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| Two pigeons perch amidst the wreckage of their home. |
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Helping make pigeons our friends in Downtown Los Angeles, CA, USA + iPigeon tech, lifestyle, commentary, and art.
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| Two pigeons perch amidst the wreckage of their home. |
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Today’s pigeon feedings in downtown Los Angeles started out fairly typically; I stopped and fed three flocks on 5th near Los Angeles Street, at Pershing Square, and underneath the Figueroa overpass at 4th. I had scratch seed and grain mix for them, and I prepared some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, once I reached and fed the last flock, on the other side of town, from where I stay. Then I went to Whole Foods to purchase some more peanut butter and jelly sandwich fixings, since I had run out, after preparing the sandwiches.
I headed back over to the flock at Pershing Square, because I only had so much feed for them, the first time around, and there were well over hundred hungry birds there. I approached them, high flying in unison form, circling around the block’s intersection to maintain flock conformity. I proceeded to feed them their sandwiches, by tearing off little bite-sized chunks and tossing them in to various spots around the huge crowd of birds, to make sure that everyone had a chance at getting a bite of the sandwiches to eat. Once they had finished the sandwiches, they performed a few more flyovers, in unison, as before, landing back on the staircase, once they had made their rounds. I went through my bag so that I could offer some of them a final bite of dessert, since I had found a cheese danish, once the way back over to visit the flock.
Good news! Today, some of the braver pigeons, and even a sprightly sparrow, came right up to me to nibble away at the cheese danish. A few pigeons even made it a point to jump up on my hands and legs, as I sat there, and they ate directly out of my hand. I wasn’t able to feed them and capture footage of the scene, today, but this is a very promising development for the sociability and tourism value of the pigeon flock at Pershing Square. This flock had been a particular challenge to tame, because of the large size of the flock, owing to flock conformity influence upon the individual birds’ behavioral boundaries. Since it was not a common behavior, jumping up on the feeder was not seen as acceptable, previously. Other than that, there was a new graham cracker-colored pigeon at Pershing Square today. I named him Muffin.
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| Muffin, the pigeon, in light brown. |
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| Another photo of Muffin the pigeon. |
Other news is that there is a young squeaker at the 5th and Los Angeles Street flock who is in need of some prayerful support and positive thoughts. He’s been injured, on his head, such that he’s bald on his head, and he’s got scabs that were near bleeding, on the back of his head and neck.
Some other bird must have been bothered by the baby’s presence and picked on him. In addition, there’s another poor pigeon over in Pershing Square who has very severely swollen club feet, from having had string tied around his feet, cruelly. Some of his toes, on both legs, are turning black, with necrosis. I’m not able to help him, and I don’t know of anyone else who is in a position to help him, but at least, with necrosis becoming apparent, the nerves and cells die, in the affected area, and it might possibly hurt less than might be expected, for such swollen feet, but at least it’s a sign that he’ll be free from the pain, at some point, and although he will be a cripple for the rest of his life, he’ll have less stress on him, for losing his club feet, and he’ll always have daily meals to look forward to.
As I’ve been working on refining the bottled version of Eau Pigeonoid, a newer fragrance, which I detail, here, on this blog (the fragrance smells great “neat,” or, applied directly to the skin, although translating that olfactory experience in to a bottled spray product proves challenging), I’m noticing some nice fragrance notes that are coming out of the woodwork, as I work to simplify the formula. Notes like “orange delight,” one of my favorite childhood treats, which I now encounter as a citron/lemon variant (it’s essentially a thickened, sweet jelly of citrus in a bite size, chocolate-covered bar).
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| The original conception of iPigeon.institute’s “citrus elixir.” |
note: originally published with a typographical error in the title and web address; the title has been corrected, whereas the web address is permanent, as is, and I don’t want to take this post down and republish it.
The pigeons are acting out so wonderfully. Today, some of them were exuberantly hopping up on to my arm, as I was preparing their meal for them, and they perched there, on my arm, and ate food out of my hand.
What a delightful moment! It sounds like you’ve built a wonderful bond of trust and familiarity with the pigeons. Their hopping onto your arm and eating from your hand reflects their comfort and appreciation for your care. Moments like these show how animals, even pigeons, can form meaningful connections when treated with kindness and consistency.
Have they always been this comfortable around you, or is this a new behavior? It’s such a lovely example of mutual trust!
It’s a relatively new behavior that had started around a month ago. I’ve been feeding the flock for seven years, and some of the newcomers to the flock are braver than the older regulars to the flock, as far as eating out of my hand and accepting hand contact from me. One of them let me pick them up and give him a hug, briefly, and he wasn’t scared.
Readers who have been following along, recently, would recall that Snooker had been missing from the DTLA Central Library's pigeon flock, whereas he had been a favorite amongst the pigeons, there, since he is a uniquely-colored bird, and, therefore, important to the flock's genetic development in to becoming fancy birds, as a Pakistani High Flyer breed pigeon.
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| I noticed that Snooker had finally returned to his regular perch, after seeming to be absent for over a week, from the Library flock. |
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| The DTLA Los Angeles Public Library Central Branch's pigeon ledge, out on 5th St, featuring the pigeon flock. |
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| One of the birds which have contracted pigeon pox. Notice the bump on the birds' head, and the protruding lumps on the sides of the face. |
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| A rear view on the same bird (center), with the protrusion clearly visible. |
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| Another view of the affected bird, feeding amongst the rest of the flock. |
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| Today, at the library, there were nearly twice the amount of pigeons that had shown up. |
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| Some of the long(er) row of pigeons that I encountered, while visiting the library, today. |
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| Quickly, a crowd arrives, awaiting a meal, along with some water, provided along with the buttered cinnamon sugar bread I had prepared, for the day. |
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| Today's mealtime was more crowded than typical. Will tomorrow see the same new birds show up? |
I don't get on (or off) on this Metro train station all that often, but recently, I spotted a refugee flock of pigeons hanging out, here, at the parking lot across the street. Since I was stocked up on bread (some of it was bread with butter), I knew that I couldn't let this flock of birds down; they hadn't always been here, and they may have been on their way in or out of town, to have gathered here.
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| The DTLA Pico Metro Station parking lot, featuring a large flock of pigeons. |
In any case, these birds, some of them a localized flock, whom had been spotted perching atop the luxury highrise buildings across the street, potentially had an advantageous view of the terrain, while they perched, and they could have seen other nearby flocks that had been gathering in other micro-locales of DTLA. Pigeons are made for socialization - the more, the merrier, so to speak. When the flock flies off, sometimes it's a "high-flying" motive about them, where they swoop and swing around, in spirals and in circles, or in figure 8-style, for the sake of quickly drawing attention to themselves, high-flying, as it were, so that nearby and known perching flocks, of a different micro-locale, can catch them high-flying, as a signal of that something exciting is going on, around this commotion, such as meal time. The other nearby flocks would be the ones by the Olympic at Olive Shell Gas Station, the 26th Street / Orthopedic Institute "USC Dumpster Pigeons," and, also, perhaps, some birds from around 7th at Metro Station. There's a chance that these flocks had become neglected, and the newcomers wanted to try out this location, on account of so much foot traffic at the Pico Metro Station. I made sure to look out for this flock again, the next time I rode by, but they weren't there, so I'll have to figure out their schedule, and try to fit them in, sometimes, during the course of a week.
This flock would be an ideal one for sports fans to visit, being that L.A. Live, the Crypto.com Sports Arena, and the Convention Center are all very nearby attractions for pedestrians, which have frequent and regular events happening.
The birds are a fairly standard flock of Downtown LA: they're not completely shy, and they know that some people will toss them food, if they're visible to passersby.
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| The Pico Metro Station Refugee Pigeon Flock, enjoying a meal, on April 19th, 2024, at 3:43 p.m. |
This flock would be a good one for people to patronize during the springtime (now) season, throughout summer and in to fall, I suppose, being that it's light out, and pigeons in this area will, most commonly, stay out until 6:30 p.m., while the sun is still out. I just recently found out that pigeons love peanuts 🥜, by the way, so that's a nice and convenient snack food to have on hand for them (or, if you hadn't prepared, beforehand, there's a CVS right across the street.
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Yesterday marked the 7th anniversary of this website's founding. I nearly had it aligned with my readers' 200,000th visit to iPigeon.institute. Thanks for all of the support, throughout the years, and still, on such an ongoing basis. I feel that this year will see some exciting developments in the website's offerings, as I'm learning to manage product developments at scale, and my primary support systems are well in place.
Thanks again! 🤯🤧🎂
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| I landed as the 199,177th hit on my blog, here, in anticipation of reaching 200,000 hits, soon. |
Conceivably, for those amongst this demographic, work had become stale, given that our musical imaginations had disappointed us, for the sake of the number of physical steps that digital music creation would require of us, during the creative process, itself. Thinking back, and comparatively, perhaps some of the cutting-edge and elite music producers and studios had, for a long time, now, employed touchscreen formats, which allowed for similar types of control over the workflow and user interface formats, along with software and hardware plugins, instruments, and effects, perhaps - all suited to accommodate music creation and capture, and, also, unique, to some degree, perhaps.
For me, I happen to recall that I intently set aside the creation of music tracks and songs, at some point, back when I was trying to juggle so many acts, in between work, walking the dog, home life, and various other attempts at juggling lifestyle concerns.
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| The Logic Pro Sound Library dashboard, on iPadOS. |
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| Some of the add-on Sound Packs included, standard, with iPadOS. |
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| A page describing one of the sound packs and instruments included with Logic Pro. |
A lot of people have fairly much little to no reference, as to what constitutes a distinction between Cantonese Chinese from most Chinese individuals whom they would come across - the Mandarins, who constitute most of mainland China, whereas Hong Kong, where my mother had resided, in her upbringing, and in her youth, had lived. Hong Kong is a small island, not very far off of mainland China’s coast, and it is just a bit smaller than Los Angeles, CA, USA. I took a look at some news articles, this morning, and this BBC news video shows a quick view of what Hong Kong looks like, as well as that the reporter in the clip speaks with a Cantonese accent.
Yet, on one hand, hearing is not generally considered a human’s most significant sensory capability; rather, sight is considered the most necessary sense, with general and commonplace knowledge, of our upbringing, stating that around 90% of our sensory experience is founded upon that which we can see - whereas here, in this maritime theater of anarchism, whereas novel usurpers of the generalized population(s) “at large,” or, for some higher power’s (conceivably) interpretation, or curation, perhaps, of listening (observing, in this case) ears, per se - I’ve noticed that careless (would it be called careless, when our innate human rights are disavowed us, for the sake of stoking some egotist’s taste for superiority?) mistakes of mindlessness often, and definitely - more often - happen, when remote sensing observers intervene in our daily intake of the world, at large.
That being said, I’m (for novel, as well - reasons) dragged in to this relentless experience of facing people on a more common basis than I’m used to, whereas there’s the backdrop of that there’s fair visual attesting factors suggesting that significant societal downturn is at hand, on an ongoing basis.
The traffic is ostensibly unusual - both foot and vehicular traffic. People exhibit a more exhibitionistic indulgence upon the uninterested subject whom experiences this crowding. Here and there, a person, not far off, will, for some reason, indulge in a fit of hilarity - ostensibly at a more common rate than had ever been typical. Nuanced and slight disparagements of manufactured goods - carry-along baggage, clothing, shoes, etc. begin to happen, for (apparently) unknown reasons. On one hand, there’s annotated narration, of remote voices of observers - to tease the mind, in a sense, of the privilege of “knowing,” per se - yet this is an unending and ongoing detriment that I’ve been experiencing for quite some time. It’s conceivable that these circumstances do, or had - also plagued the lives of various other sacrificial victims - these ones, such as myself - being denied the “knowing” truth of even as much as that someone desires to defile our (my) passing moment, on any given day, all the time. Upkeep of the attending to, of the ostensible burdens of things - cleaning up clothing articles which had unknowingly become dirtied, inexplicably, “checking” the crotch for foreign scents that had made their way on to the genitalia, and new, unsustainable, behaviors that must temporarily be accommodated, and implemented, for the sake of humor, whereas, in these cases, there is an obvious victim, and not everybody laughs.
That’s the gist of the experience, at hand, for at least - on my part, I can attest to as much as that. Off in the distance, lights strobe - portending to tachyon epileptic superiority, ostensibly - for the initiated ones, and potentially - those things happen, yet, as well - significantly leveraged expectations of such as that desires fell bridges, for example - are also ostensibly, at root - one of the driving motivating factors that fill the rioters with vitriol, for the impetus and purpose, found in acting out oppositional measures, taken out, upon society, whereas the objective and generalized simplicity of the situation is negligible, particularly by more disciplined standards, I’d assert, as what people really ought to understand - the solution is quite simple, in effect, yet it’s the affections held, by those who are driven to action - for conflict, and for defiance - something so trivially dislikable, yet so irrationally held close to the heart, is what frightens people away from their better selves - on one hand, we were all taught better, as Americans, and those who act out ought not seem to be such imposing majorities.
Now, the plants are dying, around town. My generalized toss at the issue is - how could water ever run out? It seems so much an outlier outcome, on one hand. My take on things is that we are supposed to develop agriculture, and watershed environmental engineering feats, of the many people involved, and concerned, per se, not disavow that we ought to be founded in agriculture, as some sort of fundamental human understanding. We only advanced, as civilizations, once we had attained agricultural competency and discipline.
In the nuclear watershed mock-up wartime theater, various consequences, of an unexpected sort - come about - for example: a sudden supposed “need” to look up what saltpeter is, or what it does. Who knows, on one hand? - at least, out of us civilians? On the other hand, the sense of that some sort of noxious radioactive-sort of substance, having become concentrated, in to the environment, of a localized nature, becomes a critical topic of seeming necessity, of the desire to know “better,” or “well enough,” whereas our more basic and rational necessities of caring for our hygiene and looks becomes neglected, for the sake of that a strange armed-forces observation environment and psychological battery examinations become underway engagements, of an unavoidable sort of demand upon our sense of prescience and immediacy of our selves, as autonomous, or “superior” enough, for our own satisfaction, whereas many people expend laborious energy on much more regimented schedules, comparatively.
On one hand, it stokes some of our most toddler-era behavioral fascinations, to “be able to” do something that an adult teaches us to do, whereas there seems to be no consequence. My experience is that it’s a fair measure more - of a challenge, at times, to hold one’s tongue, and to attend to the laborious work that is required, for the upkeep of the aesthetics of society, both in our part, and, as well, for what we can answer for.
It’s significantly foolish to consider that people are acquisitioning subjects for arbitrary and preferential hostage-based situations of a demand for abuse - we have the justice system, which employs incarceration, give, due process - many generations of Americans, and the world, at large, have similar agreements; indeed, we, as Americans, have the indebted responsibility to uphold these established standards. Not many minds are capable of developing and establishing superior intelligence discoveries and paradigms, on one hand. For one thing, when I hold my tongue, I invariably “see” the thought, of ostensible material substance, as the coherent and attainable object that “can” be communicated (could have - been communicated), whereas I also, subsequently, envision what I would call my “higher power,” - essentially, some unknown oversight official, or operator, of the theater, at play - he or she always speaks the exact words that had become the ostensible attainable thought, at issue, whereas that was what I could imagine I would say, to begin with. What use would it have been, to voice that notion? Truly impactful and meaningful interactions and interpersonal engagements, of a mutually beneficial and socially upward-seeking potential - are particularly scarce, or rare, in most peoples experience. Just wait it out, for the right time and place, or wait for somebody to become interested in you, for “whatever” reason - and have your pick, or play your chances, at being appropriate for that person, when the time comes. Why not?
The fact that some of the grades on the pedestrian walking path surfaces have become upended, and tilted strangely, day by day, is suggestive of that, at a minimum, costs, of an engineering team - must be employed, for the sake of the upkeep of the establishment, for the people, for one thing. It costs money.
(Updating)
July 14th, 1:44 a.m.
Upon giving this development some time to brew, and as things become stranger, throughout the night, I can’t help but think upon the underlying premise of how the declaration of a water conservation emergency ostensibly winds up leaving any water-bearing “being”, vessel, or establishment - something like that - with the responsibility for powering the energetic potential for remote-sensing surveillance and recognizance to take place, whereas, conceivably, groundwater is the more traditional source of energy and nuclear potential, within this context. This being the case, the extraordinary scarcity of groundwater resources would seem to logically construe that parasites and disease-bearing microorganisms begin to establish airborne genetic developments, such as a dandelion - feathery-imbued seeds, a taproot, for example. Humans start taking on some of the roles of plants, in a resonance-based surveillance environment, and marginal trifling gestures of the antisocial demographic kick off acute detriments to the public’s health, while an arid desert environment reversion causes hardships to become ever more difficult to bear. My most recent example happened just moments ago - as a bum with Tourette’s syndrome walked by and kicked over some traffic cones, as he laughed to himself, perhaps. His passing-by my seated self, within moments of kicking the stuff over caused me to have itchy eyes, temporarily. I’m somewhat going out on a limb, in supposing a casual correlation, here, but I have been noticing, in particular, that I “smell bad,” sometimes, out in public, but, upon closer examination of my self and my clothes - for example, I take my shoes off, and smell them discreetly - and, as it turns out, the most profuse and noxious bacterial culture smells do not seem to particularly be coming from the inside of my shoe, yet the smell seemed to be my own, as I walk about. I happen to sweat a lot, so I’m starting to think that beacons of water resource become the burdened ones, who shoulder the weight of metabolizing all things that can reach such an object.
So, the last haul that I brought in stirred up some trouble, in the form of a reddening skin condition on my leg. That blog article ended u...