Find your niche!

I love pigeons. Pigeons are everywhere in NYC, and it’s easy to disregard them as a moving greyish mass of messiness. But when you take a moment to really look at them, they are quite beautiful, each with a unique pattern, and they fulfill a variety of niches in the city’s ecosystem. 

The pigeon in this photo was nesting in a niche in the wall of El Moro, in San Juan, Puerto Rico. I took the picture for a friend of mine who says if she is ever reincarnated she wants to come back as a pigeon.

As I look at the photo now, back in NYC, I think about it as illustrating the creativity we need to find our own niches. The hole in this enormous city wall was not made for this pigeon. But this creative little creature has adopted it and made it her own. 

We need to find our niches where we can, and we need sometimes to look in unlikely places.