A small bird sitting on a wire next to a bigger bird next to a bigger bird.
One seagull flies into the storm while another one flies away from it.
A pigeon standing dead-still in the middle of an intersection. The cars drive past him and he continues to stand untouched and unnoticed.
A hawk standing on a tree branch not an arms length away. His head turns to make eye-contact. We lock eyes and he invites me to come closer. I take a few steps closer. He does not avert his gaze. I take a few more steps closer. A rustle in the brush behind me, and he takes off, majestically, wings outstretched. I can make out the texture on the individual feathers as he launches off into the air.
Five white albino pigeons sit crowded together on the corner of an apartment building rooftop, next to a brown pigeon a few feet away.
The birds on top of the Vons sign look very, very busy.
A dead pigeon on the ground by the stairs outside my apartment. Upon opening up his wing gently with a plastic bag, the sight of blood and mangled/opened-up body. The pathway down to the sidewalk is lined with feathers and traces of blood.
Two crows sit on a fence screaming at each other. The screaming continues to escalate and they get louder and louder and louder until one flies away. It circles around the parking lot a few times, flies back and lands again right next to his compatriot.
A flash of green as a flock of wild parrots flies over the stopped traffic.
A homeless man with blackened feet lying next to a wall. A pigeon picking up the crumbs around him.
It is raining, says one pigeon to another. Yes it is, the other pigeon replies.
The birds don’t seem to notice that it is raining, that it is thundering, that there a particular weather event occurring in this particular moment.
The birds often don’t understand the irony of the billboard that they have chosen to sit upon.
The pigeons gather and sit on every possible surface of the intersection: lampposts, signals, signs, rooftops, sidewalks, trash cans, trees, statues. It almost seems that they are plotting on how to take over the city.
Photo Credit: Sal Verduzco
The birds have already taken over the city.
Refusing to simply fly away, the pigeon frantically runs around the parking lot as it is chased by a child.
Do pigeons read the news?
You have the face of a bird, one person once observed to another.
Pigeons are trending now, he declared.
That man looks a lot like a bird, the girl thought. That girl looks a lot like that man, the bird thought.
A bird walking faster than the man. A man walking faster than the bird.
The first bird to land is the first to fly away again.
A man holding a bag of groceries who gets off the bus furrows his eyebrows as he tries to cross the street during rush hour traffic. The birds above him fly around in circles, not able to decide where to land next.
The two birds in the cage only know two modes: complete sunlight and complete darkness.
A large crow slowly and painfully pecks at a tiny bird, while three other tiny birds nearby scream and jump around and attempt to save their friend. They are distressed, they don’t know what to do, how to help, how to save their friend. The tiny bird caught between the crow’s beak is dead after a series of moments, long, drawn out moments of pecking, being picked up, and pecking. As his body continues to twitch, it is hard to know the moment of actual death or the moment of realization when the other tiny birds finally give up and fly away.
A hawk on the road, only half run-over and plastered to the asphalt, one wing still aimed at the sky, still reaching, still flapping.
Three birds perched on a lamppost.
One bird perched on a lamppost.
A seagull perched at the very end of the lamppost, looking due west. Seven pigeons standing next to him on the pole, outstretched and horizontal, all watching the cars coming at them from below.
Two birds stand on a wire, perfectly still, perfectly calm, the width of six birds between them.
Sometimes the birds don’t move for several minutes at a time. Sometimes they seem to twitch involuntarily, as if hiccuping.
A bird, like a compass, faces whatever direction it is most drawn to.
