Pigeon Keepers of Amman

An age old sport, in an age old town

While walking Amman I kept having the sneaking suspicion there was some pigeon action happening on the roofs. Not your run of the mill pigeon action, but the pigeon keeping type action I knew so well from the Bronx and Brooklyn.

I kept seeing flocks swooping and swirling in circles over roofs in tight flapping formations, a betraying sign that someone was collecting, housing, and conducting pigeons.

It also made sense that Amman would have pigeon keepers, a sport brought to New York City by European immigrants, mostly Italians, and I wasn’t that far from Italy, not culturally at least.