Assisi is a town of a million pigeons. They nest under roof tiles and in niches where stones are missing from walls. No street, alley or piazza is without them but generally you don't see them in large flocks. A dozen, maybe twenty at the largest, but usually they're flying around in pairs, threes, fours. So it's hard to get a real sense of how many there are.

Down below the town is a construction site. Rumor is they're building a parking lot, which wouldn't be a bad idea. This being August, no work's going on, and the giant, I mean massive, I mean colossal, crane hasn't moved since we got here. This is what's called a tower crane: in the parked position it's got a hundred foot vertical tower supporting a sixty foot horizontal arm. The arm is steadied by cables from the top of the tower. The crane is silouetted against the sky and though it's below the town, it's still up on the hillside far above the valley.

So can you see what's coming? At sunset, the pigeons all swirl through the sky looking for a place to roost. One by one, two by two, they land on the crane. They space themselves along the cables until there's no room, and then the late-arriving birds settle on the arm. Eventually the entire ginormous crane is covered with pigeons. As the sky turns to silver, then fades to deep velvet blue, the pigeon-covered crane stands black against it, scaleless but obviously huge, looking like it's strung with Christmas lights that aren't yet lit.