Someone is stealing pigeons off New York City’s streets.

Captured in grainy bystander video, it happened on a day in early April in Manhattan, when a man, his face obscured by a low-slung hat, swooped a giant butterfly net over a small flock, scooped up dozens of birds and popped them into the trunk of a car parked on 10th Avenue.

Reviled as rats with wings or, by a slimmer margin, beloved as downy, dirty urban icons, pigeons seem as much a part of New York as its skyline. The sympathetic throw them pretzel chunks, the disgusted kick their way through their sidewalk confabs, and even the agnostic cover their heads when passing below their subway platform roosts.

But who would steal pigeons?

Mother Pigeon, a pro-pigeon activist who feeds flocks of pigeons dressed as a pigeon while also selling felted figurines of pigeons, was sure she had the answer: the two brothers who own a pet store at the edge of Bushwick, Brooklyn. Their shop caters to the city’s dwindling corps of pigeon keepers, and she believes they are reselling the birds for use in live pigeon shoots in Pennsylvania.

And so last month, she and a small collection of pigeon activists showed up at the store, Broadway Pigeons & Pet Supplies, waving placards and chanting on the sidewalk. The owners deny having anything to do with stolen pigeons and say they have been unfairly attacked by pigeon partisans.

But not long after the protest, a new suspect emerged.

Somewhat lost in the conflict is a fact little known to most people: that New York City’s pigeons do, in fact, get snatched with some regularity. There was a rash of thefts in 2017, 2019 and again in 2022, according to Humane World for Animals, which has tracked the nettings. Some of those birds, the organization says, end up as fodder for a controversial but legal sport with committed defenders, in which the main object is to toss a live bird in the air and shoot it.

Dressed in a jacket of felted gray feathers, Mother Pigeon, whose real name is Tina Piña Trachtenburg but who goes by Ms. Piña, crouched in Maria Hernandez Park in Bushwick on a recent weekday, as mottled pigeons tumbled across her hands and shoulders pecking at seed. She earns a living from selling her felt pigeons in parks for between $35 and $75 a piece.

Earlier this month some of her live flock were netted, according to a man whom she pays $10 a day to bird-watch while he hangs out in the park; the flock was less than half the size it was a month ago, she said.

“How sad is this?” she asked, spreading her wings to take in what remained. Tears began to well in Ms. Piña’s eyes. “The propaganda against pigeons is intense.”

This devotion (she calls it “dove-otion”) led her to help organize a rally outside of Broadway Pigeons, casting blame on the two brothers who own it, Michael and Joey Scott, for the disappearances.

Reached at the store, Michael Scott, who had been accused in the past of selling pigeons to shooters, vehemently denied involvement. He said he adored his own 600 pigeons, and was being wrongly and unfairly targeted. The accusations, however, have not dimmed his nearly lifelong love for tending pigeons, he added.

“Show me some pictures of me pigeon-napping, then I’ll start quaking in my boots,” Mr. Scott said in a telephone interview before hanging up.

In a sense, New York’s pigeons belong to the city itself. They are officially designated city wildlife (like raccoons, squirrels and even Astoria the turkey), and it is therefore illegal to trap or kill them.

“I hear from people who absolutely love pigeons, and I hear from a lot of people who are compassionate for all sentient beings but also don’t see the beauty,” said Alexandra Silver, the director of the Mayor’s Office of Animal Welfare. “But I am glad we have a law that spells out that you cannot do this, that you cannot net birds.”

But in Pennsylvania, pigeons are fair game in a sport with a long heritage called flyer shooting. In his law office in Doylestown, Pa., Paul Perlstein, a lawyer and the spokesman for the Pennsylvania Flyers Association, keeps what he says is a 1913 photo of a man sport-shooting pigeons on the Champs-Élysées in Paris; the same city hosted live pigeon shooting as a sport in the 1900 Olympic Games. There has been no accusation that the association has done anything illegal.

In flyer shooting, a bird is tossed by a “columbaire”; once the bird flaps to a certain height, the shooter may take aim.

The pigeons used in the sport are typically “nuisance birds,” according to Mr. Perlstein, that would have been exterminated anyway — pests nesting under bridges, for example, where their highly corrosive droppings can erode pilings.

Indeed, New York City does allow licensed exterminators to kill pigeons. To Mr. Perlstein’s knowledge, no New York City street birds had entered the supply chain of flyer shooting events in Pennsylvania. But there are many clubs and many suppliers. Is there a possibility that someone, somewhere had introduced stolen street pigeons into the events? Maybe.

Inside her workshop in Bushwick, where wire pigeon feet were piled in baskets and a live street pigeon and a fat squirrel darted freely through an open window to the kitchen table, Ms. Piña fretted over the fate of her lost flock and reaffirmed her certainty that the brothers’ pet store was somehow involved. This wasn’t the first time she had targeted the shop: Several years ago, she claimed, she put on a nun’s habit, posed as a customer and secretly released caged birds out of the back of the store. No one, she said, found out.

“She needs help,” said a woman answering the phones at the store who would give only her first name — Lisa, she said — for fear of activist backlash. “She thinks she is a pigeon.”

On April 30, the police arrested Dwayne Daley, 67, of Bushkill, Pa., who they say was scooping up birds in Tompkins Square Park in Manhattan. Officers discovered a truck parked nearby that contained nets and more than 25 pigeons in cages.

Mr. Daley was charged with one count of misdemeanor animal cruelty and released, but he was arrested again the very next day and charged with felony assault for his involvement in an altercation from 2021. Police say he punched a man who tried to stop him from netting pigeons in Brooklyn, knocking out two of the man’s teeth.

In 2007, Mr. Daley was also caught stealing pigeons after a man in East Harlem set up a sting operation to figure out why his beloved pigeon had gone missing. At the time, Mr. Daley said he bred the birds or sold them at auction. “It’s not like I’m doing anything wrong with them,” he said then.

Mr. Daley could not be reached for comment. There is no information suggesting that he is connected with the Brooklyn pet shop.

At the store, Michael Scott said that the attention had unexpectedly doubled his business. He said he had never met Mr. Daley. The April arrest, he said, meant that activists targeting him and his brother were “flying to the wrong coop.”

Mother Pigeon, however, was unapologetic. As she nursed a one-eyed pigeon back to health in her apartment and absorbed news of Mr. Daley’s arrest, she said she still believed the Scotts were up to no good and that she and her group already have plans to protest the shop again.

“If someone came in and took 10 dogs from the dog park, they would have been convicted,” Ms. Piña said. “Pigeons are not considered an animal that people feel they need to love and protect,” she added. “It’s hurtful.”