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 As evening fell over the Brooklyn Navy Yard, once home to the
nation's largest naval fleet of carrier pigeons, artist Duke Riley
opened an enormous coop and released the homing pigeons of his "Fly
by Night" project.
At the call of his whistle, the massive flock took off and circled
for 30 minutes late Thursday over the deck of their temporary home
on a decommissioned U.S. Navy ship, following a bamboo pole waved in
the air by Riley.
What resembled air-borne embers swirling from a campfire were
actually LED lights in the birds' leg bands, which historically were
used to carry messages.
"It is a collaborative project between me and the pigeons," Riley
said. "It's a performance or maybe it's just a drawing that they are
doing in the sky."
The show will be repeated every weekend evening from May 7 through
June 12.
 Riley's flock includes a variety of specially trained pigeons, some
of which are his own, while others were purchased or borrowed from
pigeon fanciers. After the project ends, Riley will keep many of
them as his pets.
"Fly by Night," which was presented by the non-profit organization
Creative Time, comes three years after Riley's 2013 performance
piece "Trading With the Enemy," in which trained pigeons carried
cigars from Havana to Key West, Florida, to protest the U.S. embargo
of Cuba and challenge American spying capabilities since the birds
evade surveillance equipment. The New York City project pays
homage to pigeon keeping, whether for sport, service or
companionship. Once a popular pastime on city tenement rooftops, the
hobby has dropped off amid escalating real estate prices.
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While dubbed by some New Yorkers as "rats with wings," pigeons have
been revered for thousands of years, dating back to the ancient
Christians of Cappadocia in Turkey, who valued the birds for their
excrement, a rich fertilizer.
Pigeon droppings were also at the top of the minds of wary art
lovers on Thursday, as 2,000 birds flew overhead, threatening to
anoint onlookers with what some superstitions define as good luck.
"It was not a concern of mine at all because most animals, including
humans, usually don't like to defecate while they are exercising,"
Riley said.
Evidence on a reporter's purse, however, proved otherwise.
(Additional reporting by Elly Park and Lucas Jackson; Editing by
Scott Malone and Bernadette Baum)
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