So this was Cassels' idea. Cassels is a guy from OBNYC, and he wanted to get people and go pigeon-catching. There were supposed to be 5 of us -- Cassels, Emma, me, Carol, and Daniel, but only Cassels, me, and Emma showed up. (Daniel here is Daniel Speyer, who is the brother of David Speyer, and who talks just like him.)
Now I wanted to do it the hard way -- catch pigeons with our bare hands! Well, OK, not quite bare hands... presumably we'd put gloves on or something. After all, I got so close to this working when I was a kid! But as Cassels pointed out, that was after trying for like months or years. So, we were doing things the easy way -- with a net and some bait (popcorn).
Except, not quite, because at Cassels' insistence, we didn't just buy a net, no, we made a net. Except, none of us knew how to make a net. Well, that's not entirely true, Emma seemed to have some familiarity with netmaking; but she didn't show up till later, so Cassels and I had to figure out the basic plan without her.
So, yeah, we looked up some videos on making a net and decided to go with what seemed like the easiest method. It went pretty well! It took like 2 hours or so, but we made a net. (Although, Emma had to do all the knots for tying the main weave of the net to the frame on the side; neither Cassels nor I seemed to be able to figure that out.)
The problem was, would it work? It was a net, sure, but it wasn't very fine. Cassels thought it would hold a pigeon, but Emma and I weren't so sure -- I was like, I think you're underestimating how much of a bird is feathers, or, as Emma put it, how squishy they are. Still, it was the net we had and we decided to at least try it before resorting to something else.
And here comes our plan's surprising failure: We didn't manage to find any pigeons. OK, not none -- we found one. But only one pigeon! In New York!
OK, so we encountered one pigeon as soon as we stepped outside, but I'm not counting that one as we hadn't obtained the bait yet. Once we got the bait, we headed to Washington Square Park, but that's more a place to find people than to find pigeons, so we headed to other nearby parks. Well, long story short we tried a number of nearby parks but didn't see any pigeons in basically any of them. When we got to Father Demo Square (which, it should be noted, is in fact a triangle) we were pretty tired so we decided to sit down for a while; fortunately our patience was eventually rewarded when a pigeon showed up!
(I had taken the subway to Cassels' place where we made the net; I realized afterwards I actually could have walked, but I'm glad I didn't what with how much walking we ended up doing, it was pretty tiring.)
Anyway, so, we were sitting in Father Demo Square and a pigeon shows up. So we deploy the bait, I get ready with the net, it goes for the bait... but it doesn't get quite close enough, at least not by my judgment, and I was the one with the net. And, well, after that it didn't go for the bait again. Cassels took the net for a bit and I kept being like, wait, it's not quite in range, and Cassels was just like, man, I could *not* be an ambush predator :P The pigeon spent quite a bit of time just sitting at the top of the fountain, while I occasionally walked around and verified it was still there. Eventually it wasn't, and we gave up on Father Demo Square.
Unfortunately none of the later parks we tried had any pigeons, until eventually the sun went down and we gave up. The plan was to try again in a few weeks once Emma returned, but so far this hasn't happened. Well, maybe I'll keep bugging the two of them about it. And this time we won't have to spend hours making a net first...
-Harry
Now I wanted to do it the hard way -- catch pigeons with our bare hands! Well, OK, not quite bare hands... presumably we'd put gloves on or something. After all, I got so close to this working when I was a kid! But as Cassels pointed out, that was after trying for like months or years. So, we were doing things the easy way -- with a net and some bait (popcorn).
Except, not quite, because at Cassels' insistence, we didn't just buy a net, no, we made a net. Except, none of us knew how to make a net. Well, that's not entirely true, Emma seemed to have some familiarity with netmaking; but she didn't show up till later, so Cassels and I had to figure out the basic plan without her.
So, yeah, we looked up some videos on making a net and decided to go with what seemed like the easiest method. It went pretty well! It took like 2 hours or so, but we made a net. (Although, Emma had to do all the knots for tying the main weave of the net to the frame on the side; neither Cassels nor I seemed to be able to figure that out.)
The problem was, would it work? It was a net, sure, but it wasn't very fine. Cassels thought it would hold a pigeon, but Emma and I weren't so sure -- I was like, I think you're underestimating how much of a bird is feathers, or, as Emma put it, how squishy they are. Still, it was the net we had and we decided to at least try it before resorting to something else.
And here comes our plan's surprising failure: We didn't manage to find any pigeons. OK, not none -- we found one. But only one pigeon! In New York!
OK, so we encountered one pigeon as soon as we stepped outside, but I'm not counting that one as we hadn't obtained the bait yet. Once we got the bait, we headed to Washington Square Park, but that's more a place to find people than to find pigeons, so we headed to other nearby parks. Well, long story short we tried a number of nearby parks but didn't see any pigeons in basically any of them. When we got to Father Demo Square (which, it should be noted, is in fact a triangle) we were pretty tired so we decided to sit down for a while; fortunately our patience was eventually rewarded when a pigeon showed up!
(I had taken the subway to Cassels' place where we made the net; I realized afterwards I actually could have walked, but I'm glad I didn't what with how much walking we ended up doing, it was pretty tiring.)
Anyway, so, we were sitting in Father Demo Square and a pigeon shows up. So we deploy the bait, I get ready with the net, it goes for the bait... but it doesn't get quite close enough, at least not by my judgment, and I was the one with the net. And, well, after that it didn't go for the bait again. Cassels took the net for a bit and I kept being like, wait, it's not quite in range, and Cassels was just like, man, I could *not* be an ambush predator :P The pigeon spent quite a bit of time just sitting at the top of the fountain, while I occasionally walked around and verified it was still there. Eventually it wasn't, and we gave up on Father Demo Square.
Unfortunately none of the later parks we tried had any pigeons, until eventually the sun went down and we gave up. The plan was to try again in a few weeks once Emma returned, but so far this hasn't happened. Well, maybe I'll keep bugging the two of them about it. And this time we won't have to spend hours making a net first...
-Harry
