Carla Gould studies pigeons near Central Park.

On a busy corner of Central Park, shivering tourists clench their overcoats and frantically hail taxis. Seemingly impervious to the cold and commotion, environmentalist Carla Gould sits alone on a bench, her eyes fixed on a cluster of pigeons at the foot of a nearby statue. She’s motionless except for the occasional scribble on her notepad.

Except for a Canadian accent, the 30-year-old is effortlessly New York chic—tall and slim with dark hair and delicate features that show subtle traces of well-applied iridescent make-up—perhaps an unconscious tribute to her subject, the pigeon.

She has come here with one mission: to revitalize the pigeon’s reputation. New York City is her laboratory, and these so-called “rats with wings” are the focus of her thesis: “Re-contextualizing the Pigeon Through Space and Interaction.

Carla Gould

Ms. Gould is a visiting fellow at New York University’s xClinic, a research center that focuses on how health is affected by environmental factors, such as human interaction with pigeons. Instead of advocating pharmaceuticals, the clinic’s research emphasizes action plans – even ostensibly unpopular ones like Ms. Gould’s.

On leave from her undergraduate studies in Toronto, Ms. Gould finds the human-pigeon dynamic to be romantic, despite the bird’s reputation as a pest. “It’s a rich relationship that has been ignored,” she says with conviction.

The first step in her evangelistic action plan is “to change the public perception of the pigeon,” she says. Most people believe that guano, or pigeon excrement, carries disease. Gould strongly disagrees, so she’ll start her mission by “showing how much of a misconception this guano fear is.” In the clinic’s two-room office in Manhattan’s East Village, she has begun writing a handbook about the many virtues of guano, including its use as a fertilizer.

The second step is to inspire an attitude adjustment since many think the pigeon is a nuisance. “We haven’t learned how to properly cohabitate with them,” she says. But given two minutes, she says she can change skeptics’ minds and show that city life and nature are not mutually exclusive.

She usually begins with a story about the pigeon’s work as a revered messenger during World War I. Because of their innate ability to fly long distances, “carrier” pigeons were often dispatched to deliver military intelligence to base camps and were credited with saving lives. “I get teary-eyed when I talk about it,” she says.

She then segues to its journey to America. Early settlers brought pigeons as a sign of affluence and a delicacy to eat. “The story captivates people,” she says. “People will say, ‘Oh, my God, that’s incredible. They’re not just freeloading off my AC unit and shitting on my front door.’”

Natalie Jereminjenko, xClinic’s founder and Ms. Gould’s supervisor, is also pro-pigeon. “The pigeon is a critical tool to understanding urban health,” she says. The two paired up when Dr. Jereminjenko gave a speech at the Ontario College of Art and Design, where Ms. Gould is a student. Afterwards, Ms. Gould approached her and pitched her pigeon project, to which Dr. Jereminjenko responded with an invitation to work at the clinic.

Six months later, Ms. Gould moved into a crammed sublet a few blocks from the NYU campus. Her typical day may include her two-minute tutorials on the street, or testing pigeons’ food preferences (breadcrumbs trump French fries).

She’ll spend hours on some afternoons observing a flock of birds. Occasionally, it’ll be an impromptu session, as Chris Denda, her boyfriend, learned on a recent visit from Toronto. “We’ll be walking down the street and she’ll stop without telling me. I turn around and she’s ‘interacting’ with the birds—looking at them, ‘being’ with them,” he says. “I don’t think they even notice her. They probably think, ‘Oh, it’s Carla again.’”

The flock might not notice Ms. Gould because a component of her research involves pretending to be one of them. During a 30-minute “pigeon embodiment exercise,” Ms. Gould and her xClinic colleagues stood in a stairwell near the office, closed their eyes and opened their minds to what it would feel like to be a pigeon. They arched their backs and cocked their necks to impersonate a tail and beak. Extended arms became wings, shifting back and forth as if in flight. The exercise prompted giggles in the beginning, but soon the group fell silent. “We imagined how the legs would be positioned and how to walk accordingly. It was nuts because you’re growing a tail in this peaceful state,” Ms. Gould says.

“Channeling” pigeons is far afield from Ms. Gould’s initial career track. After weathering through academic probation in high school, she and her parents agreed vocational training suited her off-beat nature more so than the formal higher education route. She studied hair and make-up and got a job as a make-up artist on Canadian Idol. Six years later, the show-biz glamour had worn off and she decided to give higher education another shot, enrolling in an industrial design program at her art school in Ontario. This time, it stuck.

Ms. Gould concedes the pigeon is an unlikely muse. “A lot of people laughed, and I thought it was funny at first, too. But I was passionate about this story that was unfolding,” she reflects.

New York is one research stop on an itinerary she hopes will take her around the globe for her studies. She has created a survey designed to compare the pigeon-human interaction in Boston, Vancouver and Hawaii. The 20-point questionnaire will gather scientific data, such as pigeon population sizes and locations, plus photos and anecdotal evidence from her observations.

Surveys aside, the bigger picture is a harmonious human-pigeon living environment, says Ms. Gould. She envisions a scenario where air-conditioning window units are someday used as platforms for pigeon families, and apartment residents collect their guano to fertilize rooftop gardens.

While the goals are conceptual for now, the potential impact is considerable. “This is not just a playful little design project,” says Dr. Jereminjenko, Ms. Gould’s supervisor at the xClinic. “This has real implications to your health, to my health, everyone’s health.”

Her success may be hard to quantify, says her professor and advisor, Carl Hastrich. Ms. Gould’s objective is “not a tangible, sellable result,” he says. Her aim is to increase awareness, but “how do you know when you’ve created a dialogue that’s successful?” he asks. “How you measure success is an open-ended adventure.”

Ms. Gould is not the first pigeon advocate. She freely acknowledges that “a few people” have put pigeons on the map, citing two mainstream books called Superdove: How the Pigeon Took Manhattan and Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the World’s Most Revered and Reviled Bird Pigeon as required reading.

“I really want to be a part of what happens next,” she says.

Some of her future research is still on ice. Tucked away in her freezer are two birds—a woodpecker and sparrow—awaiting a dissection to compare its wing structure to the pigeons’.