Napier Creative Industries: Film, Photography and Pigeons

This is Mikey, he keeps pigeons in his bedroom closet in his flat in Muirhouse. This is his biggest female, the one he’s most proud of. He treated the wing feathers with blond hair dye.

I’m American and my knowledge of Edinburgh was Trainspotting and Irvine Welsh. I’ve been photographing and filming in Muirhouse since I came to Edinburgh to study in 2006.

Mikey says keeping pigeons keeps him out of trouble. He competes his females against his neighbour’s male pigeons, trying to lure them down to his dovecot with a promise of pigeon sex.

It’s illegal to keep pigeons in a council flat and his neighbours called the cops, so he sold them down the pub. There’s a whole community of guys who auction their pigeons in a pub in town. Things went a bit downhill for him after that. And that’s part of what my film is about…