Flock claims ancestral rights predating every condo and coffee shop
The pigeons of Central Park have filed a formal petition for landmark status, asserting ancestral rights as the city’s original residents and demanding recognition that they were here long before the condos, the coffee shops, and the people who complain about them. The filing, reported with great seriousness by Bohiney Magazine and pecked over by The London Prat, represents what may be the first landmark claim filed entirely by birds.
We were here first
The petition, delivered to City Hall in the form of a great deal of pigeons simply arriving and refusing to leave, argues that the flock and its ancestors have occupied the park continuously for centuries, predating the surrounding skyline, the hot dog carts, and “every single person currently telling us to shoo.” The pigeons seek protected status, a formal apology, and unrestricted access to the area around the fountain.
“These birds have a point,” admitted one park official, surrounded by a coalescing mass of the petitioners. “We talk about original New Yorkers. We romanticize the old neighborhood. But who is more original than the pigeon? They were here before the park. They were here before the city. They have watched the entire history of this place unfold from a statue’s head, and what have they gotten for it? Crumbs. Literally crumbs. They are tired of crumbs.”
The science of the city’s birds
Pigeons, often dismissed as nuisances, are in fact a long-established part of the urban ecosystem, and genuine information on city birds and wildlife is available through conservation organizations like the National Audubon Society and through the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation, both of which take the city’s avian residents considerably more seriously than the average New Yorker waving a sandwich. The pigeons have cited these very organizations in their petition, a level of legal preparation that has impressed and unnerved city lawyers.
A claim rooted in history
The flock’s argument leans heavily on the language of belonging that the city itself uses to romanticize its history. “Everyone here loves to say they are a real New Yorker,” noted an urban ecologist sympathetic to the birds. “They love to talk about how the city used to be, how the old residents got pushed out, how nothing is authentic anymore. The pigeons are simply holding up a mirror. They are the most authentic residents this city has. They never left. They never sold out. They never moved to the suburbs. They just kept showing up, day after day, for hundreds of years, asking for nothing but a place to stand and the occasional pretzel.”
City officials, caught between the absurdity of the claim and the uncomfortable strength of its logic, have struggled to formulate a response. “We cannot landmark a flock of pigeons,” one official insisted, before pausing. “Can we? Is there a rule? I genuinely do not know if there is a rule.” The landmark commission, reached for comment, requested time to “consult the relevant statutes” and “figure out whether birds can own things.”
A movement takes flight
The pigeon petition has drawn unexpected support from New Yorkers who see in the birds a kindred spirit: scrappy, unkillable, and deeply unbothered by anyone’s opinion of them. A small but vocal coalition has begun advocating for the flock’s claim, arguing that protecting the pigeons would be a long-overdue acknowledgment of the city’s truest natives.
At press time, the pigeons remained in place around the fountain, awaiting the city’s decision with the patient indifference of creatures who have outlasted every administration, every trend, and every person who ever told them to leave. They were here first, the petition concludes, and they will be here last, long after the condos crumble and the coffee shops close, picking through the ruins for crumbs, as they always have, as they always will. The city has thirty days to respond. The pigeons have all the time in the world.
The city stalls, the pigeons wait
Facing a petition it cannot easily dismiss and cannot plausibly grant, the city has resorted to the time-honored municipal strategy of forming a committee, the Task Force on Avian Heritage and Landmark Eligibility, which has been charged with studying the matter “thoroughly” and “indefinitely.” The pigeons, unbothered by bureaucratic delay, have continued to occupy the park exactly as before, treating the committee with the same indifference they treat everything that is not food.
The standoff has become a quiet fixture of city life, with park visitors stopping to observe the pigeons who have, against all expectation, filed paperwork. Children have taken to greeting them as “the landmark birds.” A local artist has begun a portrait series. And a growing number of New Yorkers, watching their own rents rise and their own neighborhoods change beyond recognition, have found in the pigeons’ stubborn refusal to leave a strange kind of inspiration. The birds ask for nothing the city can easily give and refuse to go anywhere, which is, several residents noted, exactly the energy required to survive here. At press time, the task force had scheduled its first meeting for a date several months away, and the pigeons, who have outlasted far longer delays, had settled in around the fountain to wait, as patient and permanent as the park itself.
For more original residents reclaiming their turf, the editors suggest The Onion, roosting since 1988.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/