Empire City — The Department of Sanitation confirmed Monday that the municipal pigeon depot on Kestrel Yard now contains no pigeons, and reiterated that there is no pigeon shortage.
It is the third depot to empty since August.
“There is no shortage,” said deputy commissioner Marisol Ebbenhauer. “I want to be careful with the language, because this newspaper was careless with it last week. There is no shortage of pigeons. There is an absence of pigeons. Those are different things and the difference is budgetary.”
Asked to explain the difference, Ms. Ebbenhauer said a shortage would require the department to act.
The Feed Continues
Deliveries have not been adjusted. Eleven hundred pounds of premium thistle blend arrived at Kestrel Yard on Thursday, as it does every Thursday, and was signed for by a municipal employee who was not asked to confirm that anything remained to eat it.
The department's position is that suspending deliveries would constitute acting.
The thistle blend is not accumulating.
That sentence was checked twice before publication. The department confirms that the depot is empty of pigeons, that eleven hundred pounds of feed arrives weekly, and that the feed is gone by Tuesday. It declined to characterise the mechanism.
A Fourth Depot
A fourth depot has been opened on Lasker Avenue, three streets from the water tower, and stocked in advance.
Ms. Ebbenhauer described the new depot as “a precaution,” and, when pressed on what it was a precaution against, said the department did not speculate.
Residents of Kestrel Yard have reported nothing unusual, with the exception of Mrs. Wilhelmina Grote, 71, of the harbor wards, who reported something unusual and asked that it be printed exactly as she said it.
“It was very quiet,” Mrs. Grote said. “That is the part I would put in the paper. Not the shape. The quiet.”
The Times has printed both.