🔗 Share this article

The plane pushed through wall after wall of freezing rain during the approach into its destination. A growing unease filled me during the trip, intensifying as I made my way through the arrivals hall. I resented having to be the place where I had grown up, after residing on the other side of the world for what had felt like a an eternity.

After a couple of days, I went out to get a haircut. My attention was far away, focused on an sea, when I heard something smack into the ground. I gazed down to see a bird on its wings, splayed out, and twitching.

The impact happened just as schoolchildren were emerging from the local elementary school and so within a short time a group of youngsters had formed, surrounded by their mothers and fathers. This circle of confused faces peered down at the creature, uncertain what to think or act. The kids were more definitive: “Daddy, she needs a vet, can we call an animal ambulance?” I removed my jacket, crouched down and gently lifted the pigeon into it. “No problem, love, the nice man will help her!” remarked one mum with a audible relief. I had become the rescue vehicle for this pigeon that had just come down hard, involuntarily, as I had a short time earlier.

I walked slowly home, arms ramrod straight, with the bird tucked safely inside the coat.

Little did I know that my impromptu decision to rescue the bird (the name I gave my avian patient) would lead me to a web of city dwellers giving up significant amounts of their time to provide not only rescue services for feral pigeons but scans, convalescence, and even “bird rehabilitation”.

I located a shoebox for Belinda, placed inside it with an old shirt, and put her inside. Every half hour or so, I’d lift the lid just long enough for us to make brief contact.

Those periods of common bewilderment punctuated my frantic search for what to do after that. I phoned friends for suggestions and one suggested trying online groups, where, to my surprise, I found a local pigeon rescue group, and submitted a request to become a member.

A Community Effort

With a large membership, the group has an decentralized system: someone in Manchester stumbles across an hurt pigeon, a urgent post is published, then a comment section “assessment” follows. If the bird is judged in need of an examination, someone with a connection to a clinic can organize it; if it needs physio, a “carer” will step forward to care for the bird.

Volunteers each have their own carefully cultivated skills, whether it’s setting broken wings or cleaning wounds. Their momentous, cooperative effort for the pigeons of the city runs entirely on goodwill.

Belinda was quickly diagnosed with a neurological issue, likely a head injury, and matched with a rehabber who would give pain relief and a regimen of patient physio. We never found out exactly what made her to plummet. I resumed the role of pigeon ambulance once more, riding the tram across the city with Belinda in a container on my lap so she could receive the attention she required.

A New Perspective

After finding this secret pigeon “support system”, I began to feel much more positive about being back in my hometown. I question any of the places I had resided in while away could have anything even close. It also occurred to me that this was not the first time I’d been part of a pigeon rescue: almost 20 years earlier I’d witnessed one fall from the sky into the playground of my old school. Again, children surrounded the bird, but only one – my friend at the time – had the gall to rescue it and take it to a safe place.

The friend in question has since passed away – one of several friends to pass away in the years before my departure from Manchester. I came to see that this had been a significant factor of what had made the return so painful.

Feathered Support

Pigeons have a tradition as “therapy” animals, especially in the North. Laborers started to keep the birds because they gave them comfort and an excuse to gaze up at the open air between long shifts of underground work. During the economic downturn, workers on the assistance also found solace in pigeons, but keeping them was viewed as a sign of “idleness”.

Nowadays, pigeons are often disparaged as stupid, dirty or a pest. Before finding the rehab group, I had spoken to a vet, who told me: “if you bring that here, leave it in the car park and we’ll end its life.”

The bird? Not her. Although unlikely to ever fly again , she has embraced her newly land-based life with grace in a volunteer’s spare bedroom. Each contented coo, often elicited by her favourite food, frozen peas, feels like a example in adaptability and resilience – and I am always appreciative to her for revealing to me a different facet to the city I believed I understood.