Exploiters positively thrive in the thick of the city. Untroubled by human presence, they roost on our roofs, nest in our eaves, and eat our trash. The exploiting birds that are most conspicuous in New York City—starlings, house sparrows, rock pigeons (the proper name of the common street pigeon), mallard ducks, and Canada geese—are also abundant in many other cities across the world. Quick to colonize any denatured landscape, they are “tramps easily dispersing across our world,” writes the ecologist John Marzluff. “If they were plants, we could call them weeds.” They point toward a homogenized future in which one will see the same tough, streetwise birds in any city in the world.