🔗 Share this article

Our aircraft forced its way through successive sheets of sleet on its descent into the city. A growing unease filled me during the journey, only deepening as I shuffled through the airport. I felt bitter over having to be the town where I had grown up, after residing on the other side of the world for what had felt like a lifetime.

After a short while, I ventured out to get a haircut. My thoughts was far away, lingering over an vast expanse of water, when I became aware of something hit the pavement. I gazed down to see a rock dove on its side, splayed out, and trembling.

The impact took place just as schoolchildren were streaming out from the local primary school and so within moments a little crowd of children had assembled, surrounded by their parents. This ring of confused faces stared down at the creature, uncertain what to do or say. The kids were more definitive: “Daddy, she needs hospital, can we call an animal ambulance?” I took off my jacket, bent down and gently lifted the pigeon up into it. “No problem, sweet, the nice man will look after her!” remarked one mother with a sigh of relief. I had become the emergency transport for this pigeon that had just landed abruptly, against its will, as I had a couple of days prior.

I trudged home, arms ramrod straight, with the bird tucked safely inside the garment.

Little did I know that my spontaneous decision to medivac Belinda (the name I gave my avian patient) would guide me to a community of Mancunians giving up significant amounts of their time to provide not only transport for street birds but diagnostic imaging, convalescence, and even “pigeon physio”.

I located a small container for Belinda, placed inside it with an old T-shirt, and put her inside. Every short while, I’d open the box just long enough for us to awkwardly lock eyes.

Those periods of shared bewilderment punctuated my hectic search for what to do after that. I called friends for advice and one suggested trying social media, where, to my surprise, I discovered a local pigeon rescue group, and submitted a request to participate.

A Grassroots Network

With a large membership, the group follows an anarchic system: someone in Manchester discovers an ailing pigeon, a heartfelt post is made, then a comment section “evaluation” takes place. If the bird is deemed in need of an X-ray, someone with a connection to a clinic can get it one; if it needs physio, a “rehabilitator” will offer to foster the bird.

Volunteers each have their own highly developed skills, whether it’s mending broken wings or dressing wounds. Their tremendous, collective effort for the pigeons of the city is powered solely by kindness.

Belinda was promptly diagnosed with neurological problems, likely a head injury, and matched with a rehabber who would provide comfort and a program of gentle physio. We never discovered exactly what made her to plummet. I assumed the role of avian courier once more, taking the tram across the city with Belinda in a shoebox on my lap so she could get the treatment she required.

Rediscovering Home

After finding this underground pigeon “NHS”, I began to feel much more positive about being back in my hometown. I doubt any of the places I had lived in while away could claim anything comparable. It also dawned on me that this was not the first time I’d been involved in a pigeon recovery: almost 20 years earlier I’d observed one fall from the sky into the schoolyard of my secondary school. Again, children surrounded the bird, but only one – my best friend at the time – had the courage to rescue it and take it to safety.

The aforementioned friend has since passed away – one of several friends to die in the years before my departure from Manchester. I came to see that this had been a big part of what had made the return so painful.

A History of Comfort

Pigeons have a longstanding role as “emotional support” animals, especially in the North. Laborers started to keep the birds because they gave them solace and an excuse to stare at the open air between long shifts of darkness below. During the Depression, workers on the assistance also found comfort in pigeons, but keeping them was seen as a sign of “despair”.

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

It? Not this bird. Although unlikely to ever fly again , she has adapted to her newly land-based life with grace in a volunteer’s spare bedroom. Each contented coo, often caused by her favourite snack, frozen peas, feels like a demonstration in adaptability and strength – and I am always appreciative to her for showing me another side to the city I believed I understood.