I had an extraordinary moment on the Palisades Parkway leaving New York City. In medium traffic moving about 50 miles per hour, with end-of-day sun slanting from the west, I could see something white and, seemingly, winged, flitting and darting within the flow of cars up ahead.

Sure enough, it was a bird, moving at about the speed of the vehicles around it. I was thinking it must be a hawk, but as I caught up with it, I could see it was a pure white dove or pigeon — at my eye level — seemingly enjoying racing another Prius.

Its wings pumped powerfully. Here and there, it darted upward, but then it returned to the race. I watched it diminish in my rear-view mirror, worrying that some distracted driver might hit the bird.

But, in perhaps the biggest miracle of all, everyone was going slowly, with successive waves of cars approaching the sight from behind and grasping the wonder of the moment.

I did a bit of searching on Google and, no surprise, came up with other such instances, including one just a couple of weeks ago in Queensland, Australia. Here’s video captured of that pigeon in traffic:

I briefly thought about grabbing my camera. (I did do something that foolish once when I saw a motorcyclist pulling a wheelie on an interstate highway going about 80 miles per hour.) But I abandoned the thought, preferring to commit my Palisades pigeon encounter to memory.

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