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Our aircraft pushed through layer after layer of sleet during the approach into Manchester. A sinking feeling filled me during the journey, only deepening as I walked through the airport. I was unhappy about having to be the city where I had been raised, after residing on the other side of the world for what had felt like a an age.

After a short while, I headed out to get a haircut. My thoughts was far away, back across an ocean, when I became aware of something hit the sidewalk. I looked down to see a rock dove on its wings, sprawled, and twitching.

The crash took place just as children were emerging from the local grade school and so within moments a group of youngsters had gathered, accompanied by their mothers and fathers. This ring of puzzled 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 ambulance?” I took off my jacket, crouched down and gently lifted the pigeon up into it. “No problem, dear, the kind man will help her!” said one mum 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 few days before.

I made my way home, arms stiffly extended, with the bird nestled inside the coat.

Little did I know that my on-the-spot decision to aid my feathered charge (the name I bestowed upon my new friend) would lead me to a community of local residents devoting significant amounts of effort to provide not only rescue services for street birds but X-rays, convalescence, and even “avian physiotherapy”.

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

Those instances of shared bewilderment interrupted my desperate search for what to do after that. I called friends for advice and one suggested trying Facebook, where, to my amazement, I discovered a bird rehabilitation group, and submitted a request to participate.

An Anarchic Model

With a large membership, the group follows an organic system: someone in Manchester stumbles across an hurt pigeon, a urgent post is created, then a comment section “triage” takes place. If the bird is considered in need of an X-ray, someone with a veterinary contact can arrange it; if it needs rehabilitation, a “rehabber” will offer to foster the bird.

Rehabbers each have their own carefully cultivated expertise, whether it’s repairing broken wings or cleaning wounds. Their tremendous, combined effort for the pigeons of the city depends completely on goodwill.

Belinda was promptly assessed with a neurological issue, likely a concussion, and placed with a rehabber who would administer comfort and a program of patient physio. We never found out exactly what made her to plummet. I resumed the role of bird taxi once more, boarding the streetcar across the city with Belinda in a container on my lap so she could obtain the attention she required.

A New Perspective

After discovering this underground pigeon “NHS”, I began to feel much better about being back in my city. I question any of the places I had lived in while away could have anything even close. It also occurred to me that this was not the first time I’d been connected to a pigeon rescue: almost 20 years earlier I’d witnessed one drop from the sky into the grounds of my old school. Again, children surrounded the bird, but only one – my best friend at the time – had the nerve to rescue it and take it to safety.

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

Pigeons as Companions

Pigeons have a history as “emotional support” animals, especially in the North. Miners started to raise the birds because they gave them comfort and an reason to gaze up at the sky between long shifts of darkness below. During the Depression, workers on the dole also found a distraction in pigeons, but keeping them was seen as a sign of “social malaise”.

Nowadays, pigeons are often dismissed 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 it in the lot and we’ll euthanise it.”

The bird? Not this bird. Although improbable to ever soar , she has embraced her newly grounded life with aplomb in a volunteer’s extra room. Each happy call, often prompted by her favourite food, peas, feels like a example in resilience and fortitude – and I am eternally thankful to her for revealing to me another side to the city I believed I understood.