Nesting falcons interrupt £200m Vodafone 4G mast upgrades

Five pairs of nesting falcons have disrupted Vodafone customers' mobile phone signals in London and the south east – because the birds have set up shop on the carrier's masts. The Daily Telegraph reported that Vodafone engineers spotted the birds of prey nesting on and around base stations on a church, a hospital and an office …

[John Sturdy]

Is there anything harmful in the base station signal at such a short range? I can imagine the Daily Mail getting hold of the story and predicting huge mutant falcons within a generation!

[Shrimpling]

"If we learned one thing from The Amazing Colossal Man and Grasshopperus it's that radiation makes stuff grow real big real fast."

So we wont even need to wait a generation until we get huge mutant falcons.

[Fungus Bob]

"Daily Mail getting hold of the story and predicting huge mutant falcons"

Nah, ever'body knows ya gotta feed 'em steroids like Tiffany did in Mega Python vs Gatoroid.

Now, that wuz sience.

[montyburns56]

Can I be the first to welcome our huge mutant falcon overlords.

[Virag0]

dual purpose

Why not design towers that both serve data but also accomodate the falcons? A radio mast that is being adopted by the animals is only a step away from being a terriffic side benefit.

[Simple Si]

Re: dual purpose

Great idea although the design seems to be working so far. They could however install fixed terminals so the falcons can place some food orders on-line at FunkyPigeon.com

[Marshalltown]

Re: dual purpose

It has been dual purpose ever since the falcons nested there. The problem is changing out antennae to upgrade the hardware. You climb the tower and if the birds fly away, you have "disturbed" them, which violates the law, meaning jail and or a fine for bird bothering. If they get pissed and go after you, you want a good safety net, or a parachute, and health insurance, and since they were pissed at you, you have disturbed them, again violating the law, meaning jail or a fine, after you get out of the hospital.

[Kevin Johnston]

Story aside, that is a great photo....severe envy here as none of mine come out anything like that well

[Chris Miller]

'Falcons' is a term encompassing several species, including the Kestrel. It looks very much as though these are specifically Peregrine Falcons.

[Hairless Biker]

Hodgesaaaaargh!

I feel ever so slightly soiled, as I checked the Torygraph link to confirm that they are referring to Peregrines.

Now, where did I put my jesses...

[AndrueC]

A few years ago I was talking to a colleague and we got on to discussing pets. At the time I had a pet budgie and in his typical disparaging(*) way he said "why don't you get rid of that and get a parrot - at least they can talk".

So I pointed out that a budgie is a parrot and in fact they appear to be one of the best human vocal imitators :)

Taxonomy can be a funny old thing.

(*)He was, frankly, an unpleasant git and one of only two people that I can claim to genuinely hate. Thankfully we parted ways several years ago.

[ToddR]

Falconidae is the family name rather than a "term"

[Sarah Balfour]

Exactly what I was about to say…

I believe the peregrine is the only one to breed in cities, though, very useful for controlling aerial vermin.

Reg, 'falcon' is a genus, NOT a species, do yer fecking research, FFS!

I used to be a member of the RSPB, until I learnt it was IN FAVOUR of fracking.

[Calum Morrison]

I wouldn't hold out much hope for getting it working Londoners - our local mast was sitting on 2G for 8 days recently after Vodafone buggered up a 4G roll-out. No texts or calls on any of our 45 handsets unless we forced them all down to 2G. Not the first time it's happened either. Useless. Thank god I took the Reg's suggestion and moved my personal moby to 3 recently - what a revelation after a year of Vodafone.

[frank ly]

Many years ago ...

... (late 70's) I worked at the Central Research Labs of EMI Ltd, a quite old building. A kestrel (or two) had found their way into some crumbling brickwork on the corner of the bulding and were seen regularly going in and out. That corner housed a small old storeroom which contained an archive of highly classified documents. It was assumed that they had shredded some documents to make their nest.

Nobody with the required clearance was willing to go in and look, so it was decided to leave them alone until the nesting season was well over.

[Paul Hovnanian]

World’s fastest bird

"Vodafone was very pleased to have the world’s fastest bird as visitors to its masts, Gordon added."

Just have the Vodafone sales staff tell them how much faster they'll be if they upgrade to 4G (with a 2 year contract, of course).

[Ol' Grumpy]

Re: World’s fastest bird

Maybe Vodafone could employ them as high-speed carrier pigeons. Would certainly be faster than the signal I get around here.

[Adam Foxton]

Re: World’s fastest bird

But just imagine the packet droppings

[Tim Jenkins]

Raptor in the Middle

Already covered by RFC 6214

"...routing carriers through the territory of predatory carriers may potentially cause severe packet loss. It is strongly recommended that these factors be considered in the routing algorithm used to create carrier routing tables. Implementers should consider policy-based routing to ensure reliable packet delivery by routing around areas where territorial and predatory carriers are prevalent..."

http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6214

[PNGuinn]

C'mon, el Reg

Sod the falcons.

Wot we Want is VULTURES!!!

A few dozen of 'em nesting in Westminster might even make politics interesting again.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: C'mon, el Reg

Too many vultures already nesting in Westminster.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, the marketing possibilities

To start with, you can market mobile service to kids using your new mascot "Fredrick the 4G falcon"!

Some other ideas:

Vodafone--Carrion' your most important conversations since 19XX!

Vodafone--Raptor-ously good customer service since 19XX!!

Vodafone--Don't be another carrier's pigeon!

Vodafone Falcon(TM) 4G--Everything else is prey!!

(Dear Vodafone, my usual rate for marketing consulting is $300/hour. Please enclose payment to M. Hack....)

[Conundrum1885]

Re. pigeons

I have heard that a certain group of pigeons over here acquired the irritating habit of stealing small items left lying around (ie keys) and relocating them to random locations.

It wouldn't be that hard to train them to carry more useful items ie microSD card stacks (128GB*8) so thats a pretty high data rate if wireless comms via light is used on the Tx and Rx ends.

Time until some enterprising hackers implement this for ToAC (Torrents over Avian Carriers) ... :-)