Meanwhile, Back at City Hall . . .

While pigeons in the Los Angeles Harbor area are losing one favored perch, their cousins in downtown Los Angeles are facing a bleaker fate.

The city is seeking bids from private contractors to trap as many as possible of the hundreds of pigeons that reside in the area around City Hall and the Los Angeles Mall, said Bob King, director of building services for the city. The trapping probably will begin in several weeks.

King said he has received numerous complaints about the pigeons--a stray one even flew into the City Council chambers not long ago--and the loudest grumbling has come from food vendors in the city-owned mall, which draws a big lunchtime crowd.

“There’s all kinds of incentives for them to be there,” King said. “The climate is right, the food is great and they have water and everything else there. . . . I’ve actually seen them land in people’s plates and just start eating.”

King said cages containing pigeon feed will be placed on rooftops and other out-of-the-way locations, and the pigeons caught in the cages will be turned over to the city animal control division to be destroyed. About 800 pigeons were snared a year ago, King said.

Although there is no way to trap all of the downtown pigeons, King said, that does not concern him.

“A bird here and there, most people don’t complain about that,” he said. “But when they start getting organized and taking over the area, that’s when you’ve got to do something about it.”