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Our aircraft forced its way through wall after wall of freezing rain on its descent into the city. A sinking feeling had accompanied me during the journey, growing stronger as I shuffled through the terminal. I resented returning to the town where I had grown up, after residing on the opposite end of the world for what had felt like a lifetime.

After a couple of days, I headed out to get a haircut. My thoughts was far away, back across an vast expanse of water, when I was startled by something hit the pavement. I gazed down to see a pigeon on its back, spatchcocked, and trembling.

The crash occurred just as kids were emerging from the local grade school and so within moments a little crowd of youngsters had gathered, accompanied by their mums and dads. This circle of confused faces looked down at the pigeon, unsure what to say or do. The kids were more decisive: “Daddy, she needs hospital, can we call an emergency service?” I slipped off my coat, knelt down and picked up the pigeon up into it. “It’s okay, sweet, the gentleman will take care of her!” remarked one mother with a sense of relief. I had been transformed into the emergency transport for this pigeon that had just fallen suddenly, involuntarily, as I had a few days before.

I trudged home, arms ramrod straight, with the bird tucked safely inside the coat.

Little did I know that my impromptu decision to medivac Belinda (the name I gave my avian patient) would guide me to a web of city dwellers sacrificing significant amounts of effort to provide not only transport for street birds but X-rays, respite care, and even “pigeon physio”.

I retrieved a cardboard box for Belinda, prepared it with an old shirt, and put her inside. Every half hour or so, I’d lift the lid just long enough for us to share a momentary glance.

Those periods of mutual confusion marked my hectic search for what to do after that. I phoned friends for guidance and one recommended trying social media, where, to my amazement, I stumbled upon a Manchester Pigeon Rehab group, and sent a request to participate.

A Community Effort

With a large membership, the group has an organic method: someone in Manchester discovers 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 veterinary contact can arrange it; if it needs therapy, a “rehabber” will offer to care for the bird.

Rehabbers each have their own carefully cultivated expertise, whether it’s mending broken wings or dressing wounds. Their momentous, combined effort for the pigeons of the city runs entirely on volunteerism.

Belinda was rapidly assessed with brain trauma, likely a blow to the head, and placed with a rehabber who would administer medication and a program of gentle physio. We never discovered exactly what caused her to plummet. I assumed the role of avian courier once more, boarding the tram across the city with Belinda in a box on my lap so she could get the attention she required.

Rediscovering Home

After stumbling across this hidden pigeon “NHS”, I began to feel much more positive about being back in my hometown. I doubt any of the places I had called home while away could have anything even close. It also occurred to me that this was not the first time I’d been involved in a pigeon rescue: almost 20 years earlier I’d seen one drop from the sky into the playground of my secondary school. Again, children gathered around the bird, but only one – my closest friend at the time – had the nerve to rescue it and take it to security.

The individual has since been lost – one of four friends to pass away in the years before my departure from Manchester. I understood that this had been a major reason of what had made the return so painful.

Pigeons as Companions

Pigeons have a tradition as “therapy” animals, especially in the North. Laborers started to keep the birds because they gave them solace and an opportunity to look up at the heavens between long shifts of darkness below. During the Depression, workers on the unemployment also found solace in pigeons, but keeping them was considered a sign of “despair”.

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 car park and we’ll put it down.”

The bird? Not her. Although not expected to ever fly again , she has taken to her newly land-based life with success in a volunteer’s spare bedroom. Each happy sound, often elicited by her favourite food, frozen peas, feels like a demonstration in perseverance and resilience – and I am forever grateful to her for showing me a new dimension to the city I was familiar with.