Birds of a Feather : Newport Beach Woman at Home With a Flock of Pigeons

Julie Garcia says she has 300 friends waiting for her at the beach every day.

Garcia has befriended the Newport Beach pigeon population with her generous handouts of birdseed and loving care.

“I love them just like someone loves a dog or a cat,” she said. “They are so exquisite and beautiful to watch.”

Garcia, a medical technician who lives four blocks from the beach, carries 10 pounds of birdseed to the pigeons at 7 each morning and a second 10-pound helping at about 2 in the afternoon.

She said she is convinced that the birds see her as more than just a meal ticket. They respond to her calls and finger commands. “The pigeons sit on my hand or on my head, one of them will peck my ear if I don’t pay attention to him.”

She has given about 80 of them names, from “Spot” to “Don King.”

Garcia, 37, said her fondness for birds began three years ago when she tried to help a pigeon that had been tangled in fishing line at the beach. She kept feeding the bird until it trusted her enough to let her touch it.

Now Garcia has become a sort of Jane Goodall of pigeons. She said the birds are so familiar with her presence that when she once wore different perfume, the birds would not approach her. Even if she wears a different jacket, the pigeons are more wary and cautious.

She said she has noticed a social order to the pigeondom.

“One day I saw the ugliest little bird. I called him Yellow Snow,” Garcia said. “Now he is the cockiest bird on the beach. When he sits on my arm, that’s it, no one else can sit there too.”

She said she has seen about five generations of pigeons in her three years of feeding them on the beach.

Garcia said none of her human friends have the same interest that she does in the birds.

“None of them can fathom what it is like,” she said. “None of them want to get up that early in the morning.”

She said Saturday morning that Newport Beach police had asked her to stop feeding the pigeons because lifeguards at the beach complained that it made them more bold about landing on the lifeguard towers.

But Garcia says she does not plan to stop.