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Pigeon-watching hotspots to see around town #11: Broadway at 7th St. (sub-) flock.

 

This flock has been establishing itself as a more prominent feature of 7th St., off of Broadway, since the city put in bike lanes and pedestrian islands. Prior to that, for at least several months, the intersection had been fenced off completely, at times, due to the construction, job site that was situated in this part of town. 

The flock is most likely a sub-feature of the more well-trafficked Broadway flock, at 5th, between 5th and 6th. There, the owner of a shop hands out a 5 pound bag of bird seeds every day, going on many years, now - which is sufficient to feed the dozens and dozens of birds there, and their friends, sometimes (the Broadway flock flies over to Pershing Square, and back and forth, at least a few times per day). A lot of the birds situate themselves at Pershing Square for much of the day, since that’s one of my daily pigeon-feeding flocks that I visit daily, and I also have food for them. 

This flock is moderately sized, with perhaps 2 dozen or so pigeons. Here, there is a newspaper and noticias vendor that tends to them. The flock is a nice feature of the corner, and the birds liven up the heavily foot-trafficked pedestrian intersection of Broadway at 7th, in Downtown LA.

The vendor’s station, at Broadway at 7th.

Pigeons Amongst the Almond Blossoms (painted picture).

 I’d mentioned before that I had become fond of Van Gogh’s Almond Blossoms painting, which I became aware of from encountering the likeness of the image on a nightlight, which I got off of Amazon Vine. Here, at the nursing facility where I now stay, there’s an activity room, for doing crafts and for getting on the internet, or just a computer, for residents that don’t have access, otherwise. One of the managers here encouraged me to do some paintings, since they have canvasses and watercolors, here. This is my third painting that I’ve done here, and it’s the first painting that I really sort of took seriously, in doing my best to fill in all of the white of the canvas, like a standard painting would have. I think that it came out well; I’d previously done an impressionist art adaptation of Van Gogh’s Starry Starry Night in polymer clay, which I textured with a pin, to imitate the impasto technique that Van Gogh is famous for. Here’s the image:

Pigeon-watching hotspots to see around town #10: Figueroa at 4th St. Underpass flock

This flock is a delight to visit (for me, at least, because I'm training them). They are currently (October 2024) becoming trained on the clicker, for "come." One of the birds swooped down in front of me, just earlier, today, as I arrived. I was positioned in an unfamiliar place, for feeding's sake, so it was especially flattering that the bird recognized me by the clicker. 

Some of the pigeon flock at Figueroa at 4th St. Underpass. 

This flock is particularly charming for its resilience in the face of challenges. Several of the birds (much more than by averages of other flocks) have visible battle scars, in the form of deformed and swollen feet, from having string tied around their feet, by former trappers that frequented the area, although they're here no longer, I seem to notice. I'm not well-versed in trapping the pigeons, to save them from their plight, at this time. I just show up and feed them. You can check out some of their quaint and isolated behaviors (although fairly common fare, for pigeons; I just felt that they could be a control flock, eventually, in psychological terms, with their progress and development in mind, on account of their isolation) in some video footage I captured while socializing my deceased pigeon friend that I brought along, and wrote an article on, a couple of weeks ago, below. 

Here, you can see my pigeon friend is being investigated by one of the males in the Figueroa at 4th St. Underpass flock's regular members.

Regardless of being new to the place, my pigeon friend felt right at home with the new birds, and he took to some sharing of the same meal as the other birds, while we visited. 

This bird, (unnamed, so far) is one of the more charming of the flock. He had a broken leg happen to him, several months ago, and it hasn't quite healed properly, but he could potentially heal up and be just fine, some day. 

The location is fairly quiet, lately, and, as I noted, isolated, but it's ideal if you happen to show up with food for the birds, and you can spot them roosting on the light poles. They'll swoop down and accept food, if they spot you tossing some out, in many cases. If you have a clicker, that's even better, because they're becoming trained on clicker noises. 

Autumn 2025 updates:

I’d been coming here regularly, now, for perhaps 2 years. The flock has stayed a fairly steady 12 core resident birds, here (the birds here are partially learned helplessness subjects, but, for example, as I arrived, today, the birds were out for a flight, so I suppose that they have somewhere to go, when they want to, or, perhaps, when they need to, which they don’t, really, since the flock here is relatively isolated from other flocks nearby that I know about. Regardless, in the summertime, I observed that, on one day, there were about 20 birds present, so that could have been their young, that had moved out, to live somewhere else, and they returned home to the cool enclave where they roost - a shady spot that’s practically impervious to heat waves. 

Some of the flock had returned, since I started writing this update:

I like this flock, in particular, because of its isolation - there’s rarely any humans that visit or frequent the location, and it’s kind of a cozy connection to have, knowing that they (probably) largely depend on me showing up, for their meal times. There used to be a homeless encampment here, and some of the birds here show signs of having been trapped, previously. Fortunately, none of them are too badly maimed, just some lost toes, here and there, and one crooked-legged pigeon. I also like this flock because sometimes they’ll spot me walking up, from a distance, and they’ll fly out to greet me, knowing that I’ll feed them.

 

Wet pigeons are cuter than pigeons that aren’t wet.

An atmospheric river storm hit Southern California, this weekend, and it felt like a much-welcomed event, especially looking back, a bit, to this past year’s wildfire season, which claimed much of Pacific Palisades and Altadena homes in those areas. On a lighter note, however, a rain storm is an opportunity to catch photos that are rarer, in other circumstances.

Pershing Square, lately, has been seeing impressive numbers of pigeons show up to hang out on the stairway to the main plaza level of the park. 

I had a great idea come to me, from my Amazon Vine product reviewing gig, in the form of a clip-on telephoto / macro 2x mobile device lens, by Veedzoens, for this rainy day, seeing as how the birds had been showing up in such large numbers at Pershing Square, almost like they had taken over the place. What better photogenic opportunity could there be, for capturing some of the flock on camera using my telephoto lens?

The sparrows were the gatekeepers, as I approached the pigeons’ daytime roosting and hang out spot at the nearby stairs.

Now, the lens was made specifically for the iPhone, which has a different sized lens, and different on-device lenses, from my iPad Pro, but I was able to adapt it fairly well, to my device. As you can see, there’s some of the inside of the lens that got captured; this happens when the camera is zoomed out. Aside from that, the optical zoom feature of the lens offers a sharper image, and better close-ups than my standard iPad Pro cameras, which max out at 12 megapixels, for the rear camera.

My new 2x telephoto lens. There’s an attachment that goes with it that the lens screws on to, which is a clip for mounting the camera on the rear camera of a mobile device.

I ended up going out, twice, yesterday, in the rain, for the sake of feeding the pigeons, as it was a lot of fun to have a rainy day, with so many photogenic birds present, and I got to make use of my new telephoto lens for most of the photos captured here, from this day. 

I was finally able to get some good close-ups of Muffin, one of the new brown-ish colored pigeons of this flock of birds.

The birds are truly a landmark feature of this part of town. At various several times, during the day, such as after a meal, the pigeons will all fly up in to the air, and follow the leader, as they circle around the high rises, sometimes whisking around to the next street over (Broadway), and some of them fly back over some of the buildings, and they end up roosting back at their lofty places, such as on an apartment building’s ledge, or at the traffic signal. This daily ritual, featuring around 150 birds, or so, at a time, is a signal, at times, to other flock members situated on Broadway, who branch off, from there, to check out different feeding and roosting spots on the next street down, while others may recognize me, and they return to the staircase at Pershing Square, awaiting their meal. 

The birds are truly in their top form, when they’re out in the rain, and it’s a rich sensory experience to observe the pigeons as they work out eating their meal, as a flock, as well as during their post-meal socialization moment, and their flying in formation is a beautiful sight to behold. 

The pigeons perch on the traffic lights, as it’s one of their favorite spots to wait around for meal time.

Muffin, in the Rain (fan art, inspired by Clifford and Rosemary Ellis’ Antiquaries Prefer Shell, 1934)

Lady Gaga and Muffin, from the Beats1 Zane Lowe interview.

Halloween Hijinks Involving Pigeons, 2025.

 This Halloween saw a number of pigeon hijinks on my Facebook, but what about from other folks? Here are some of the art pieces and notable mentions that went down, this past Halloween.

PBS Documentary: How Pigeons Thrive in the City | The Pigeon Hustle.