🔗 Share this article

The plane forced its way through successive sheets of sleet during the approach into the city. A sinking feeling had accompanied me during the journey, growing stronger as I made my way through the terminal. I felt bitter over returning to the town where I had spent my youth, after making a home on the opposite end of the world for what had felt like a an eternity.

After a short while, I went out to get a trim. My mind was miles away, focused on an ocean, when I was startled by something hit the sidewalk. I gazed down to see a bird on its side, splayed out, and trembling.

The fall took place just as children were emerging from the local elementary school and so within a short time a group of little ones had gathered, accompanied by their parents. This circle of confused faces peered down at the bird, unsure what to think or act. The kids were more certain: “Dad, she needs help, can we call an emergency service?” I removed my anorak, bent down and gently lifted the pigeon into it. “No problem, love, the gentleman will take care of her!” exclaimed one parent with a sigh of relief. I had turned into the ambulance for this pigeon that had just come down hard, against its will, as I had a short time earlier.

I walked slowly home, arms ramrod straight, with the bird nestled inside the garment.

Unbeknownst to me that my impromptu decision to rescue the bird (the name I chose for my patient) would guide me to a community of city dwellers devoting significant amounts of effort to provide not only rescue services for feral pigeons but diagnostic imaging, convalescence, and even “avian physiotherapy”.

I retrieved a shoebox for Belinda, placed inside it with an old piece of cloth, and put her inside. Every 20 minutes or so, I’d open the box just long enough for us to awkwardly lock eyes.

Those periods of shared bewilderment punctuated my desperate search for what to do next. I contacted friends for suggestions and one proposed trying online groups, where, to my surprise, I stumbled upon a local pigeon rescue group, and submitted a request to participate.

An Anarchic Model

Over 3,000-strong, the group has an anarchic method: someone in Manchester stumbles across an ailing pigeon, a urgent post is made, then a comment section “assessment” follows. If the bird is judged in need of an scan, someone with a vet link can arrange it; if it needs therapy, a “rehabber” will offer to foster the bird.

Volunteers each have their own finely honed 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 rapidly assessed with a neurological issue, likely a blow to the head, and placed with a rehabber who would provide pain relief and a course of gentle physio. We never found out exactly what made her to plummet. I took up the role of bird taxi once more, taking the light rail across the city with Belinda in a container on my lap so she could receive the care she required.

An Unexpected Lesson

After finding this underground pigeon “NHS”, I began to feel much differently about being back in my home town. I question any of the places I had resided in while away could have anything even close. It also dawned on me that this was not the first time I’d been connected to a pigeon rescue: almost 20 years earlier I’d seen one plummet from the sky into the schoolyard of my high school. Again, children surrounded the bird, but only one – my best friend at the time – had the gall to pick it up and take it to safety.

The friend in question has since died – one of a number of companions 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 coming back so difficult.

Pigeons as Companions

Pigeons have a longstanding role as “therapy” animals, especially in the certain regions. Workers started to care for the birds because they gave them comfort and an excuse to look up at the sky between long shifts of subterranean gloom. During the economic downturn, workers on the assistance also found comfort in pigeons, but keeping them was seen as a sign of “social malaise”.

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

It? Not her. Although improbable to ever soar , she has taken to her newly earthbound life with grace in a volunteer’s extra room. Each contented call, often caused by her favourite snack, frozen peas, feels like a demonstration in perseverance and resilience – and I am eternally thankful to her for showing me another side to the city I thought I knew.