I captured some photos of the pigeons getting messy, while enjoying some cheesecake, yesterday, at the library.
Helping make pigeons our friends in Downtown Los Angeles, CA, USA + iPigeon tech, lifestyle, commentary, and art.
Translate iPigeon.institute in to your native language 💱
Thursday, November 21
Saturday, November 2
Pigeon-watching hotspots to see around town #3: The Central Library High-Flyers Flock.
Check out this amazing deal on Amazon, where you can sample the lovely fragrance of the Magnolia tree's summer blooms. |
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.
Saturday, October 12
I found my own personal pigeon friend.
Yesterday, when I was out feeding the pigeons, I noticed that one of the pigeons stayed behind, while the other birds left, after their meal. He was puffy feathered, which indicated that he might be under the weather. I tried picking him up, and, surprisingly, he let me pick him up.
I'm not sure why he's not flying away, but I took him to another pigeon-feeding spot, and I let him wander around, with the new pigeons, and, after their meal, he let me pick him up, again, so I took him home.
He's an adorable puffy pigeon. He slept next to my bed, and I gave him a water dish and some cookie crumbs, while I'm out, for the day.
I'm not sure if I'm going to keep him, for the long term, just yet. I have to figure out if his condition is temporary, or not, and see if he stops letting me pick him up, after a few days, or so. He seems fairly healthy, aside from the puffy feathers, and he might make a good housed pigeon, for me to keep.
Update: the pigeon succumbed to whatever was ailing him, and he passed away, 2 nights ago. I had one day with him, which was nice :)
Some fond memories of my adorable little black puffy pigeon:
If you're interested in adopting (purchasing) your own personal pigeon friend, yourself, I recommend Farid's Pet Shop, at the corner of 6th at Maple in Skid Row, Downtown Los Angeles. He has a variety of pigeons, from time to time, and he currently has some pigeons (Late October, 2024) in stock, I saw them just yesterday. It's a good start to establishing your own small pigeons and avian pet friends hobby, with hand-feeding the young, as the next step in having a tame bird as a pet. As you can see, pigeons are adorable birds!
Saturday, September 7
Pigeon-watching hotspots to see around town #7: Universal City / Studio city Metro Station and Bus Hub.
The Universal City / Studio City Metro Station flock of pigeons is an extra-special flock to see, along the Metro Red Line (B Line). |
Wow, what an exciting flock of birds! For years, now, I'd been coming to visit the Universal City / Studio City flock of pigeons, here and there, and the birds never let me down, in offering an amusing and interactive birdwatching and bird-feeding session. Today, right before the beginning of summer, was no different.
This time, I came with Hawaiian burger buns, since I was making burgers, later on, as well as pastries. For refreshments, I brought Sparkling Ice brand flavored water. |
A sprawl of pigeons, amidst the street surface level of the Universal City / Studio City Metro Station and Bus Hub. |
A baby pigeon seeks out some food, in the planters at the Metro Station. |
An adult pigeon follows the baby pigeon around, in the planter. |
The adult pigeon chases the baby pigeon around, in an effort to socialize the baby pigeon, appropriately. |
The pigeons, here, at the Universal City / Studio City Metro Station, often congregate off to the side, nearby the planters. |
I made sure to offer the birds a dish of cold water, since it was a hot day. They took to it, just fine! |
The birds started to get wise, as to where the food was, and they raided my large pastry that I brought for them. |
Soon afterwards, more pigeons began to flock to the pastry, and they ate the whole thing. |
A delicious meal, for these birds. |
Friday, September 6
The iPigeon.institute 2024 Halloween Sticker Time Collection and Marketing Materials.
This year's Halloween is gearing up to be one of the funnest and most spooky yet. |
For those of us who loom around the cutting edge of retail and e-commerce merchandising seasons, we'd have surely encountered early Halloween, Christmas, even next year's Easter's marketing materials, gadgets, and gags, alike. I felt that, in the spirit of Google Labs launching their Image 3 ImageFX engine, that I ought to try it out on some quirky and cute pigeon Halloween costume ideas. Here it is: a set of 6 new Sticker Time Stickers, known as the first in a series of Halloween and seasonal Sticker Time Collection stickers.
Pirate gear is classic garb for Halloween, on this pigeon. |
This cute pigeon wears a ghost costume. |
A spooky pumpkin-headed pigeon. |
This inflatable T-Rex costume is one of the most fun costumes to wear, at Halloween. |
This pigeon wears goofy alien head gear attire, for a costume. |
A creepy skeleton cloak, with cat ears, for this pigeon. |
Monday, September 2
Challenges in training wild pigeon flocks, and some corollaries.
Just a moment ago, I happened upon reflecting, internally, upon a crossroads of various thoughts. One of them was the impermeability of my Chinese side in me: I thought about this, within the contexts of life coaching affecting personality shifts, and, with regards to animal training, and the difficulties that are inherent in working with wild birds. It is, after all, a Chinese saying:
A bird in hand is worth two in the bush.
Affecting such a sort of change, in a wild bird, compared to the standard, hands-off, keep away nature of birds, yet, in urban society, and, hence, with pigeons and other city birds in Los Angeles, CA, USA, it's still a rare occurrence to encounter a bird (pigeon) that is malleable and resilient enough to get close enough to a human who is postured and positioned for potentially putting hands on the bird. Birds of this sort (city type) are well-familiarized, typically, with the gestures and habits of humans - for certain, there are bird lovers abound, who care to be gentle and loving to the birds, and, on the other hand, there are much more shocking gestures of humans and their animals of chasing after the birds, or, outright frightening the birds, such as: mindlessly, or out of frustration.
A pigeon decoy. |
It is my experience with animals capable of higher intelligence, which are capable of being trained, that, absent of an early nurturing environment of singular human care, beyond a certain point, in the creature's infancy, the mind of the animal is fairly malleable, in adjusting the lifetime degree and measure of trust that the creature has, towards the caretaker. A traumatic experience in the animal's nurturing environment circumstances will tend to shape the creature's general attitudes and level of trust, as well as trainability of the animal, over a lifetime. I thought about all of this, momentarily, while lamenting a broken relationship or two, that had happened to me, in life. I thought about things, such as could I have done something more? I reflected upon deeper contexts of the issue that I draw relevance, here, between my life, and the flocks of pigeons that I try to tame, here in downtown LA, (I work on two flocks, in general, lately) for my amusement, and for the amusement of others, hopefully, in the future. I thought about my mother, who is Chinese. She brought me up of a relatively rigid and disciplined sort; I ended up an early bloomer, in some contexts, such as in school, and in dating, compared to some of my peers. My recurrent thoughts 💭 of my mother, lately, (absent of speaking directly to her) are fairly astute; that is to say that there's little variance between what I remember of her, and what goes on, in my thoughts that include her, now, in terms of her personality. We were very close, in our upbringing. On the other hand, my father was a less patient disciplinarian, and the imaginative thoughts I experience of him, now, tend more towards confusion and caprice, and it's moreso troubling sorts of things that go on. Mind you, this is all referring to things that happen in my mind about them, when I'm by myself.
I draw this comparison between my relationship with my parents and the birds that I take care of, because it's a sort of parenting, to take care of a flock of birds, such as these pigeons. I also think up my available models of behavioral conditioning and nurturing environment expertise possible, given my own experiences; I consider the expertise of others, as well, such as in instances where I've sat in on trained-animal shows and installations, such as the small-parrot aviary at the San Diego Wild Animal Park's (they've changed names, since I've been, apparently) walk-through aviary that they had, where hand-tame small parrots would land on patrons and drink nectar out of little cups that visitors could purchase. I wonder about the years-gone-on potential of these pigeons, somewhere down the line, and I think about what these birds could be capable of - some part group and social abilities training, and some part, some facet of the Wild Animal Park's walk-in, hand-feeding aviary experience, somehow, navigated through the lens of that the pigeons are just wild birds. I've seen, and experienced, some features of this sort of descriptive pigeons and parrots experience, up north, in Sacramento, where, as a child, I had a formative experience in feeding birds (pigeons) that would land on people who fed them, and take food out of their hands.
(Some of) a flock of pigeons that I take care of, in town. One arrives, swooping down from the birds' ledge, while others eat their meal, and while one examines me, observing them. |
Snooker tends to disappear, though, here and there, I'd estimate, and since he had sired some young, or mated with females, at least (I'd witnessed him mate, once or twice), there's a possibility that his genetics will appear, soon, or, over years ("recessively," as it's known, in genetic terminology), once again, if he had gone missing, permanently. There's a chance that he's caring for some young, with his mate, for example, perhaps, since I'd seen him recently pair up with a female 🐑.
Anyways, what I thought had been unique conditioning rhetoric that occured, recently (yesterday), was that the birds had started to get used to me showing up, and I'd been favoring sweet, rich treats, such as peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with table syrup (now, I'm doing PB&J with marshmallow creme). Some of them start to anticipate being fed, and they'll swoop down, when I show up and sit on the ledge, and wait for their food (sometimes, they won't wait, though, and they creep up and steal a slice of bread, while I prepare their sandwiches. Inevitably, the slice falls down, on to he sidewalk, and some of the other birds, waiting below, begin to devour the bread slice, hungry creatures that they are). This time, though, the really cute thing that some of the birds did was that they followed me, after I was done feeding the flock, and I was headed over in to the library. There's a shady alcove, beneath the foliage, where some of the birds have started spending some time, to cool down, during the heat wave we'd been going through, in Southern California. So, several of the birds follow suit, and track me over to the new spot, which, I feel, is a good signal for optimism that these birds are trainable, despite being adult birds, most of them. There was a bird that had swollen ears, or an infection, of some sort, and he's doing better, lately, as well.
Monday, August 26
The pigeon handi-crafts project(s) page: crafting pigeon folk art. (Updating)
My project practice loom, which I obtained from Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D6R7PCSH |
An adorable assortment of feathery yarn, discovered via Google Shopping, after browsing some yarn inspiration found on Amazon. Apparently, a 90% discount off of the regular price, on Temu! |
The pumpkins that inspired it all (nearly; I'd been on a folk art kick, recently, and I was attracted by this product on Amazon, and I almost picked up a set, myself, for analysis). |
A closer look at the material I'll be acquiring; I purchased three sets, and got free shipping, on Temu, with an exclusive buyer's offer! |
There'll be more to come, as I document my progress in creating these handi-crafts, over time. It'll give me a productive and neat creative project to work on! So far, I haven't really found any sort of template I can work from, so I have to gather sparse resources and work on my raw technique, developing skills that, hopefully, some day, equate to that I can create pigeon yarn-crafts (I thought, initially, that I would work with raffia, mimicking the initial folk art pigeons I had generated on my art history page, on this blog). I had even procured a clump of dried hay grass to work with, which I found, while out buying food for the birds' next day's meal, one night.
A clump of tall hay grass that I found; perhaps suitable to try my hand at creating raffia folk art work, I felt. I took it home with me, since I found the notion serendipitous. |
Thursday, May 30
Pigeon-watching hotspots to see around town #5: The USC Dumpster Pigeons.
This flock of pigeons hadn't always lived here, which is curious, because I could trace back to days of pigeon-feeding that I'd done, where I knew this localized flock of birds, from somewhere else, namely, The Hoover Recreation Center and Public Park. At some point, however, I suppose that the birds possibly were mistreated, or, for some other reason, they found greener pastures - here, at a transit thoroughfare peninsula parking lot, to be succinct. I call them: the USC Dumpster Pigeons, since the spot is within the University's grounds, more or less.
The USC Dumpster Pigeons (left), alongside the famous dumpsters of the place. |
This flock, although slightly out of bounds of Downtown Los Angeles (I figured that these flocks hotspots would perhaps, someday, become more well-populated with people, as well as pigeon watching and feeding sites, along the lines of a tourist day time attraction, which would, in effect, encompass a series of viewing locations, in sequence), is one that I'd known, practically back to the beginning of my pigeon-feeding and pigeon-blogging ventures, which had started around the summer of 2017, at which point, I had decided to try and participate in Tumblr's Inktober annual illustration blog bash and celebration; me, starting out with an ink brush, and some drawing paper.
This flock, itself, is rather charming, in their naivete, being that there's so many young ones, and, for the most part, their daily fare is tack bread crumbs, thrown out, by one of the businesses (I guess that the fact that they are given regular regard, of any sort, by the neighboring businesses, is appreciable). This flock is eager to nibble and munch on some tastier far; soggy fare, as I'd have it, for them, since there's no water source, nearby.
The USC Dumpster Pigeons, eager to have a tasty, fresh meal served to them, with the thoroughfare parkway in the background. |
I had some aspirations to landscape the nearby thoroughfare parkway, since it's currently just weedy grass and hay, with some drought-tolerant freeway-adjacent plants. I'm currently (late May, 2024), sprouting some seedlings, ostensibly to carry out that task, for this growing season (it's a really humbling thing to consider, but there's more rewards in it, if the project is seen through, in this way, and the whole block of parkway could be adopted, and seem regular, as landscaped parkway, at some point, I figure).
The major highlights and takeaways of this flock are that they're so set on taking the first bites of food, over each other, that they're nearly willing to be picked up, and held, by the caretaker / feeder, which is relatively rare. I'd suppose that, since this flock is somewhat remote from other flocks, there's less of the large-scale socialization establishments of fear and timidity that is seen in the DTLA-proper flocks.
Some notes on this flock: the parking lot is situated east of Figueroa, on Adams, and west of the 23rd Street / Orthopedic Institute for Children Metro Expo E Line Train Station, although the birds are also sometimes found at the 23rd Street at Figueroa gravel peninsula and bus stop / 110 Freeway overpass.
Thursday, April 18
The iPigeon.institute Sticker Time art, illustrative, and photography miniatures collection, with annotations.
Welcome to the iPigeon.institute online slight exhibition and annotations for the Sticker Time sticker collection.
One last thing, though: a how-to for printing out the stickers, if you'd like to do so, at home.
The avery.com search page, after querying 22807, in the search box. |
You can make a login for the Avery website, at this point, and you'll see a page pop up, featuring different design templates, for the round labels (stickers).
Here's the page you'll see, after logging in to the Avery website (you can also log in as a guest, I believe). |
Here, we're going to be using the blank round label template (the first option, at the top left). You'll see the design interface pop up,after selecting this template.
A bunch of stickers that I printed, using FedEx Office's printers and professional paper-cutting tool. |
https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/live/ads?sz=640x480|300x600&iu=/21748173425/CPM_ipigeon.institute__Banner_300x600/ipigeon.institute__Side_Banner_300x600&ciu_szs=300x600&env=vp&impl=s&gdfp_req=1&output=vast&unviewed_position_start=1&url=[referrer_url]&description_url=[description_url]&correlator=[timestamp]
“Golden Tropical” glitch line art pigeon, rendered by Vector Q app, (2023) |
“Sprightly Sparrow,” glitch version. (2021) |
“Flattened Rat,” glitch version. (2021) |
“Poppin’ Pigeons.” 2021 |
iPigeon.institute brand logo for Pinterest. 2021 |
Baby Sparrow at feeding time. 2022 |
Curious baby pigeon in Pershing Square. 2022. |
Chimera Sparrow. Created with Chimera Painter, a Google AI project. 2021. |
Injured winged pigeon, kaleidoscope glitch version. 2023. |
Baby Fruit Bat, glitch version. 2021. |
Navy Stripes Cheetah pigeon illusion (masks). Rendered by Vector Q. 2022. |
Preening pigeon (triangles). Rendered by Vector Q. 2021. |
Wired lighting fanciful bird caricature. Rendered by Vector Q app. 2023. |
Vanilla planifolia vine, Harajuku Doll version. Rendered by Vector Q app. 2023. |
Ernst and Young Plaza, Downtown Los Angeles - Curious over a Fried Egg. (Artist unknown - George Herms?). Rendered by Vector Q. 2023. |
Cute baby pigeon in hand, Tarot version. 2023. Originally from:
|
2023 California superbloom wildflowers. |
Romantic pigeon, glitch version. Poppy flower adapted from Dior artwork. 2023. |
Romantic pigeon, standard version. Poppy flower adapted from Dior artwork. 2023. |
Common pigeon x The Matrix. 2023. Background from WallpaperCave.com. |
|
|
birds restaurant, Hollywood, CA. Rendered by Vector Q app. 2023 |
Scientology Celebrity Center, Hollywood, CA. Rendered by Vector Q. 2023. |
Sketching exercise, primitives of pigeons, glitch version. Glitch by SCN app. 2023. |
Broken-winged pigeon, tropical poppin’ glitch version. Line art by Vector Q. 2023. |
Ashy rover beetle. 2023. |
Latest post.
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.
iPigeon.institute’s most popular recent blog articles and posts
-
I've been assigned to Interim Housing, through the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, since around February of this year,...
-
Downtown Los Angeles architecture is one of the primary lures for tourists and sightseers, and, for bird lovers, the Central Branch of the L...
-
Yesterday, when I was out feeding the pigeons, I noticed that one of the pigeons stayed behind, while the other birds left, after their me...
-
These are all images that have previously been shown and published, here on iPigeon.institute, and elsewhere; it's just that I set out...
-
Mining Bitcoin and other top-name cryptocurrencies is an emerging, yet well-established aspiration to fulfill on mobile devices. Although Ap...
-
Recently, on one of my grocery shopping trips, my jaunt was that I was set on making the ultimate milkshake, and I purchased some various ...
-
The first entry in this set of serial / threaded entries, intended as an aide to the academic study (or abstract review, at minimum) of ...
-
Since around October of last year, I decided to make good on an inkling I'd had, with regards to that fragrances would work out well f...
-
Outside of jailbreaking your iOS device that you would otherwise intend to use for Apple’s Developer Program development, there aren’t many...
-
This flock is a delight to visit (for me, at least, because I'm training them). They are currently (October 2024) becoming trained on th...