For the birds

There are more than 8 million humans in the naked city — and populations of rats and pigeons that, taken together, rival us in numbers. But we don’t put the vile rodents that scurry across sidewalks and occasionally bite babies in the same category as the so-called rats with wings that, yes, can certainly be a nuisance but whose wings also let them scrape the sky.

Birds are glorious. So shame on whoever painted that pigeon, dubbed Flamingo, pink, presumably for a gender-reveal party, and thanks to the good people at the Wild Bird Fund — a terrific nonprofit soon set to open a second location in Brooklyn — for laboring, unfortunately unsuccessfully, to rescue the columba livia forma urbana.

And shame on the finch smuggler who in Brooklyn federal court was just sentenced to a year and a day in prison for sneaking countless finches into New York for birdsong competitions.

And long live Flaco, the Eurasian eagle-owl who left the Central Park Zoo early this month after vandals damaged his enclosure. He’s now hanging out in a tree, as owls are wont to do, and feasting on real live rats. Huzzah.

And long live all the songbirds and waterfowl and birds of prey and others that make our buzzing metropolis a hub of avian diversity. The five boroughs are on the Atlantic Flyway, that many different types of birds follow during their migrations. When they see our landmarks and our parks, they settle for a stretch, just as people often do.

So go ahead and eat some chicken wings during the big game tonight. Today, turn your eyes to the skies and give thanks for the ospreys and the egrets and the orioles and the kestrels and the eagles an the woodcocks and the terns and the warblers and the herons and the cardinals and the bluejays and the ducks and the parakeets and the pheasants and the hawks and the pigeons, even the pigeons. Every time they soar, they take a piece of us heavenward.