Although a number of pet birds have flown around my living room through the years, I tend to divide avian wildlife in New York City into two categories, as this sign does:

Why single out pigeons? Here’s my theory: if you have one or two pigeons, they’re beautiful — a feathered palette of grays and whites with touches of black. But that’s never what you actually have. You have a flock, a megaflock, many megaflocks! You have a pigeony exponential growth-curve akin to the one Covid-19 has, unfortunately, made us all too familiar with.

Pigeons also make an appearance in this sign, which a reader spotted in a park:

The reader remarked that she “would have thought NYC already had plenty of these without anyone having to breed more.” I join her in rejecting this imperative sentence.

Still another pigeon, because, as I said, you really can’t have just one:

You can read this sign two ways. (1) You’re not required to feed a pigeon and clean-up, but doing so would be nice. (2) You’re not supposed to feed the pigeon, but you’re going to do it anyway, so could you please remove the inevitable end product? It’s the law. Which surprises me. I know there are all sorts of laws about snow removal — how much time may elapse after the last flake falls before you must shovel a path for pedestrians, for example. Is there also a time limit on poop? Do you have to sit around staring at the pigeon you’ve just (illegally) fed, so you can scoop the end product? Asking for a friend.

That’s it for pigeons, you’ll be glad to know. But not for birds. Below is one of the first signs I spotted when I started this blog:

Then, as now, I smiled to think of how you would sit . . . birds. Bend their little legs? Offer a chair? I’ll leave you with that image, hoping it cheers you, and any pigeons you’ve befriended.