🔗 Share this article

Our aircraft forced its way through layer after layer of sleet during the approach into its destination. A sinking feeling had accompanied me during the trip, only deepening as I walked through the arrivals hall. I was unhappy about having to be the town where I had been raised, after residing on the other side of the world for what had felt like a lifetime.

After a couple of days, I ventured out to get a haircut. My mind was distant, lingering over an sea, when I heard something hit the pavement. I gazed down to see a bird on its back, spatchcocked, and trembling.

The crash happened just as kids were emerging from the local grade school and so within a short time a group of children had gathered, accompanied by their mums and dads. This ring of puzzled faces peered down at the creature, unsure what to say or do. The kids were more certain: “Daddy, she needs hospital, can we call an ambulance?” I took off my coat, crouched down and picked up the pigeon up into it. “Don’t worry, dear, the gentleman will help her!” remarked one parent with a audible relief. I had been transformed into the emergency transport for this pigeon that had just fallen suddenly, unintentionally, as I had a couple of days prior.

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

Unbeknownst to me that my on-the-spot decision to rescue Belinda (the name I chose for my avian patient) would direct me to a network of Mancunians giving up significant amounts of their time to provide not only rescue services for street birds but diagnostic imaging, convalescence, and even “avian physiotherapy”.

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 open the box just long enough for us to awkwardly lock eyes.

Those moments of common perplexity interrupted my frantic search for what to do from there. I phoned friends for guidance and one suggested trying Facebook, where, to my amazement, I found a Manchester Pigeon Rehab group, and sent a request to join.

A Community Effort

Boasting thousands of members, the group operates on an organic system: someone in Manchester finds an injured pigeon, a urgent post is created, then a comment section “assessment” takes place. If the bird is judged in need of an X-ray, someone with a veterinary contact can get it one; if it needs physio, a “rehabber” will volunteer to foster the bird.

Rehabbers each have their own highly developed expertise, whether it’s mending broken wings or treating wounds. Their significant, cooperative effort for the pigeons of the city runs entirely on volunteerism.

Belinda was quickly diagnosed with brain trauma, likely a head injury, and assigned to a rehabber who would give medication and a program of careful physio. We never learned exactly what caused her to plummet. I assumed the role of bird taxi once more, taking the tram across the city with Belinda in a shoebox on my lap so she could get the attention she required.

Rediscovering Home

After discovering this underground pigeon “NHS”, I began to feel much differently about being back in my city. I doubt any of the places I had resided in while away could have anything remotely similar. It also struck me that this was not the first time I’d been involved in a pigeon aid mission: almost 20 years earlier I’d seen one plummet from the sky into the playground of my high school. Again, children circled the bird, but only one – my closest friend at the time – had the nerve to scoop it up and take it to a safe place.

The individual has since been lost – one of a number of companions to lose their lives in the years before my exit from Manchester. I understood that this had been a significant factor of what had made returning home so painful.

A History of Comfort

Pigeons have a longstanding role as “companion” animals, especially in the north of England. Miners started to care for the birds because they gave them company and an excuse to stare at the heavens between long shifts of underground work. During the hard times, workers on the assistance also found comfort in pigeons, but keeping them was viewed as a sign of “social malaise”.

Nowadays, pigeons are often written off as unintelligent, unclean or a pest. Before finding the rehab group, I had called a animal doctor, who told me: “if you bring that here, leave it in the lot and we’ll end its life.”

It? Not this bird. Although not expected to ever take to the skies , she has embraced her newly land-based life with grace in a volunteer’s extra room. Each contented sound, often elicited by her favourite treat, frozen peas, feels like a lesson in perseverance and strength – and I am eternally thankful to her for revealing to me another side to the city I thought I knew.