14 Birds Saved: UES Building Relents And Helps After Outrage In Press

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — Uptown birds are chirping a happier song now that a Yorkville building has agreed to help remove nesting birds trapped and dying inside their intensive, unpermitted sidewalk-shed netting.

In a sudden about face, the management at Normandie Court now says that they'll work closely with the same bird advocates who they called the police on just two days earlier in an effort to help free the trapped animals, several of which have died as a result of the brutal nets.

The nets, meant to keep birds out from making the long-standing sidewalk shed their home, actually trapped already nesting birds inside, cutting them off from food, water and family.

While the city has since ordered the building to remove the nets — or face a penalty up to $10,000 — management now says they will now try to prevent birds from dying in their net-trap.

"Early this morning, in an effort to deal expeditiously and humanely with the nesting pigeons at Normandie Court, the building directed experienced professionals from US Bird Control to safely remove the pigeons from the netting area at Normandie Court," said Fraser Seitel, a representative for the building and its owner, Ogden Cap.

Around 14 birds were saved in the morning time operation, said Seitel.

Bird-loving neighbors have been trying to get the attention of the building's management for weeks ever since neighbors began noticing starving, and occasionally dead, birds trapped in the recently enhanced netting.

On Monday, one bird rescuer told Patch that a pigeon she wrestled from the netting at Normandie Court, which occupies the entire block at East 95th and 96th streets, between Second and Third avenues, were in horrific condition — an assessment she made from past pigeon rescue efforts.

“We've been trying to get them out for a couple of weeks now,” said Sonia Izak on Monday, a neighbor and longtime animal rescuer. “They’re just gonna start dropping dead from starvation and dehydration.”

“If they were really helping, we wouldn’t be out here every day," she told Patch.

"It was clear management wasn’t going to do anything and hoped we’d go away," said fellow bird-savior Harley Brooks, a photo retoucher who grew up on the Upper East Side.

That's why Izak and Brooks were surprised to hear from the company that set the nets in the first place.

Brooks said that management contacted the owner of the net contracter, a company called U.S. Bird Control, who then reached out to the bird rescuers.

Turns out, Brooks said, the owner was actually trying to help birds as early as late Sunday night, after the animal rescuers staged a guerilla-style bird-net rescue — and Normandie Court called the NYPD on them.

"I thought he was closing up the holes," said Brooks of seeing the man after their operation ceased, "but he was opening them and getting as many birds out as he could."

The owner, named Nugo, told Brooks and Izak that someone from his company would meet them early on Wednesday to look for more birds.

"He arrived at 5 a.m. to get some birds out," Brooks said, and soon called the duo to come pick up a pair of rescued baby birds.

The bird rescue team agreed to meet again on Friday to look for more trapped birds, with Nugo pledging to work with them to get all the birds out until the project is finished — fulfilling the demand of the bird-concerned neighbors.

But it's not just the bird-lovers who are concerned with the netting.

The Department of Building officially issued a violation for the sidewalk shed after discovering that the horizontal netting was not a part of the approved plans.

According to a Buildings spokesperson, the department has ordered the contractor to "remove the unapproved horizontal netting in order to resolve the violation."

If the netting is not removed by April 15, the building could be fined anywhere between $1,250 and $10,000 for the violation.

"It is our hope that people will stop leaving birdseed and cutting the netting and allow the building, working with professionals, to resolve this issue in a diligent and humane manner," said Seitel, the building's representative. "By doing so, we can ensure the safety and well-being of both the birds and the people."