Good morning. It’s Thursday. Today we’ll look at pigeons and the High Line’s plan to celebrate them. We’ll also find out why the cap on deductions for state and local taxes has become a stumbling block for the $3.8 trillion federal spending bill in the House.

Credit…via the High Line

New York celebrates its nuisances.

That’s one way to explain why a birder and a lawyer have been fighting to save nests of Canada geese in Central Park. Federal workers had been destroying the nests under a government program to reduce the possibility of bird strikes that affect airplanes. Hazards at 5,000 feet are not the only problem. Canada geese honk noisily, and they foul lawns in parks and fairways on golf courses.

And then there are pigeons. The High Line, the rail line turned park that threads its way through the Far West Side, put a statue of a 16-foot-tall pigeon on a pedestal last fall. Now the High Line is planning something called Pigeon Fest. It may not be for everyone. The executive director of the High Line, Alan van Capelle, acknowledged that New Yorkers had “a complicated relationship with pigeons.”

How complicated? Van Capelle said he could not think of another event where you could see “a pigeon impersonation pageant and a panel on urban ecology and bird conservation.” Tina Piña Trachtenberg, who is known to many New Yorkers as Mother Pigeon — and feeds flocks of pigeons while dressed as one — was one of the first people who was invited to the festival, a daylong celebration on June 14. The all-pigeons-all-the-time theme will include swag bags by Iván Argote, the artist who created the giant pigeon.

Van Capelle said that Pigeon Fest would be “whimsical and fun and avant-garde,” and also serious. “Our big theme this year is urban ecology and the many different ecosystems you can find on the High Line,” he said. And that meant “paying homage to icon of the city.”