🔗 Share this article

The plane battled through wall after wall of freezing rain as it landed into its destination. A growing unease settled over me during the flight, intensifying as I shuffled through the airport. I was unhappy about coming back to the city where I had grown up, after residing on the other side of the world for what had felt like a an eternity.

After a few days, I ventured out to get a my hair cut. My thoughts was miles away, lingering over an sea, when I became aware of something hit the pavement. I glanced down to see a pigeon on its side, splayed out, and trembling.

The impact occurred just as schoolchildren were emerging from the local elementary school and so within a short time a small chorus of youngsters had assembled, accompanied by their mums and dads. This ring of confused faces peered down at the bird, unsure what to say or do. The kids were more certain: “Papa, she needs hospital, can we call an emergency service?” I slipped off my jacket, crouched down and gently lifted the pigeon into it. “No problem, love, the kind man will take care of her!” remarked one mum with a audible relief. I had been transformed into the emergency transport for this pigeon that had just landed abruptly, against its will, as I had a few days before.

I trudged home, arms held out, with the bird tucked safely inside the garment.

Little did I know that my on-the-spot decision to aid my feathered charge (the name I gave my patient) would direct me to a network of local residents devoting significant amounts of effort to provide not only rescue services for city pigeons but diagnostic imaging, recovery care, and even “bird rehabilitation”.

I retrieved a small container for Belinda, prepared it with an old piece of cloth, and put her inside. Every half hour or so, I’d peek inside just long enough for us to make brief contact.

Those periods of mutual confusion punctuated my frantic search for what to do from there. I phoned friends for suggestions and one proposed trying Facebook, where, to my astonishment, I found a bird rehabilitation group, and sent a request to become a member.

A Grassroots Network

Over 3,000-strong, the group follows an anarchic system: someone in Manchester finds an hurt pigeon, a urgent post is made, then a comment section “evaluation” follows. If the bird is judged in need of an X-ray, someone with a vet link can organize it; if it needs physio, a “carer” will step forward to look after the bird.

Rehabbers each have their own carefully cultivated specialities, whether it’s setting broken wings or treating wounds. Their momentous, collective effort for the pigeons of the city is powered solely by goodwill.

Belinda was rapidly assessed with brain trauma, likely a head injury, and matched with a rehabber who would give pain relief and a course of patient physio. We never discovered exactly what caused her to plummet. I took up the role of avian courier once more, taking the light rail across the city with Belinda in a box on my lap so she could obtain the attention she deserved.

An Unexpected Lesson

After stumbling across this hidden pigeon “NHS”, I began to feel much more positive about being back in my home town. I am skeptical any of the places I had resided in while away could boast anything remotely similar. It also dawned on me that this was not the first time I’d been part of a pigeon recovery: almost 20 years earlier I’d seen one plummet from the sky into the grounds of my old school. Again, children surrounded the bird, but only one – my friend at the time – had the courage to scoop it up and take it to safety.

The aforementioned friend has since passed away – one of a number of companions to die in the years before my departure from Manchester. I understood that this had been a big part of what had made returning home so difficult.

Pigeons as Companions

Pigeons have a longstanding role as “therapy” animals, especially in the north of England. Workers started to keep the birds because they gave them comfort and an opportunity to look up at the heavens between long shifts of underground work. During the hard times, workers on the unemployment also found a distraction in pigeons, but keeping them was considered a sign of “social malaise”.

Nowadays, pigeons are often disparaged as simple, dirty or a pest. Before finding the rehab group, I had spoken to a veterinarian, who told me: “if you bring it here, leave that in the car park and we’ll euthanise it.”

The bird? Not her. Although not expected to ever take to the skies , she has adapted to her newly grounded life with grace in a volunteer’s home. Each satisfied sound, often elicited by her favourite food, peas, feels like a lesson in adaptability and resilience – and I am eternally thankful to her for showing me a new dimension to the city I believed I understood.