LondonIt’s a mild day in late October, and I’m standing near the Peter Pan statue, J.M. Barrie’s monument to childhood, in Kensington Gardens, in the heart of central London. Next to a fenced-off area, about 20 people are feeding a noisy group of parakeets. The exotic, emerald-green birds with lipstick-red beaks are used to the attention. They swoop down, unafraid, onto the outstretched hands of delighted children and grown-ups, who hold out apple cores or nuts for them to feed on. Some even perch on people’s heads.

David Kaminski, a 53-year-old writer for an aviation magazine, has been coming to the park from his home in South London for a decade. When I meet him, he has a pigeon on his