Avian Encroachment

Pigeon on a building

One of my pho­tographs, enti­tled “Avian Encroachment”, has been select­ed as one of the final­ists in CBCs 2008 Nature in Focus con­test under the cat­e­go­ry Your Habitat. There were 1200 entries entered this year.

The title is a play on the term “urban encroach­ment”, which is used to describe the destruc­tive habits of human activ­i­ty spread­ing over nat­ur­al areas.

Since the pho­to is of a pigeon sit­ting next to the spikes used to keep birds off the ledges of build­ings, it appeared to me that he was flaunt­ing his posi­tion, and push­ing back.

One of my geol­o­gy teach­ers in uni­ver­si­ty said that it was sil­ly to think of us try­ing to save the plan­et, because the earth, as a liv­ing thing, is going to be around for a long time. Environmentalism is real­ly about sav­ing our­selves.

You can check out the win­ners and oth­er final­ists on the CBC web­site.

9 comments

  1. Wow. Congratulations man. That’s a great pho­to. Too bad you did­n’t win, but being a final­ist out of sub­mis­sions from across the coun­try is no small feat!

  2. Great Photo Jeff!

    There’s this odd­ly con­struct­ed house on Sommerset at Lyon street in Ottawa. It’s next to the beer store (i think), you might want to check it out. In the sum­mer redicu­lous num­bers of pigeons stack near­ly one on top of anoth­er on the roof of the house.

    The house faces Lyon street, but the roof is best viewed from the park across the street. Best viewed after a big plate of sauteed snow pea leaves with gar­lic and a bub­ble tea(o=

  3. @trolley — Thanks…you’re right, I’m hap­py to have even made the final­ists.

    @loo — I’m going to have to check out that house, I think I know which area you’re talk­ing about (there’s only one Beer Store on Somerset with a park across the street, as far as I remem­ber). I’ll be sure to bring my longest lens for that.

    And where can I get some sautéed snow peas?

  4. Re: the crazy pigeons.
    They weren’t crazy every­time i went by, i can’t seem to fig­ure out if its the weath­er or the time of day or.. some­thing else i can’t quite put my fin­ger on, but what i remem­ber is warmer days, not quite over­cast, but not blaz­ing sun­light either.

    On the top­ic of snow pea leaves/tips (not snow peas them­selves) you can buy them at the asian mar­ket at the cor­ner of Montgomery and Montreal road and cook them your­self with some rice wine and gar­lic and oil OR you can go to Yangtze and ask for an order of snow pea tips with gar­lic (AND an amaz­ing egg tart)… and for you, maybe a “milky” tea. (o=

    Hopefully the pigeon-house own­ers haven’t replaced its old roof, i think the pigeons were there eat­ing up the lit­tle stones from the shin­gles (i think that helps them digest or some­thing to that effect)

  5. I’m going to have to check that out, it sounds deli­cious.

    Pigeons eat­ing stones reminds me of the dinosaurs who had smooth rocks in their stom­achs to grind food.

  6. Awesome. Good show. That’s a great image. Glad it will get more view­ing.

  7. Amazing. I absolute­ly love it.

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