Birds of prey dive bomb fishpond
Birds love to eat fish in this pond
A rise in predatory birds this summer has led facility staff at Centennial’s Centre for Creative Communications (CCC) to take defensive measures.
After campus staff witnessed seagulls picking fish from the pond late this summer, they summoned facilities worker, Steve Starr, to come up with a solution to keep the fish in the pond and the birds out.
“It seems as though seagulls and pigeons have been moving north in the city,” Starr said.
“I noticed flocks of seagulls around campus and at my home, which is near the campus, this summer.
This is the first time I’ve seen seagulls in this area in my years of working here.”
Starr suspects the seagull and pigeon presence is due to the introduction of hawks into the downtown core, in order to curb the pigeon problem there.
“Instead of the hawks getting the pigeons, they just moved north and brought the seagulls with them.”
The fishpond has been a feature of the CCC since the building was constructed in 1954, but fish have only thrived in the pond since it came under Starr’s care four years ago.
Starr can often be found wading in the pond, vacuuming up dirt and debris. He also moves the fish into plastic bins filled with water and stores them in the maintenance shed during the winter.
This has been standard practice ever since a bubbler failure caused some of the fish to die. A bubbler is designed to keep the water in the pond moving and prevent freezing.
With the help of a co-worker from the HP campus, Starr put hooks into the concrete on two sides of the pond and wooden stakes on the other side in order to support the pigeon netting.
The statue in the middle of the pond prevents the net from sagging into the water.
“I had originally designed a piece that would be modular, that could be easily removed and wouldn’t require the installation of hooks or stakes,” he said.
“But the copper cost would have breached $1,000 and that’s just too expensive.”
While Starr is not satisfied the current netting is the best, or even the most attractive solution, he regrets it is the most feasible given the budget.
Steps to control the pigeon populations of large urban centres have been diverse. One approach is an education program aimed at the populace to curb littering, thus, making the area unattractive to pigeons.
Another method is to have trained marksmen whose job consists of shooting pigeons.
Pigeons are unwelcome in cities because they carry diseases and generally cause a nuisance.
According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology website, the first pigeons in North America were brought by European settlers in the 1600s.
Pigeons that escaped from their owners formed wild flocks that would take up residence in cliffs with rocky ledges, the same way pigeons make buildings, bridges and other man-made structures their homes today.
