Monday, April 23, 2007

Decline and Fall (with Hawks & Pigeons!)

Rebecca sends this item from England. It needs deconstructing. All emphasis mine...


"The mechanical birds — called "Robops" — have been placed on rooftop locations around the British city of Liverpool and will flap their wings and squawk loudly to scare the problem pigeons away."

Yeah, that's what falcons do..

"The initiative was launched to deal with the birds who are now considered a nuisance in the city, flying at people and leaving droppings everywhere, Liverpool council said."

Attack pigeons?

"The pigeon problem has been exacerbated by residents in the city feeding the birds — whose natural diet is seeds and insects — with take-away leftovers. “We need to get the message across that anyone who feeds the birds intentionally, or occasionally with leftovers such as sausage rolls or burgers, is responsible for our streets being so crowded with these birds,” Berni Turner, Liverpool city council’s executive member for the environment, said."

INSECTS??

"The council’s environmental health manager, Andy Hull, said that the scheme was an attempt to improve the health of the pigeons, as their current diet is unhealthy and dangerous."

Nanny State for pigeons?

And-- why not use hawks?

Oh, right, it wouldn’t be good for their health...

2 comments:

Todd said...

Protect the lower rungs of the food chain at the expense of predators. It's just not cute to have a hawk feast on pigeon! This follows the same logic of the antis regarding hare coursing I suppose.

PBurns said...

On the upside, we do it different in the U.S. where every urban hawk and falcon seems to have a web cam, a blog, and a professional photographer attached to it. Not only do we encourage raptors in our cities, we see the urban environment as almost ideal for certain birds such as peregrines. See http://urbanhawks.blogs.com/ for a great example and truely admirable photography.

P.