Brooklyn pet store owner accused of kidnapping NYC pigeons, selling them as live shooting targets
An alleged pigeon pirate is ruffling feathers in the concrete jungle.
A longtime Brooklyn pet store owner is coming under fire after allegations resurfaced that he kidnaps pigeons from public parks and illegally sells them to hunters to be used as live shooting targets, The Post has learned – but his brother claims activists have pigeonholed the wrong guy.
Michael Scott, co-owner of Broadway Pigeon & Pet Supplies in Bushwick, has been accused of purloining pigeons for decades, according to animal rights activist Tina Piña, who claims her own Brooklyn pigeon flock was ransacked by the store owner this month.
“My beloved flock was netted a week ago, and I know that it happens – but when it happens to you, it’s different,” said Piña, whose flock roosts regularly at Maria Hernandez Park in Bushwick and who organized a 60-person rally outside the pet store Saturday.
About 15 to 20 of her beloved birds, which she has cared for for a decade, were captured by a man at the park in the early morning hours of April 1, a witness told Piña — who goes by “Mother Pigeon” on Instagram. The same individual reportedly netted more pigeons in the days following – and Piña claims Scott is behind the bird-brained scheme.
Pigeon trapping on public property is illegal and considered animal abuse, according to NYC’s 311 portal.
A request for comment from Scott, 56, was not immediately returned, but his brother Joey Scott, who co-owns Broadway Pigeon & Pet Supplies, claims the duo have never caught pigeons from the street, and instead sell off unwanted pigeons from their inherited rooftop coop without asking many questions.
“Dog trainers call me from different states, they want to come take birds,” he said, adding that he’s also sold white pigeons for funerals and weddings from the generations of birds they inherited from their grandfather in 1971.
“Some people come [buy birds] to do voodoo sacrifices, I’m sure,” he added.
“I don’t ask what they do with them, but they kill them and they train dogs with them … if I have my own pigeons and they’re mine and nobody else’s and I breed them, I’m allowed to do what I want with them.”
The Scott brothers previously came under fire in July 2008 after an attorney admitted the store sold birds to a pigeon broker in charge of an invitation-only pigeon shooting tournament in Pennsylvania, where such contests called flyer shooting are still legal, The Post previously reported.
“The Humane Society of the United States believes that some of the pigeons who end up as living targets in the circuit of live pigeon shoots in Pennsylvania come from the brokers at Broadway Pigeons in New York City,” a rep for the nonprofit told The Post at the time.
Though Piña said the paper trail for illegal out-of-state pigeon sales is difficult to pin down, it’s not surprising that her flock was ransacked just ahead of contest season.
“It’s timing … They collect the pigeons right before the weekend of the shoot, and then the pigeons are all gone,” Piña said.
In a 2018 report expressing support for a Pennsylvania law that would make pigeon shoots illegal, the New York City Bar Association concluded that many of the pigeons used for the Pennsylvania target practice are illegally trapped in New York City and transported across state lines.
More than two dozen pigeon shoots took place in 2016, according to the report, in which thousands of pigeons were shot. Some of the birds “suffered a slow and painful death, were denied veterinary care, and in some cases, had their heads torn off and bodies smashed by children hired to collect their bodies,” according to the report.
“Netting” has been a phenomenon for decades in the city, Piña contends, with 311 reports dating back to at least 2010.
Piña claims netting has taken place across the city’s parks including Father Demo Square in the West Village, Tompkins Square Park in the East Village and Washington Square Park – and even on street corners, according to an Instagram video posted by activist group Pigeons4Miles, which claims to depict Michael Scott “or possibly one of his friends” in the act.
But Joey called fowl play on the allegation.
He said the man in the video isn’t his brother or affiliated with Pigeons on Broadway at all, and the store is being framed by bird lovers.
“It’s not him, it’s a Spanish guy with a black beard [in the video],” Joey said.
“The guys that do it, they’ve been caught by the cops,” he said. “But the cops make them release the birds, that’s it. They don’t do nothing.”
John Di Leonardo, executive director of animal rights group Humane Long Island, told The Post the issue of pigeon trapping and netting is long overdue for an enforcement overhaul.
“The authorities need to investigate this, and [Michael Scott] needs to be arrested for the violation of state and local laws,” Di Leonardo told The Post. “Laws are only as good as their enforcement, and we need the NYPD to take animal cruelty seriously and arrest this guy. It’s been decades.”
“The city knows, the animal cruelty unit of New York City knows who is doing it,” Piña added. “They have license plate numbers, they have reports – they have decided this is something they don’t want to deal with.”
Piña has since decided she will be taking the issue to social media and on the ground demonstrations and protests all summer – “until this stops.”
“It feels like a lost cause because the propaganda against pigeons is so strong,” she said.
“They’re incredible creatures, and they give us life to the city … New Yorkers don’t have rivers and streams and forests to walk amongst — we have pigeons that bring us back to nature.”
