That early morning pigeon flock in Prospect Park changed my whole walk route

I used to go the same path every day at 5:30 AM through the north end of Prospect Park in Brooklyn. Saw lots of robins and cardinals but never paid much attention to the pigeons under the benches. Then one morning about 3 weeks ago a whole flock of maybe 40 of them rose up all at once when a dog ran past, and the light hit their feathers making this blue green shimmer I never noticed before. Now I take a different path each day to see what I've been missing. Anybody else had a bird you see all the time do something that made you look at it different?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_diana23d ago

Did you ever look at pigeons and think yeah, I'm about as forgettable as a bird that lives under a bench and eats french fries? I had something similar happen with crows last winter, they were picking up bread crusts and dunking them in a puddle to soften them up, and I realized I was watching something smarter than half my exes. It's wild how the most common thing can just flip your whole brain around like that.

tylerpark23d ago

Diana, that crow thing hits hard. Watching an animal figure out a solution right in front of you is a little humbling. I had a moment like that with a squirrel once. It was trying to get into a bird feeder that was supposed to be squirrel-proof. That thing tried about five different angles, hung upside down, and then just figured out a way to shimmy the lid off. Made me feel like a real amateur for thinking I had outsmarted a rodent.