This chapter was filled with many things that annoyed me. The first thing I want to talk about is the pigeons, which in general, always annoy me. They are the embodiment of a species adapting to their urban environment. We see them everywhere, eating and sleeping all the time. They make nests in signs on buildings and in the beams of our train trestles. It’s the same with the sparrows who make nests under our air conditioners and awnings. Like the falcons on top of our skyscrapers, they have made the best of a bad situation. However, unlike the falcons, they’re just too used to humans.
What I mean is that years ago, they’d probably fly as far away as possible from us. But the pigeons we’ve grown up? They’ll eat right out of our hands and they absolutely do not move out of the way when we come charging through. I’m not complaining that they’ve adapted. Kudos to them for getting used to their environment and doing what they have to survive. That’s more than what I can say for many people. What irks me is the fact that they’ve been forced to go to such limits. We’ve taken everything from them and they couldn’t fight back.
This sounds terrible, especially when you see it in addition to all the unnecessary killing that’s gone on over the years. Killing for food is one thing. I can accept that. But in the chapter, McCully mentioned the over-killing done just for sport. It didn’t really show any skill since there were so many birds, you could miss your target and still hit one. It really did a number on NY’s bird populations and only now are eagle, red-tailed hawk, and owl populations building to what they once were. Let’s hope preservation laws are enforced to keep them safe.
