🔗 Share this article

The plane battled through wall after wall of icy precipitation on its descent into the city. A growing unease had accompanied me during the flight, intensifying as I walked through the airport. I resented coming back to the place where I had spent my youth, after living on the other side of the world for what had felt like a an eternity.

After a few days, I went out to get a haircut. My thoughts was miles away, back across an vast expanse of water, when I was startled by something smack into the sidewalk. I glanced down to see a rock dove on its back, splayed out, and convulsing.

The impact occurred just as children were emerging from the local primary school and so within moments a group of children had assembled, surrounded by their mothers and fathers. This circle of bemused faces looked down at the pigeon, unsure what to do or say. The kids were more certain: “Dad, she needs help, can we call an emergency service?” I took off my anorak, bent down and picked up the pigeon inside it. “Don’t worry, love, the nice man will look after her!” exclaimed one parent with a sigh of relief. I had turned into the rescue vehicle for this pigeon that had just landed abruptly, unintentionally, as I had a few days before.

I made my way home, arms held out, with the bird tucked safely inside the jacket.

Unbeknownst to me that my spontaneous decision to rescue Belinda (the name I bestowed upon my new friend) would guide me to a web of city dwellers sacrificing significant amounts of time to provide not only rescue services for street birds but diagnostic imaging, respite care, and even “pigeon physio”.

I found a small container for Belinda, lined it with an old shirt, and put her inside. Every short while, I’d peek inside just long enough for us to make brief contact.

Those moments of common bewilderment marked my desperate search for what to do after that. I contacted friends for guidance and one recommended trying online groups, where, to my surprise, I found a bird rehabilitation group, and submitted a request to join.

An Anarchic Model

With a large membership, the group has an organic method: someone in Manchester stumbles across an ailing pigeon, a pleading post is published, then a comment section “evaluation” takes place. If the bird is judged in need of an examination, someone with a veterinary contact can organize it; if it needs rehabilitation, a “rehabber” will volunteer to foster the bird.

Carers each have their own highly developed expertise, whether it’s mending broken wings or dressing wounds. Their tremendous, collective effort for the pigeons of the city depends completely on goodwill.

Belinda was rapidly diagnosed with a neurological issue, likely a concussion, and placed with a rehabber who would provide comfort and a course of patient physio. We never discovered exactly what made her to fall from the sky. I assumed the role of pigeon ambulance once more, boarding the tram across the city with Belinda in a shoebox on my lap so she could get the care she deserved.

A New Perspective

After finding this secret pigeon “NHS”, I began to feel much better about being back in my city. I doubt any of the places I had called home while away could boast anything even close. It also dawned on me that this was not the first time I’d been involved in a pigeon aid mission: almost 20 years earlier I’d witnessed one fall from the sky into the playground of my high school. Again, children surrounded the bird, but only one – my closest friend at the time – had the nerve to pick it up and take it to security.

The aforementioned friend has since died – one of four friends to lose their lives in the years before my leaving from Manchester. I came to see that this had been a significant factor of what had made the return so painful.

A History of Comfort

Pigeons have a tradition as “companion” animals, especially in the north of England. Workers started to care for the birds because they gave them comfort and an opportunity to look up at the sky between long shifts of underground work. During the hard times, workers on the dole also found comfort in pigeons, but keeping them was seen as a sign of “idleness”.

Nowadays, pigeons are often disparaged as simple, unclean or a pest. Before finding the rehab group, I had contacted a vet, who told me: “if you bring the bird here, leave that in the parking lot and we’ll end its life.”

It? Not her. Although improbable to ever soar , she has embraced her newly land-based life with success in a volunteer’s extra room. Each happy coo, often caused by her favourite treat, peas, feels like a lesson in resilience and fortitude – and I am eternally thankful to her for showing me another side to the city I believed I understood.