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This Manhattan resident’s petition drive is not for the birds.
A Kips Bay man wants to stop overzealous pigeon feeders who are creating a bird-seed buffet in his neighborhood.
“The noise, commotion, scattered seed, and feces are all invasive to the tenants on the block and pigeon feces is linked to numerous diseases,” says a petition started by Christofer Holland, who lives on East 26th Street. It had garnered 62 signatures as of Saturday morning.
Holland told The Post that one or two people who live around the corner on East 27th Street come by every afternoon and scatter bird seed in an empty tree pit near his building.
“I just want peace and quiet and these dirty birds off my sidewalk,” Holland said.
In anticipation of the daily feast, pigeons line the ledges of nearby buildings ready to pounce.
On Wednesday, one of the pigeon lovers quickly threw down bird seed on East 26th Street and scurried away as dozens of birds descended.
“It’s OK if you’re going to feed them, but 1,000 of them at a time? I think that’s a little too much,” said Tony Lopez, a building superintendent on East 26th Street who said the pigeons poop on his car and roost on fire escapes.
Another neighborhood resident said pigeons are also being fed on East 27th Street and when they circle the area it’s like a scene out of Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds.”
“If they’ve just thrown feed out, literally we have 50, 60, 80 pigeons on the sidewalk,” the resident said. “They’re flapping around in your face. You’ve never seen such fat pigeons in your life.”
Not everyone is squawking about the overfed birds. Holland ruffled feathers when he posted a link to his petition on the NextDoor site.
“I love pigeons. They are native New Yorkers,” one woman wrote.
One commenter said his wife feeds pigeons to calm her anxieties.
City animal lovers have long defended giving food to wildlife. A 2019 Parks Department proposal to ban feeding pigeons and squirrels led to an outcry.
The city doesn’t take 311 complaints about pigeon feeding, but has logged 160 gripes about pigeon poop or odor from Jan. 1 through Wednesday, March 23. The Upper West Side, Gramercy Park, Bay Ridge and Bushwick generated the most complaints.
A spokeswoman for City Councilwoman Carlina Rivera, who represents Kips Bay, said her office has asked the Sanitation Department to be on the lookout for the pigeon feeders and issue tickets for littering if they were spotted scattering the bird seed.
Source: NYPOST
