Walking and Metro Ride Tours of the DTLA Pigeon Flocks.

 Are you a local or visiting nature lover? Curious about getting to know the town’s pigeon flocks? Care for a unique and unforgettable wildlife sensory experience? Now, you can book walking and L.A. Metro ride tours of Downtown Los Angeles’ pigeon flocks, and get a chance to get close up with the birds, and perhaps you’ll get to hand feed them and handle some of them in the process. Tours cover several flocks spanning much of DTLA, over the course of a late morning or early afternoon, with opportunities to photograph, feed, and, potentially handle (some of) the birds in the process. I’ll show you my personal methods for feeding the birds, and it’s the perfect day trip excursion for bird and wildlife lovers, or for the wildlife-curious, at that. Tours take around 2 hours (recommended), and the buyer names the price (you’d have to book online, however, unless you somehow catch me in person for this deal). Tours include local and recent historic insights and lore regarding the flocks, and the town’s relationship with each flock, uniquely so.

Here’s your chance to see the pigeons up close and personal, alongside their primary handler (some of them).

Pigeon-watching hotspots to see around town #4: Downtown Los Angeles' Inner-City Window Ledges.

I had just recently moved in to new housing, after so many spats of housing that was, unfortunately, in various ways, hostile, unprofessional, or outright unfriendly and discriminatory in nature, at times. This being the case, I'd oftentimes move out, or I'd be ordered to move out, which happens to be a legal premise (it's called a self-help eviction, when there'd been no paperwork filed for eviction). 

In any case, now, in the spring time of 2024, I'm housed somewhere I can really appreciate: they serve three meals a day, and they're fairly relaxed about any sense of micro-managing tenants and their belongings (my belongings, in other words). The security of the home is well-done, and I can let up off of many stressful burdens of my material possessions having formerly been at risk, on a constant basis. The charm of the place is akin to movies that most of us had grown up seeing, which depict inner-city lifestyles - for example, windows that face each other, with an apiary center space, between the facing rooms of the building (I have a view, from my window, though). The windows thing became a curious point of focus for me, when I encountered a new pigeon friend, while at the restroom. I call him "Sleepy Pigeon."

Sleepy Pigeon typically shows up, across from the restroom, where he perches, for the afternoon, or evening. Here, he finds peaceful rest, and, since I met him, he also gets fed here, at the window.

The spot is apparently a social magnet for other pigeons, once they find out that food's being served at the window. Take a look at what happens when the other birds show up. 

A crowd of pigeons flocks to the window on my side of the building, since they'd discovered that there's food here, sometimes. 

On top of that, there's also a similar ledge, outside my window, and there's a pigeon that shows up there, as well (I can't show the photos, in this case, for privacy reasons). 

This paradigm of pigeon perching and resting places really gave me an impression of that this style of living is how these urban environment pigeons situate themselves - I'd not been sure, previously, all this time, as to where the birds go, at night, in general. It was almost like a Hollywood movie moment for me, in fact, especially since it featured pigeons ☺️. That aspect really did it for me. In a different sense, it really makes the place feel like home, for me, and since I'm housed in downtown LA, now, it's like I'd come full circle (I used to rent a loft, out in DTLA, back in 2010-2012; then I became homeless, after some acute psychiatric emergencies, amidst a failing tech services business that I was running).

Perhaps, if folks happen to show up in town, on a touristy basis, they might, also, find some lodging that features a pigeon friend, just outside the window.

Product Review: Biscoff Crunchy Cookie Butter.

People always wonder what they should feed their pigeons, in order to improve their behavior, boost their health, and to engender courteous behaviors between themselves, within a flock. 

Since pigeons will eat nearly anything their beaks can manage, there is a huge amount of variety in foods that will delight a pigeon flock. Some caveats that I’ve encountered, however, are that they do not particularly like large items, items put in human receptacles (with some variance; I’ve seen wild pigeon flocks that are trained on bowls of water), and some colorful items, such as artificially-colored cereals will turn them off. In general, their natural diet would be comprised of seeds, and perhaps bugs, but in this day and age, pigeons are largely intrinsically intertwined with their human caretakers, and their diets are largely determined by what people choose to offer them. 

That being the case, pigeons are always hungry. They’re capable of eating three meals a day, even, in some instances. Choosing a variety of delectable foods for a flock of pigeons helps out in many ways: I’ve observed less bickering and chasing around of the younger and less dominant birds, upon providing flocks with better food, more consistently. Peace and harmony in a pigeon flock is largely something that can be created by design, as caretakers of the flock, and the foundation of a genetically competitive and diverse flock is ensured by keeping them trained upon their finest caretakers; sometimes, I see scraps of bread that other people had tried to feed flocks of pigeons that I care for, personally, and it appears that the meal had been disregarded, perhaps for the fact that I make sure to moisten their bread meals with sweet, syrupy milk, with added flavors. 

What about even more variety than milk and sweets on their bread? One of my personal favorite treats (for myself) is Biscoff Crunchy Cookie Butter - it literally is cookies, made in to a peanut butter-like consistency. It’s a wondrous delight to taste, and it’ll keep a person company at night, for midnight-snacking searches around the home. There are varieties of Biscoff Cookie Butter, but I like the crunchy version, because it has little bits of cookies in it. Try some out, and why not treat your local pigeon flock to a tasty snack? They’ll adore you for it.

The 90071 | 90017 [U.S. ZIP Code] watershed fly (video blog).

The watershed area and surrounding sloping and terraced locales, architectural developments, and ins-and-outroads of the ZIP code locations 90071 and 90017 feature a rare flying insect critter; the watershed fly. This creature is borne out from luxury, with a silver spoon, in the mouth; so to speak. It's a much gentler « feeling » fly creature when it lands on bare skin, and it's notably self-aware of its non-offense to the observer and discoverer of this emerging unicorn of genetic modification. I've witnessed this special fly, in various formative selves; and previous ones had been more attractive than this one, for certain. This one is somewhat a tropical beach-faring sun-bather, and the creature came and said hello, up at the top of the U.S. Bank Tower's terraced enclaves, across from the DTLA Central Library. Undoubtedly, the ionization and resonance created by the nearby Maguire Gardens and boring drill machinery from the Metro development project provide significant influence over the genetics of some of these fly insect pompadours, given ideal conditions. 

Have a look at the video clip!