If you're interested in tracking the birds' progress, a live map is currently available on the project's microsite. Alternatively, you can tweet the @pigeonair account on Twitter for a quick summary of a specific borough or neighborhood. The project is a three-day affair, designed to attract new beta testers for a wearable pollution monitor built by Plume Labs. As such, the new "Pigeon Air Patrol" feels more like a marketing campaign than an evolution in air pollution management. Still, it's neat to know that there are birds in the sky with backpacks -- and maybe, just maybe, there's scope to expand and refine the idea if these experimental test flights take off.

And we're off! The first #PigeonAir patrol flies from Brick Lane, monitoring air pollution as we go! pic.twitter.com/W8KnyrxnCe — Pigeon Air Patrol (@PigeonAir) 14 March 2016