the loose because people drink the water we all collect on the roof of homes and businesses. It was not long ago in Bermuda that keeping pigeons at all was frowned upon because they might escape and letting pigeons loose was widely agreed to be unacceptable.

Despite the impression given by last Friday's front page picture in this newspaper, pigeons are not just cute and friendly birds. They are pests and carry disease and can foul Bermuda's drinking water.

There are people who feed these birds and encourage their proliferation and, while that may be humane, it is not healthy. Clearly the welfare of the public has to come first. Pigeons are both a health hazard and a nuisance. It should not be difficult for everyone to understand that fact when you consider that pigeons congregate on the roof and Bermudians drink the water collected on that roof.

Pigeons are a problem in many urban areas but for years Bermuda remained largely free of pigeons because people understood about drinking rain water.

However, as a country we are becoming more careless about any number of things as we become more crowded and more hassled, and protecting our drinking water from disease appears to be one of them. There is a suggestion that some of these pigeons are raised domestically or for show purposes and then released and that is careless and entirely to be discouraged.

Pigeons seem to like cities and urban areas and we are not surprised that they have become a problem in Hamilton. The statement in last Friday's newspaper from Mr. Warren Brown Jr. would be amusing if it were not all too true. He said that in an effort to free the roof of pigeons and protect the water, his Front Street store had even placed four life-sized owls on the roof to scare off the pigeons, but the pigeons just sit on the owls' heads and "do their business''. That's also what they do on everyone else's roof.

A solution to the pigeon problem has puzzled London and New York.

In Bermuda there was a loud public row about the shooting of chickens that were causing a nuisance in Warwick so the shooting of pigeons in Hamilton is not a sensible solution. We should not try poisoning them because a lot of dead pigeons on people's roofs would probably be worse than their droppings.

The Corporation of Hamilton seems to have tried to trap the pigeons unsuccessfully. However, we think the Corporation should certainly discourage the feeding of pigeons. Some cities put out food laced with an agent which renders the birds sterile and thus prevents their increase. Bermuda could try that because it seems to be humane.

We think there is an unpleasant but realistic solution to a difficult and unacceptable problem. People must come first. Bermuda as an agricultural community used to pay a bounty for dead crows and a pigeon bounty might well be the solution. We should offer a hefty bounty for pigeons, dead or alive, delivered to the agriculture offices at the Botanical Gardens in Paget East.

We agree with those people who feel strongly that pigeons are a health hazard for humans.