As thick clouds of smoke rolled across Los Angeles in early January, Allison Shultz opened a freezer and took out a stash of pristine white pigeon feathers.
The ornithology curator at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County placed handfuls of feathers between two small screens and clipped them together with zip ties. She installed one of these homemade feather filters on the roof of the museum's Exposition Park building, a few more in its surrounding gardens, another in her Gardena backyard.
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