‘I’m not the pigeon guy – I just happen to have a pigeon’: Jeffery Jones’s best phone picture

The New York-based photographer and his wife adopted an injured bird, which gets annoyed when they leave it home alone

Jeffery Jones had a parakeet as a kid but never considered himself a bird fanatic. Yet when he and his wife settled into an apartment block in New York's East Village, the pair began noticing the local pigeons. We began to see how interesting they were - preening, doing funny little dances." he says.

Around the same time, Jones began volunteering for the Wild Bird Fund, which takes in injured birds in the city. It was far removed from his usual work as a fine art and fashion photographer. When I joined, they had this resident pigeon, named Ghob after the person who rescued her. She had arrived as a baby: a tiny, yellow, prickly thing, and had refused to leave. We did a trial fostering period with her, but when I took her back to the sanctuary, she was so angry with me she wouldn't interact with me any more. Then she fell sick and became depressed. My wife and I realised we'd have to adopt her permanently if she was going to survive."