🔗 Share this article

The plane pushed through wall after wall of freezing rain on its descent into the city. A sinking feeling had accompanied me during the trip, only deepening as I shuffled through the arrivals hall. I felt bitter over returning to the place where I had spent my youth, after making a home on the other side of the world for what had felt like a an age.

After a couple of days, I went out to get a my hair cut. My attention was far away, focused on an sea, when I was startled by something smack into the ground. I gazed down to see a rock dove on its wings, sprawled, and convulsing.

The crash occurred just as kids were filing out from the local elementary school and so within moments a group of children had assembled, surrounded by their parents. This ring of confused faces looked down at the creature, not knowing what to do or say. The kids were more definitive: “Dad, she needs hospital, can we call an animal ambulance?” I slipped off my jacket, knelt down and picked up the pigeon inside it. “No problem, sweet, the gentleman will take care of her!” said one parent with a sigh of relief. I had been transformed into the ambulance for this pigeon that had just come down hard, unintentionally, as I had a short time earlier.

I made my way home, arms held out, with the bird curled up inside the jacket.

Little did I know that my spontaneous decision to aid my feathered charge (the name I gave my avian patient) would direct me to a network of Mancunians giving up significant amounts of their time to provide not only transport for city pigeons but diagnostic imaging, convalescence, and even “avian physiotherapy”.

I retrieved a small container for Belinda, placed inside it with an old piece of cloth, and put her inside. Every short while, I’d open the box just long enough for us to awkwardly lock eyes.

Those instances of common perplexity punctuated my hectic search for what to do from there. I phoned friends for advice and one recommended trying online groups, where, to my amazement, I stumbled upon a local pigeon rescue group, and submitted a request to become a member.

An Anarchic Model

Boasting thousands of members, the group has an organic method: someone in Manchester discovers an hurt pigeon, a urgent post is created, then a comment section “assessment” follows. If the bird is considered in need of an examination, someone with a connection to a clinic can organize it; if it needs rehabilitation, a “rehabber” will offer to foster the bird.

Volunteers each have their own highly developed specialities, whether it’s setting broken wings or cleaning wounds. Their tremendous, cooperative effort for the pigeons of the city depends completely on volunteerism.

Belinda was quickly diagnosed with neurological problems, likely a blow to the head, and assigned to a rehabber who would give comfort and a program of patient physio. We never discovered exactly what made her to fall from the sky. I assumed the role of bird taxi once more, riding the tram across the city with Belinda in a shoebox on my lap so she could obtain the treatment she needed.

An Unexpected Lesson

After stumbling across this hidden pigeon “health service”, I began to feel much better about being back in my city. I am skeptical any of the places I had called home while away could claim anything even close. It also struck me that this was not the first time I’d been connected to a pigeon rescue: almost 20 years earlier I’d seen one drop from the sky into the grounds of my secondary school. Again, children surrounded the bird, but only one – my friend at the time – had the nerve to rescue it and take it to safety.

The individual has since been lost – one of several friends to die in the years before my exit from Manchester. I realised that this had been a big part of what had made coming back so hard.

A History of Comfort

Pigeons have a history as “therapy” animals, especially in the certain regions. Miners started to raise the birds because they gave them solace and an opportunity to look up at the sky between long shifts of darkness below. During the Depression, workers on the unemployment also found comfort in pigeons, but keeping them was seen as a sign of “social malaise”.

Nowadays, pigeons are often written off as stupid, diseased or a pest. Before finding the rehab group, I had contacted a animal doctor, who told me: “if you bring that here, leave that in the car park and we’ll end its life.”

That? Not this bird. Although unlikely to ever fly again , she has adapted to her newly earthbound life with aplomb in a volunteer’s extra room. Each happy sound, often elicited by her favourite snack, peas, feels like a demonstration in adaptability and strength – and I am always appreciative to her for unveiling for me a new dimension to the city I was familiar with.