Kathryn Palumbo

These birds crack me up!

It might have something to do with the fact that the surname Palumbo is derived from the Italian word “palombo,” which means ring dove. As the story goes, it is believed that an ancestor in Sicily used to keep pigeons on his roof and so the nickname stuck.

I took these photos on the same day that I took photos of The Ridge sign.

The two characters (above), were watching me as I was wandering around on the ground below. It seemed to me as though the two males were the ‘ring leaders,’ and would signal the others to fly away in case of danger.

Notice the female pigeon on the left, quite oblivious to my presence.

These are just fun photos that show a little bit of bird-personality.

The sky was overcast and shooting from the ground the birds were looking pretty dark, so I crossed the street to start working on photographing The Ridge sign. But not long after I took enough shots of the sign to feel satisfied, the whole group of pigeons took flight, what seemed to me as their exercise break. They fall into some kind of structured order of formation and they circle around the sky in a flurry, land, wait then repeat this cycle a few times. I just love watching the energy of this spectacle.

I already published this photo of the stained glass along with the photos of The Ridge sign. But I didn’t explain that besides the fact that this is a huge two story stained glass façade, the birds you see are actually the reflection of the pigeons flying behind me on one of their rounds. It was just by chance that I was standing at this particular angle when the birds flew by that I was able to catch this shot.

Serendipity.