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Our aircraft forced its way through successive sheets of sleet as it landed into the city. A sinking feeling settled over me during the trip, intensifying as I made my way through the terminal. I resented coming back to the city where I had been raised, after residing on the opposite end of the world for what had felt like a an eternity.

After a few days, I ventured out to get a trim. My mind was miles away, back across an ocean, when I became aware of something smack into the sidewalk. I gazed down to see a bird on its back, spatchcocked, and trembling.

The impact took place just as children were filing out from the local grade school and so within minutes a small chorus of children had gathered, accompanied by their mothers and fathers. This ring of bemused faces stared down at the pigeon, uncertain what to do or say. The kids were more decisive: “Papa, she needs a vet, can we call an animal ambulance?” I removed my coat, crouched down and gently lifted the pigeon up into it. “It’s okay, sweet, the gentleman will help her!” exclaimed one mum with a audible relief. I had been transformed into the rescue vehicle for this pigeon that had just come down hard, against its will, as I had a couple of days prior.

I trudged home, arms stiffly extended, with the bird nestled inside the jacket.

Unbeknownst to me that my on-the-spot decision to medivac the bird (the name I chose for my avian patient) would guide me to a community of local residents sacrificing significant amounts of effort to provide not only transport for street birds but X-rays, respite care, and even “avian physiotherapy”.

I located a cardboard box for Belinda, placed inside it with an old shirt, and put her inside. Every 20 minutes or so, I’d open the box just long enough for us to make brief contact.

Those moments of common confusion punctuated my desperate search for what to do next. I contacted friends for advice and one proposed trying Facebook, where, to my astonishment, I discovered a Manchester Pigeon Rehab group, and submitted a request to participate.

A Grassroots Network

Boasting thousands of members, the group has an anarchic system: someone in Manchester finds an hurt pigeon, a pleading post is created, then a comment section “triage” takes place. If the bird is judged in need of an examination, someone with a connection to a clinic can organize it; if it needs therapy, a “carer” will volunteer to care for the bird.

Rehabbers each have their own highly developed specialities, whether it’s setting broken wings or cleaning wounds. Their significant, cooperative effort for the pigeons of the city is powered solely by goodwill.

Belinda was rapidly assessed with neurological problems, likely a blow to the head, and placed with a rehabber who would provide pain relief and a course of careful physio. We never learned exactly what caused her to fall from the sky. I resumed the role of avian courier once more, boarding the streetcar across the city with Belinda in a container on my lap so she could obtain the attention she needed.

An Unexpected Lesson

After finding this underground pigeon “health service”, I began to feel much differently about being back in my city. I am skeptical any of the places I had called home while away could boast anything even close. It also struck me that this was not the first time I’d been part of a pigeon recovery: almost 20 years earlier I’d witnessed one drop from the sky into the schoolyard of my high school. Again, children circled the bird, but only one – my best friend at the time – had the courage to pick it up and take it to security.

The friend in question has since been lost – one of a number of companions to lose their lives in the years before my leaving from Manchester. I realised that this had been a major reason of what had made coming back so hard.

Feathered Support

Pigeons have a longstanding role as “emotional support” animals, especially in the North. Laborers started to keep the birds because they gave them comfort and an excuse to look up at the open air between long shifts of underground work. During the economic downturn, workers on the unemployment also found comfort in pigeons, but keeping them was viewed as a sign of “social malaise”.

Nowadays, pigeons are often dismissed as unintelligent, unclean or a annoyance. Before finding the rehab group, I had called a vet, who told me: “if you bring that here, leave that in the car park and we’ll put it down.”

It? Not this bird. Although unlikely to ever take to the skies , she has embraced her newly grounded life with success in a volunteer’s extra room. Each happy sound, often caused by her favourite food, vegetables, feels like a lesson in perseverance and resilience – and I am always appreciative to her for revealing to me a new dimension to the city I believed I understood.