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The plane battled through successive sheets of freezing rain during the approach into its destination. A sense of dread had accompanied me during the flight, only deepening as I shuffled through the airport. I was unhappy about coming back to the city where I had spent my youth, after making a home on the opposite end of the world for what had felt like a an eternity.

After a short while, I ventured out to get a haircut. My mind was miles away, lingering over an vast expanse of water, when I heard something smack into the sidewalk. I looked down to see a pigeon on its side, splayed out, and trembling.

The crash happened just as children were emerging from the local primary school and so within a short time a small chorus of little ones had assembled, flanked by their mums and dads. This ring of puzzled faces peered down at the creature, not knowing what to do or say. The kids were more definitive: “Daddy, she needs a vet, can we call an animal ambulance?” I took off my anorak, knelt down and scooped the pigeon into it. “It’s okay, love, the kind man will help her!” remarked one mother with a sense of relief. I had turned into the emergency transport for this pigeon that had just come down hard, involuntarily, as I had a few days before.

I made my way home, arms stiffly extended, with the bird nestled inside the coat.

Unbeknownst to me that my on-the-spot decision to medivac Belinda (the name I chose for my patient) would lead me to a web of local residents giving up significant amounts of time to provide not only ambulances for feral pigeons but X-rays, recovery care, and even “avian physiotherapy”.

I found a shoebox for Belinda, placed inside it with an old piece of cloth, and put her inside. Every 20 minutes or so, I’d peek inside just long enough for us to awkwardly lock eyes.

Those moments of shared confusion marked my hectic search for what to do after that. I called friends for guidance and one recommended trying online groups, where, to my surprise, I discovered a Manchester Pigeon Rehab group, and sent a request to participate.

A Grassroots Network

Over 3,000-strong, the group has an organic method: someone in Manchester finds an hurt pigeon, a pleading post is created, then a comment section “evaluation” takes place. If the bird is judged in need of an examination, someone with a veterinary contact can get it one; if it needs physio, a “rehabber” will volunteer to look after the bird.

Carers each have their own highly developed skills, whether it’s setting broken wings or treating wounds. Their momentous, combined effort for the pigeons of the city runs entirely on kindness.

Belinda was quickly assessed with neurological problems, likely a concussion, and placed with a rehabber who would administer pain relief and a regimen of patient physio. We never found out exactly what caused her to fall from the sky. I assumed the role of bird taxi once more, riding the light rail across the city with Belinda in a shoebox on my lap so she could get the care she needed.

Rediscovering Home

After stumbling across this underground pigeon “support system”, I began to feel much better about being back in my hometown. I question any of the places I had resided in while away could have anything even close. It also dawned on me that this was not the first time I’d been part of a pigeon rescue: almost 20 years earlier I’d observed one fall from the sky into the grounds of my secondary school. Again, children surrounded the bird, but only one – my best friend at the time – had the nerve to rescue it and take it to safety.

The aforementioned friend has since been lost – one of several friends to lose their lives in the years before my exit from Manchester. I realised that this had been a major reason of what had made the return so hard.

A History of Comfort

Pigeons have a tradition as “companion” animals, especially in the north of England. Miners started to keep the birds because they gave them solace and an opportunity to look up at the heavens between long shifts of subterranean gloom. During the Depression, workers on the unemployment also found solace in pigeons, but keeping them was seen as a sign of “despair”.

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

That? Not this bird. Although improbable to ever take to the skies , she has adapted to her newly earthbound life with grace in a volunteer’s extra room. Each contented call, often caused by her favourite treat, frozen peas, feels like a example in perseverance and fortitude – and I am always appreciative to her for showing me a different facet to the city I thought I knew.