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T forced its way through layer after layer of freezing rain on its descent into the city. A sinking feeling settled over me during the journey, intensifying as I shuffled through the airport. I was unhappy about coming back to the city where I had spent my youth, after living on the opposite end of the world for what had felt like a lifetime.

After a few days, I went out to get a trim. My mind was distant, focused on an vast expanse of water, when I was startled by something strike the pavement. I glanced down to see a bird on its side, sprawled, and convulsing.

The fall happened just as children were filing out from the local elementary school and so within a short time a little crowd of children had assembled, accompanied by their parents. This circle of confused faces stared down at the pigeon, uncertain what to do or say. The kids were more certain: “Daddy, she needs a vet, can we call an ambulance?” I slipped off my coat, crouched down and scooped the pigeon up into it. “No problem, dear, the kind man will help her!” said one mum with a sense of relief. I had been transformed into the rescue vehicle for this pigeon that had just fallen suddenly, unintentionally, as I had a short time earlier.

I trudged home, arms stiffly extended, with the bird curled up inside the jacket.

Little did I know that my spontaneous decision to aid my feathered charge (the name I gave my patient) would guide me to a community of Mancunians giving up significant amounts of time to provide not only rescue services for street birds but diagnostic imaging, recovery care, and even “pigeon physio”.

I found a shoebox for Belinda, lined it with an old shirt, and put her inside. Every half hour or so, I’d open the box just long enough for us to make brief contact.

Those moments of mutual bewilderment interrupted my frantic search for what to do after that. I called friends for suggestions and one proposed trying online groups, where, to my amazement, I stumbled upon a local pigeon rescue group, and sent a request to join.

A Community Effort

With a large membership, the group follows an anarchic model: someone in Manchester finds an ailing pigeon, a heartfelt post is created, then a comment section “assessment” ensues. If the bird is deemed in need of an scan, someone with a veterinary contact can arrange it; if it needs physio, a “carer” will volunteer to foster the bird.

Volunteers each have their own highly developed specialities, whether it’s setting broken wings or cleaning wounds. Their tremendous, combined effort for the pigeons of the city runs entirely on volunteerism.

Belinda was promptly assessed with neurological problems, likely a blow to the head, and placed with a rehabber who would administer comfort and a course of careful physio. We never discovered exactly what made her to fall from the sky. I resumed the role of pigeon ambulance once more, taking the light rail across the city with Belinda in a shoebox on my lap so she could receive the care she needed.

A New Perspective

After stumbling across this underground pigeon “NHS”, I began to feel much better about being back in my home town. I doubt any of the places I had called home while away could have anything comparable. 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 observed one plummet from the sky into the schoolyard of my secondary school. Again, children circled the bird, but only one – my closest friend at the time – had the courage to rescue it and take it to a safe place.

The individual has since been lost – one of several friends to die in the years before my leaving from Manchester. I realised that this had been a big part of what had made coming back so difficult.

Feathered Support

Pigeons have a longstanding role as “therapy” animals, especially in the certain regions. Miners started to keep the birds because they gave them comfort and an opportunity to gaze up at the heavens between long shifts of subterranean gloom. During the Depression, workers on the dole also found solace in pigeons, but keeping them was seen as a sign of “despair”.

Nowadays, pigeons are often dismissed as simple, unclean or a annoyance. Before finding the rehab group, I had called a veterinarian, who told me: “if you bring that here, leave that in the car park and we’ll put it down.”

That? Not our Belinda. Although unlikely to ever soar , she has taken to her newly land-based life with aplomb in a volunteer’s home. Each contented call, often caused by her favourite snack, frozen peas, feels like a example in resilience and fortitude – and I am always appreciative to her for revealing to me a different facet to the city I thought I knew.