NEW YORK: New York is staging a show with 2,000 pigeons tagged with LED lights illuminating the city’s night sky.

For its premiere Thursday, the birds were released at sunset from coops aboard a former aircraft carrier docked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Improvising their own choreography, the flock swooped, twirled and glided through the sky above the East River for the show called “Fly by Night”.

“It’s almost like this shooting star going across the skyline,” said artist Duke Riley, who created the 30-minute spectacle on the Brooklyn waterfront.

LED light bands are attached to a bird’s leg and remote-controlled from the Baylander, a decommissioned Navy ship from the Vietnam era. Spectators lined a grandstand on land, surrounded by taped sounds of birds cooing and flapping their wings as the pigeons perched atop the warship, waiting for the sky to darken.

Then a hush descended on the scene as Riley and several assistants, hollering and blowing whistles, waved garbage bags — simulating hawks — over the vessel to start the flock flying around.

The spectacle, which runs each weekend through June 12, is free of charge but requires online reservations. There’s already a waiting list.

Riley selected the Brooklyn Navy Yard for his light show because nearby, on an artificial island, the Navy housed its first messenger-pigeon fleet in the early 20th century.

Published in Dawn, May 7th, 2016