🔗 Share this article

The plane forced its way through successive sheets of sleet during the approach into its destination. A growing unease had accompanied me during the flight, only deepening as I walked through the arrivals hall. I was unhappy about returning to the city where I had spent my youth, after residing on the other side of the world for what had felt like a an eternity.

After a short while, I headed out to get a my hair cut. My attention was distant, back across an vast expanse of water, when I became aware of something smack into the ground. I gazed down to see a rock dove on its side, splayed out, and trembling.

The crash happened just as schoolchildren were emerging from the local primary school and so within moments a small chorus of youngsters had formed, accompanied by their mums and dads. This ring of puzzled faces looked down at the creature, unsure what to think or act. The kids were more decisive: “Daddy, she needs hospital, can we call an animal ambulance?” I slipped off my anorak, knelt down and gently lifted the pigeon up into it. “No problem, love, the gentleman will help her!” said one parent with a sigh of relief. I had turned into the ambulance for this pigeon that had just landed abruptly, against its will, as I had a short time earlier.

I made my way home, arms held out, with the bird nestled inside the jacket.

Unbeknownst to me that my on-the-spot decision to medivac Belinda (the name I gave my new friend) would direct me to a community of city dwellers giving up significant amounts of their time to provide not only rescue services for street birds but diagnostic imaging, respite care, and even “bird rehabilitation”.

I located a small container for Belinda, placed inside it with an old T-shirt, and put her inside. Every half hour or so, I’d lift the lid just long enough for us to awkwardly lock eyes.

Those moments of mutual bewilderment punctuated my frantic search for what to do after that. I called friends for suggestions and one recommended trying Facebook, where, to my amazement, I discovered a bird rehabilitation group, and put in a request to participate.

A Community Effort

Over 3,000-strong, the group operates on an organic model: someone in Manchester stumbles across an ailing pigeon, a pleading post is created, then a comment section “assessment” takes place. If the bird is deemed in need of an examination, someone with a connection to a clinic can get it one; if it needs rehabilitation, a “rehabber” will offer to foster the bird.

Carers each have their own carefully cultivated expertise, whether it’s repairing broken wings or treating wounds. Their tremendous, cooperative effort for the pigeons of the city runs entirely on volunteerism.

Belinda was rapidly assessed with a neurological issue, likely a head injury, and matched with a rehabber who would administer comfort and a course of patient physio. We never learned exactly what caused her to fall from the sky. I took up the role of bird taxi once more, boarding the light rail across the city with Belinda in a box on my lap so she could get the care she required.

An Unexpected Lesson

After stumbling across this underground pigeon “health service”, I began to feel much more positive about being back in my home town. I question any of the places I had called home while away could boast anything remotely similar. It also dawned on me that this was not the first time I’d been connected to a pigeon recovery: almost 20 years earlier I’d observed one plummet from the sky into the schoolyard of my high school. Again, children circled the bird, but only one – my friend at the time – had the courage to pick it up and take it to a safe place.

The individual has since died – one of several friends to lose their lives in the years before my exit from Manchester. I understood that this had been a big part of what had made returning home so painful.

Feathered Support

Pigeons have a tradition as “companion” animals, especially in the north of England. Laborers started to raise the birds because they gave them company and an excuse to gaze up at the open air between long shifts of darkness below. During the hard times, workers on the unemployment also found comfort in pigeons, but keeping them was considered a sign of “idleness”.

Nowadays, pigeons are often written off as simple, diseased or a annoyance. Before finding the rehab group, I had contacted a veterinarian, who told me: “if you bring it here, leave it in the car park and we’ll end its life.”

That? Not this bird. Although not expected to ever soar , she has embraced her newly earthbound life with aplomb in a volunteer’s extra room. Each contented coo, often caused by her favourite food, vegetables, feels like a lesson in adaptability and resilience – and I am eternally thankful to her for unveiling for me another side to the city I thought I knew.