🔗 Share this article

The plane battled through layer after layer of icy precipitation during the approach into the city. A sense of dread settled over me during the journey, only deepening as I walked through the airport. I was unhappy about coming back to the place where I had spent my youth, after residing on the far side of the world for what had felt like a an age.

After a couple of days, I headed out to get a my hair cut. My mind was far away, lingering over an sea, when I heard something smack into the sidewalk. I glanced down to see a pigeon on its side, sprawled, and twitching.

The impact happened just as kids were streaming out from the local elementary school and so within a short time a little crowd of youngsters had assembled, accompanied by their mothers and fathers. This circle of puzzled faces looked down at the bird, uncertain what to think or act. The kids were more definitive: “Daddy, she needs a vet, can we call an animal ambulance?” I slipped off my anorak, knelt down and gently lifted the pigeon into it. “It’s okay, dear, the gentleman will look after her!” said one mother with a audible relief. I had turned into the ambulance for this pigeon that had just landed abruptly, unintentionally, as I had a few days before.

I walked slowly home, arms stiffly extended, with the bird tucked safely inside the garment.

Little did I know that my on-the-spot decision to medivac Belinda (the name I bestowed upon my avian patient) would guide me to a community of city dwellers giving up significant amounts of their time to provide not only transport for city pigeons but X-rays, recovery care, and even “bird rehabilitation”.

I found a small container for Belinda, placed inside it with an old T-shirt, and put her inside. Every half hour or so, I’d open the box just long enough for us to share a momentary glance.

Those instances of shared bewilderment marked my desperate search for what to do after that. I contacted friends for advice and one proposed trying Facebook, where, to my amazement, I stumbled upon a bird rehabilitation group, and submitted a request to participate.

An Anarchic Model

With a large membership, the group follows an decentralized model: someone in Manchester stumbles across an ailing pigeon, a heartfelt post is published, then a comment section “evaluation” ensues. If the bird is judged in need of an examination, someone with a connection to a clinic can arrange it; if it needs therapy, a “rehabilitator” will step forward to care for the bird.

Rehabbers each have their own highly developed specialities, whether it’s setting broken wings or dressing wounds. Their significant, collective effort for the pigeons of the city runs entirely on goodwill.

Belinda was quickly diagnosed with neurological problems, likely a head injury, and placed with a rehabber who would give pain relief and a program of patient physio. We never found out exactly what caused her to plummet. I resumed the role of bird taxi once more, riding the tram across the city with Belinda in a box on my lap so she could obtain the treatment she deserved.

Rediscovering Home

After finding this hidden pigeon “NHS”, I began to feel much differently about being back in my home town. I doubt 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 part of a pigeon aid mission: almost 20 years earlier I’d witnessed one drop from the sky into the schoolyard of my secondary school. Again, children circled the bird, but only one – my best friend at the time – had the nerve to pick it up and take it to safety.

The friend in question has since died – one of a number of companions to die in the years before my exit from Manchester. I came to see that this had been a major reason of what had made coming back so difficult.

Pigeons as Companions

Pigeons have a longstanding role as “therapy” animals, especially in the north of England. Miners started to raise the birds because they gave them comfort and an reason to look up at the open air between long shifts of darkness below. During the economic downturn, workers on the unemployment also found a distraction in pigeons, but keeping them was considered a sign of “social malaise”.

Nowadays, pigeons are often written off as simple, diseased or a pest. Before finding the rehab group, I had called a vet, who told me: “if you bring it here, leave it in the parking lot and we’ll euthanise it.”

The bird? Not this bird. Although not expected to ever take to the skies , she has taken to her newly earthbound life with grace in a volunteer’s extra room. Each satisfied coo, often caused by her favourite treat, frozen peas, feels like a example in perseverance and resilience – and I am forever grateful to her for unveiling for me another side to the city I believed I understood.