Whitey raises and flies pigeons from a rooftop in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. He was born in Greenpoint and lived in Bushwick during the fires wars, planned shrinkage, and the red-lining of the neighborhood, a time when Bushwick and Harlem resembled war zones. At that time there were at least fifty rooftops boasting pigeon coups of both flying and racing pigeons where he lived. Whitey started caring for pigeons at the age of fourteen. He learned from neighborhood men, some who trained carrier pigeons in World War II. They would give him food and pigeons in exchange for his work. He began with a small coup on a fire escape and worked his way up to a rooftop where he still flies pigeons today. A short podcast about Bushwick, the birds and Whitey, is in progress.
This is Whitey and one of his fliers. This photo and the photos that follow were taken by Shanna Maurizi.
This is a little shanty that Whitey built on the rooftop, after many years of having none.
This is the big coup interior. It is spring and there are babies in the nests.
When pigeon fliers “catch” another person’s pigeon, they remove the pigeon’s identifying leg band and replace it with another to assert ownership. They decorate the outside of the coup with strings of these bands as trophies.
This is the outside area of the largest coup. The small enclosure is for sick and stray birds so that they can be nursed without contaminating the other birds.
“Some people keep their birds hungry so that they stay close to the rooftops, I call them bird collectors. Bird fliers let the pigeons go as high as they want.”
-Whitey
