Mystery pigeon lady is snatching sickly birds at NYC museum, leaving locals on edge: ‘Some die’
A mystery pigeon lady is snatching “weak” birds from outside the Met and storing them for days at a time inside her car – leaving neighbors disturbed over the strange behavior.
The birdnapper, who routinely is seen with a knife and bags of bread, admitted to The Post that she traps up to a dozen street pigeons outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue to protect them from threats like hawks and loose rat poison.
“Today I have three of them,” said the trapper and bookseller, who said her name is Grace. “One is really very weak,” she said Wednesday afternoon of the trio apparently flying around in the messy green Subaru Outback she lives out of.
“Some die … but not every one,” she shrugged as she unsettlingly held a large knife to cut bread for the flock — and added she often lets birds go after two to three days because “they need sunshine too.”
Grace has continued to operate unobstructed despite numerous 311 calls from locals as activists worry the weird behavior could kill the birds or spread disease. She’s been doing this for at least five years and has been known to yell at children and clash with passersby from time to time, a Met groundskeeper said.
Lifting pigeons off a public street is illegal in the Big Apple and is considered animal abuse, according to the city’s website.
“They’re easy to take,” she told The Post. “They are slow. I take the weak, not the [pigeons that] fly … in the winter it was very cold and snowy, I had 10.”
Megan Walton, who runs the Dutchess County-based avian sanctuary Pigeons for Miles, said the birds’ feces could spread diseases while breathing in pigeon dust could cause lung damage in people.
“Pigeons are not a vector species for bird flu, but it could be something that she’s spreading, it’s very concerning,” Walton added.
Walton said she has filed multiple 311 complaints reporting the pigeon-nabbing to the NYPD this week, but each case has been closed within hours or minutes of being created.
Police said they responded to several complaints Tuesday and Wednesday but “observed no evidence of the violation.”
“We are aware of complaints involving this individual and the Animal Cruelty Investigation Squad is looking into this matter,” a spokesperson said. “Additionally, the 19th Precinct will conduct directed patrols in the vicinity of the 5th Avenue and 80th Street in addition to monitoring 311 and 911 calls for any incidents involving pigeons.”
But the most pressing worry for animal activists remains the safety of the birds — with one critic saying the weird behavior is more common than many think.
“They’ll die fast in the heat and slow without medical attention either way,” said John Di Leonardo, executive director of Humane Long Island.
The pigeon-napping outside the MET was thrust into the spotlight on Monday evening when a passerby claimed the birds fed by Grace would “turn into these barely-moving wrecks, just standing there and not reacting to anything.
“She’d walk over, grab them, and put them under her jacket or into a bag. I even saw her take one out of her bag and pour something into its beak,” the user wrote in a now-deleted post. “What really struck me was how routine and normal this all seemed, there were workers nearby fixing something, people walking by, and no one seemed to pay any attention.”
Grace, a Polish citizen who arrived in New York roughly a decade ago, denied feeding the birds anything else besides bread and water — but even the water-feeding may be dangerous, Walton said.
“That’s how you kill pigeons,” Walton noted, “because they aspirate liquid if it’s placed into their mouths.”
Grace should turn over any seized animals to a sanctuary or rehabilitation center, she said.
“If she’s harming animals, somebody has to step in,” Walton said.
A spokesperson for the Mayor’s Office of Animal Welfare urged New Yorkers to share evidence in this case and others through the 311 portal.
A spokesperson for the Mayor’s Office of Animal Welfare encouraged New Yorkers to use the 311 portal to share evidence in this case or “other similar situations.”
