Pigeons in San Jose, Calif., will soon be outfitted with miniature cameras and mobile-phone backpacks – to monitor local air quality.

The homemade cellphones – equipped with GPS tracking chips and pollution sensors – will beam data back to a smog blog to provide area residents with up-to-the-minute info on air quality.

And the cameras? They’ll send the blog bird’s-eye views of trouble spots.

*

Birds of different feather have been troubling the organizers of a vintage-car rally planned for an alpine village near Mount Cook on New Zealand’s South Island.

They’re afraid the keas, sharp-beaked native parrots, will damage the cars in their search for shiny items – so they’ve hired 40 karate experts to scare them away.

It’s a bird-brained idea, insists a local wildlife ranger, who says the keas “will fly around and laugh.” He suggests using water pistols to keep them away.

*

A fender-bender has police in Seattle completely stumped.

Seems a woman driver rear-ended a car, then jumped out with her passenger and unlatched the trunk – to let a man out. Then all three ran.

Police are still investigating.

*

Thieves breaking into a factory in Santa Maria, Brazil, had a novel way to distract the guard dog – they brought along a female dog in heat.

While the guard dog was otherwise occupied, the resourceful hoods swiped $17,755 in cash and made a clean getaway.

When the first staffer arrived the following morning, she found the security dog “happily chasing after a female dog.”

*

Talk about getting a lift while skiing! A man from Lincolnshire, England, who lost his hearing 15 years ago regained it suddenly while he was on a cable car, 7,000 feet up, in the Italian Dolomites.

A new cure for deafness? Noted one expert: “Regaining your hearing because of a change in altitude is very unusual, and Britain’s National Health Service isn’t going to be prescribing holidays to the Alps anytime soon.”