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‘Fly By Night:’ Pigeons Shine In The New York Sky As Performance Art [Video]

By Anne Sewell
Published on: 21:09 PST, May 8, 2016

While many New Yorkers think of pigeons as pests, the birds were literally seen in a different light recently as an artistic performance dubbed “Fly by Night” took to the skies.

The performance involved 2,000 pigeons with LED lights attached, released in the Brooklyn Navy Yard by artist and bird lover Duke Riley. Reportedly, Riley collected the many birds and trained them to fly in the darkness for a most unusual and beautiful artistic performance.

"Fly by Night" in NYC
[Image by AP Photo/Kathy Willens]
As reported by the New York Daily News, the first “Fly by Night” happened on Thursday evening and was a public art project, commissioned by Creative Time, a nonprofit arts organization. Bleachers were set up at the water’s edge and were filled with an appreciative audience, while the pigeons crowded impatiently on the roofs of their coops, waiting to fly.

The coops had been set up by Riley and his associates on the upper deck of the Baylander, a decommissioned Navy vessel that was previously used as a landing pad for helicopters during the Vietnam War.

Reported as New York headed into dusk, the sound of amplified coos and other pigeon-related sounds were played over the scene. Suddenly the sound ceased and the LED lights on their ankles turned on.

Riley and three assistants then stepped onto the roofs, waving bamboo poles with black garbage bags tied to the ends, all the while whistling and whooping like a crowd of cowhands.

At that moment, the pigeons took to the air and the lights on their ankles lit the sky. Swooping in the dusk light, the birds flew around, with some trying to return to the boat, before being gently shooed back into the sky by their handlers. As the light faded, the birds split into smaller groups, swooping and crisscrossing each other in the evening air to cheers from the appreciative audience below.

After flying around for around 30 minutes, the birds were whistled home by their handlers and music started playing including that truly evocative and appropriate song “When Doves Cry” by Prince.

According to a report by the New York Times, Riley has been around the birds since he was a child and loves to include pigeons in artistic performances.

He reportedly even spent eight months training 50 pigeons to carry contraband cigars and filmed the event, as the birds flew from Cuba to Key West, Fla. He has also depicted pigeons in paintings, mosaics and drawings, which can be seen on the website of MagnanMetz.

Reactions to Thursday’s event were positive, with one lady saying, “As a bystander, with many pigeons in my life, I like to see them so illuminated and trained, so it’s really beautiful.”

A man said, “It’s wild to be out on the water in Brooklyn and just see thousands of pigeons, kind of like fireflies and stars flying around.”

This was only the first of the “Fly by Night” exhibits, as the pigeons will perform every Friday, Saturday and Sunday night at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Navy Street and Sands Street, through June 12. Admission is free and tickets can be reserved on creativetime.org.

The start time is around sunset, between 7.00 and 7.30 p.m., weather permitting, as reportedly the birds don’t enjoy flying in bad weather, and who can blame them for that.

[Photo by AP Photo/Kathy Willens]

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