square in Zagreb.

LEGAL STRUGGLE

The war over Trafalgar Square's pigeons has been going on for over six years -- well before the 25-million-pound facelift of the square which was completed in 2003 -- and has involved various deterrence tactics including the use of megaphones and even hawks.

The two Harris hawks proved expensive and had to go after they started overstepping their remit and killing pigeons in front of horrified tourists.

Feeding pigeons was prohibited and seed-sellers were banned from the square amid accusations of cruelty to animals and dark predictions of mass starvation.

But in 2002 a managed feeding programme was agreed which allowed pigeon-lovers to feed the birds ever-diminishing amounts of seed, provided by the Greater London Authority (GLA), to bring down numbers gradually.

Since the programme began, feeding has been reduced to 35 kilos a day, down from 150 kilos, helping cut the number of pigeons in the square to 1,500 from 4,000.

The programme was supposed to end next year but last summer the GLA pulled out of the agreement after "rogue" feeding on the square's north terrace in front of the National Gallery, which is controlled by Westminster City Council and does not fall under the Mayor's jurisdiction.
And that is where the legal problems began.

The Save the Trafalgar Square Pigeons group (STTSP) claims the deal was binding and that the Mayor had failed to pay an agreed 3,000 pounds for bird food.

Livingstone says the activists failed to adhere to the spirit of the agreement by allowing the rogue feeding and the whole case will be resolved in court in April.

"We have no intention of going backwards," said a GLA spokesman. "Since the introduction of a byelaw banning unauthorised pigeon feeding ... there has been a reduction in the number of pigeons on Trafalgar Square so that the space can be properly used by the public.

"The ban has significantly improved the environment of the square."

TOURIST ALLIES

Livingstone is not alone in his fight against what he has called "rats with wings."

"I walk through every morning and I slip over what they leave behind," said bank manager Paul Torpin as he crossed the square last month.

Torpin is one of many Londoners who agree with Livingstone's campaign -- but the pigeons can still count on tradition and the tourists.
Feeding pigeons is popular with tourists at landmarks around the world from Venice's San Marco Square to Central Park in New York City, says Tim Webb of The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in London.

"It's like chucking a coin in the Trevi fountain (in Rome)," he added. "It's one of the things you do when you go to these places. There's a romantic notion of feeding the pigeons."

Hansel Gonzalez, an American who is working on his PhD in petroleum engineering in Edinburgh, remembers how he used to feed pigeons in Central Park when visiting New York as a child.

"It's almost a ritual you do when you're a tourist," he said.

"London around here is just so fast and moving so quickly -- with the square and the pigeons it just seems time goes a little more slowly and it's a little more enjoyable."

Arty

Nevada town trying to drive pigeons away
Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Mar 26, 2007 by Associated Press
VIRGINIA CITY, Nev. -- Local officials are trying to scare away a large flock of pigeons before the birds drive away tourists in the historic mining town of Virginia City.

The pigeons that roost on the roof of the small town's visitor center pose a health hazard as well as a threat to the tourist experience, said Susan Sutton, executive director of the Virginia City Convention and Tourism Authority.

"It's a potential health hazard to have pigeon feces everywhere," she told the Nevada Appeal. "Because we rely on the tourist trade, it's also a real problem to have pigeon feces everywhere visitors step."

Storey County Commissioner Greg "Bum" Hess said the pigeons also are eating small particles off the roof of the historic Crystal Bar, which houses the visitor center.

To shoo the birds away, officials are considering a plan to place speakers on the roof that transmit a high-pitched sound that pigeons don't like.

Officials also are seeking cooperation from local residents accused of causing the flock to grow by feeding the birds.

Hess said feeding of pigeons should be covered under the county's nuisance ordinance, and Sheriff Jim Miller agreed to contact residents believed to be responsible.

County Manager Pat Whiten said he would contact state health officials concerning possible enforcement efforts.

County commissioners will consider solutions at their next meeting.
Nevada town trying to drive pigeons away Deseret News (Salt Lake City) - Find Articles


Arty