A word about Mr. LeClerc. The only child of a French father and a Dominican mother, he got through eighth grade at a neighborhood school before turning to birds and truancy, a life of creative crime under the tutelage of a man who made change for Times Square peep shows, followed by three different stints in the United States Army, including one in Iraq that concluded in 2009.

A marriage ended with his banishment in the late 1980s; he moved into his current building when it had no light or water, its upper floors abandoned and its lower ones used by a crack dealer. He struck up a cordial reacquaintance with his father, with whom he had never lived but who turned out to be squatting in the same building, having also run into domestic problems. They bought their apartments for $500 under a homesteading plan.

Through it all, he kept pigeons, a hobby whose therapeutic and soothing qualities, he reckons, make important contributions to social hygiene. “Many pigeon people are very tough and dangerous people,” Mr. LeClerc said. “They can’t get along with other people, but they find solace here. It keeps society on the whole much safer.” Describing himself as being along the Asperger’s spectrum, he said he took to the birds because of “antisocialism” tendencies.

There is little he cannot do with his hands: He bought glass blocks at an auction and created a fine kitchen bar; he somehow beveled and finished plywood to make a parquet floor; his fireplace mantel was constructed with park bench remnants.

He also was licensed as a falconer at some point, so he was comfortable around raptors. He fetched a dark green towel, donned work gloves, and let the hawk finish its meal. Then it alighted on Mr. LeClerc’s towel-covered fist. He pulsed his hand, as if it were live prey, and the hawk kept its talons working. With his free hand, he said: “You come from behind, you grab both feet. The moment you’ve got him upside down, he becomes a chicken.”

He tells the story calmly.

So then what?

“Then I started cursing the world,” Mr. LeClerc said, reeling off some perfect-for-the-occasion examples. “I’ve got a handful of hawk in my apartment.”

He found a police patrol on Amsterdam Avenue that drove him to the Wild Bird Fund Center on the Upper West Side, which takes care of injured and orphaned wildlife.