🔗 Share this article

T pushed through successive sheets of freezing rain as it landed into the city. A sense of dread had accompanied me during the journey, only deepening as I walked through the airport. I felt bitter over having to be the city where I had grown up, after living on the opposite end of the world for what had felt like a an eternity.

After a couple of days, I went out to get a haircut. My thoughts was miles away, back across an ocean, when I heard something strike the sidewalk. I glanced down to see a pigeon on its back, splayed out, and twitching.

The crash happened just as children were filing out from the local elementary school and so within minutes a little crowd of children had assembled, surrounded by their parents. This circle of confused faces stared down at the pigeon, uncertain what to think or act. The kids were more certain: “Papa, she needs hospital, can we call an animal ambulance?” I slipped off my anorak, knelt down and picked up the pigeon inside it. “Don’t worry, dear, the kind man will take care of her!” remarked one mother with a sense of relief. I had been transformed into the rescue vehicle for this pigeon that had just come down hard, involuntarily, as I had a short time earlier.

I trudged home, arms held out, with the bird curled up inside the jacket.

Unbeknownst to me that my spontaneous decision to rescue the bird (the name I bestowed upon my new friend) would direct me to a web of local residents giving up significant amounts of effort to provide not only rescue services for feral pigeons but X-rays, recovery care, and even “bird rehabilitation”.

I retrieved a cardboard box for Belinda, lined it with an old piece of cloth, and put her inside. Every 20 minutes or so, I’d lift the lid just long enough for us to share a momentary glance.

Those moments of common bewilderment punctuated my hectic search for what to do from there. I phoned friends for advice and one recommended trying Facebook, where, to my amazement, I found a Manchester Pigeon Rehab group, and put in a request to join.

A Grassroots Network

Boasting thousands of members, the group has an decentralized method: someone in Manchester stumbles across an hurt pigeon, a pleading post is published, then a comment section “assessment” ensues. If the bird is considered in need of an scan, someone with a vet link can arrange it; if it needs physio, a “rehabber” will offer to look after the bird.

Rehabbers each have their own highly developed expertise, whether it’s repairing broken wings or treating wounds. Their momentous, collective effort for the pigeons of the city depends completely on goodwill.

Belinda was quickly assessed with brain trauma, likely a head injury, and assigned to a rehabber who would provide pain relief and a program of patient physio. We never learned exactly what caused her to fall from the sky. I assumed the role of pigeon ambulance once more, taking the streetcar across the city with Belinda in a box on my lap so she could obtain the care she deserved.

Rediscovering Home

After stumbling across this underground pigeon “health service”, I began to feel much more positive about being back in my hometown. I question any of the places I had called home while away could have anything comparable. It also dawned on me that this was not the first time I’d been part of a pigeon rescue: almost 20 years earlier I’d seen one fall from the sky into the playground of my high school. Again, children gathered around the bird, but only one – my best friend at the time – had the gall to scoop it up and take it to safety.

The aforementioned friend has since been lost – one of a number of companions to die in the years before my departure from Manchester. I realised that this had been a significant factor of what had made the return so hard.

Feathered Support

Pigeons have a history as “emotional support” animals, especially in the north of England. Laborers started to keep the birds because they gave them solace and an opportunity to look up at the sky between long shifts of underground work. During the Depression, workers on the unemployment also found comfort in pigeons, but keeping them was viewed as a sign of “despair”.

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

It? Not our Belinda. Although improbable to ever soar , she has adapted to her newly grounded life with success in a volunteer’s home. Each contented sound, often caused by her favourite food, peas, feels like a example in resilience and resilience – and I am eternally thankful to her for unveiling for me a different facet to the city I was familiar with.