The pigeons eat cheesecake, at the DTLA Central Library (photo blog).

 I captured some photos of the pigeons getting messy, while enjoying some cheesecake, yesterday, at the library. 

Ugh. I'm growing tired of personal issues getting in the way.

 Over the past several months, as I've been housed in an Interim Housing Program hotel shelter, for homeless people, I've started to finally make some ground over some chronic, nagging issues that have been getting in the way of my better day for myself. For example, last year, I punched a thick wood wall panel, at a baseball dugout, essentially, over some disturbance that was playing out in my mind, and getting the best of me. I punched the board hard enough to break bone, (since the board, itself, didn't break, from me hitting it), yet my bones didn't break, even though it would have otherwise incurred a boxer's fracture, from my sloppy technique, having hit the board out of frustration, confidently, as it were, since I have steel plates in my hand, surgically implanted, dating back to another boxer's fracture, back around 2005-2006, or so. It was pretty debilitating. I had a hard time shaking people's hand, as a business person (I had to shake people's hands all the time, and I'd preferred not to have to explain the injury). 

This being the backdrop to my current situation, in that I'm certain that I incurred the same degree of injury (equivalent to broken bones), yet, latently present, in my structural formation of my body, in the facets of the supportive bones and joints that correspond with the punch to the wooden panel. I know, it seems silly, but it's difficult to empathize, or relate to a schizophrenic, I figure. I've been there, before, as a schizophrenia-naive person, to a sufferer-partner figure, who had schizophrenia, before my own real onset of schizophrenia, for myself. 

The voices had gotten to me, in other words. I was out on the street, and voices in my head were giving me a hard time, and I ended up I juring myself. It's taken a long time for me to see some positive results in recovery, but I sometimes spend entire days, out of a week, laying in bed, wondering, somewhat, why I feel like I have no energy. Since I'm always trying to quit using substances to prop me up, in life, it's somewhat a blind spot, and I found myself, recently, both denying that the substances "do" anything, at all - they do "do" something;" it's just that I had quit, temporarily, and I fell in to denial. That was the first signal to note, the other one was that, since they still "do" work, I stopped feeling like quitting, as much. It's a performance-basis sort of dependency. 

This sort of confusion is the primary reason I don't favor, or support, the "drugging" of the flocks, in order to train and tame them. I want their basis to be secure and wholesome, in simply arising from being fed well, and for being interacted with, in a considerate and paced, patient manner. I don't want the birds to become confused, as to what our purpose is, together, and hopefully others won't come along and ruin the birds' progress, as they're doing well, lately.

So, I go through these ongoing bouts of loss of ego, and denial, amidst hearing voices, although it's not as capable in persecuting me, as it had been, when I was out on the streets. It hasn't been a year, yet, since I've been housed again, but I've made good progress: my room looks impressive, for example, for a homeless person, I'd say. I finally just got back on my own unlimited Internet connection, and I'll be operating as best that I might, within a couple of weeks, or so, with a new iPad Pro in my hands, within sight, over the next few days - I've laid the groundwork for it. I go on, about my work week, trying to keep up with feeding the birds, as my daily benchmark of success, and I still have these days where I lay in bed all day, perhaps once or twice a week. It feels very physically strenuous; it probably is, considerably, somewhat strenuous, and I gauge, in my smart watches, that I track anywhere from 4 ½ miles per day, up to 11-13 miles, sometimes - just going around, feeding the pigeons and other birds (sparrows, is all, this time of year), and I also have to expend walking energy going out to buy groceries. It's pretty simple fare, and mundane, but I've worked out a fair rhythm and flow to my days. Sometimes it's the noises around me - the "certain" noises, that I can pinpoint to an actual person, or generalized location, nearby me; that is, to say, that these are "actual" noisy events around me, not voices in my head - these noises are a common disturbance for me, because of the volume. 

Anyways, I try to make my day work out, and I try to keep things working for the pigeons' best interests; i.e. keeping them fed, regularly, so that they can be trained, or trainable. They've made good progress, lately, as the library pigeons now customarily eat out of my hand, on a daily basis, as well as that they'll accept a stranger's hand, in hand-feeding them. It's a good sign; it's taken 7 years of upkeep in feeding the birds to get them to this point, in serendipity - either the birds were just ingrained-frightened of having affections for humans, meaning that they had no supportive nurturing environment to have them learn to accept humans as their caretakers, fully, perhaps due to neglect, or abuse - this type of learned behavior is difficult to alter; I find that it's best just to perform upkeep, at this stage, yet, some of the library birds' newcomers were a younger generation, which had not seen as much abuse, as had been going on, in previous years, so, some of them accept hand-feeding, and these ones sometimes seem to prefer the human element, in some part of their feeding time, for their day.

The pigeons at the DTLA Central Library enjoy some spoon-fed cheesecake.

I figure that it's a good sign, for certain; that these birds are learning new and dynamic behaviors that replicate on to the "strangers" figures, as I'd brought a companion along, on two occasions, so far, in which the birds are out of my companion's hand. It makes me ponder the possibility of the birds finally making it, in to becoming a transformational force, in the city; a force of healing recreation for people to enjoy. That potential is what keeps me going, on the days where I feel like I can't get up, keeping up the feeding of the birds, for the birds' sake, so that they don't unlearn these behaviors. Each flock has its own potential, in training, imaginably, and other flocks, such as Pershing Square, and the Figueroa at 4th St. underpass flock both also now recognize me, and they fly up to greet me, upon arrival, customarily, fairly regularly. It's a sign that they're learning, on top of having positive experiences imprinted upon them, as individual pigeons, in a flock; thus, they influence the flock's behavior, over time, as a whole. It's a decent and wholesome psychological foray; these birds, I figure - something that inspires critical thinking and psychologically-correlative thinking, in a "well" setting that's publicly accessible. 

Over time, I learn more about the pigeons, and they take me in, as one of the familiar insiders, as though I'm "one of them." 

Pigeon-watching hotspots to see around town #3: The Central Library High-Flyers Flock.

Downtown Los Angeles architecture is one of the primary lures for tourists and sightseers, and, for bird lovers, the Central Branch of the Los Angeles Public Library has a neat, al fresco pigeon flock, which, just in recent years, discovered a perch, atop the Library's titling signage, on 5th, nearby where the Library's main entrance lies, just up the street. 

The Richard J. Riordan Los Angeles Public Library (Central Branch) flock of pigeons, perched atop the outside of the apiary, as well as on the ledge, where they find shelter from the sunlight, during the day.

The street is lined with young Magnolia trees, of which feature a delightful floral fragrance;

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at the time being, the trees flower very sparsely, or not at all, just yet. They're being grown to shape them properly, for their full adult tree form, I figure. There's also some classic street lamps, a former pond (I think), which has been filled up with dirt, and which feature dwarf natal plum shrubbery - it makes for a nice (maybe not the nicest - wood chips?) feeding pen for the birds. 

An exciting meal, with the Central Branch LAPL High-Flying Pigeon Flock. Many of the birds present, on a daily basis, here in the spring time of 2024, are babies - there's perhaps 10, or so, young ones, whom had just this season come out, in to the public, for the flock's daily fare, outside the Library's facade.

For people, the ledge surrounding the feeding pen makes for a suitable spot to sit and feed the birds: it's an exciting spot to visit, with gorgeous architecture across the street; various sides of the street - there's the U.S. Bank Building, the Gas Company Lofts, The Millennium Biltmore Hotel, 444 Flower, The Westin Bonaventure Hotel, and, the Library, itself, features notable architecture, itself, for that matter. 

Back when I had my iPad Pro, I caught some great video footage of this flock, from the bird-feeder's perspective, as they spot me, preparing a meal for them. 

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This flock is a somewhat closed form flock of pigeons - the location, despite being quite nearby other flocks of birds, doesn't typically get a lot of newcomers and transient port birds, although there is some mixing and mingling around, of other birds, here and there. I'm not sure where the birds nest, either. 

Check this flock out, when you're in town! They're great birds.

Update 11/02/2024: Big news to update readers and visitors to this flock about - since I first posted this article, back in late April of 2024, a new influx of pigeons; approximately double the long-time original numbers of about 2 dozen, had shown up and joined the library flock's numbers. Although it's intimidating to take on the feeding of ever more numbers of birds, over time, the flock took well enough to the newcomers, and the new ones assimilated well, in their new location at the library. 

This being the case, the birds aren't so isolated, after all. The exciting news is, is that, apparently, the new birds might be a bit young, compared to the rest of a typical local flock's average age of the constituent birds, and the new ones haven't been imprinted with negative conditioning signals, all that much, at all. Some of them have been bold, in coming up to me when I have food out, preparing to toss the food to them, and they sneak in, some of them, and nearly fearlessly, at that. Yesterday, I was able to grab one, and I held it, for a moment, just as a test. Today, I chose to try out hand-feeding some of these newcomer young birds, since they're being competitive for a chance to eat as much as they'd like to, which, they usually do; it's just that they perhaps forget that they would be fed their full, or the constraints of flock behavior may cause them anxiety, so they step all over each other, in this case, trying to get a shot at eating out of my hand. 

This had got to be a quite major milestone, for these birds, on account of the location and ease of access to the birds, with their being situated on 5th Street, nearby the north side entrance to the library, which is a major pedestrian thoroughfare. Hopefully the birds don't get mistreated and un-homed for, or from, the area. In other words, if you do take one home, please be sure to bring it back and release it in the presence of the other pigeons. I'm sure that the at-home experience of taking one of these birds back is all that satisfying, at this point, because they're still inherently a bit scared of people. It's just not ideal. 

Other than that, new individuals have been arriving to feed the birds, in addition to that I see to their feeding on nearly every day, out of a week, and it's open and fair game to go ahead and try out feeding these birds. It's a pretty exciting flock to feed, comparatively, especially if you want to try out hand-feeding them. I recommend using seeds or peanuts.