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T battled through wall after wall of freezing rain during the approach into the city. A growing unease had accompanied me during the flight, intensifying as I walked through the airport. I was unhappy about returning to the place where I had grown up, after making a home on the opposite end of the world for what had felt like a an eternity.

After a couple of days, I headed out to get a trim. My thoughts was miles away, focused on an sea, when I was startled by something smack into the sidewalk. I looked down to see a bird on its side, sprawled, and twitching.

The fall occurred just as children were filing out from the local primary school and so within a short time a small chorus of youngsters had formed, surrounded by their mothers and fathers. This ring of bemused faces looked down at the bird, uncertain what to say or do. The kids were more certain: “Papa, she needs a vet, can we call an animal ambulance?” I removed my coat, bent down and gently lifted the pigeon into it. “It’s okay, love, the kind man will look after her!” exclaimed one mother with a audible relief. I had turned into the ambulance for this pigeon that had just landed abruptly, unintentionally, as I had a short time earlier.

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

Unbeknownst to me that my on-the-spot decision to rescue my feathered charge (the name I bestowed upon my avian patient) would guide me to a network of Mancunians sacrificing significant amounts of time to provide not only transport for feral pigeons but diagnostic imaging, recovery care, and even “bird rehabilitation”.

I located a shoebox for Belinda, lined it with an old shirt, and put her inside. Every 20 minutes or so, I’d open the box just long enough for us to make brief contact.

Those periods of shared confusion punctuated my desperate search for what to do from there. I contacted friends for advice and one proposed trying online groups, where, to my surprise, I found a Manchester Pigeon Rehab group, and put in a request to join.

A Community Effort

Over 3,000-strong, the group operates on an organic system: someone in Manchester discovers an hurt pigeon, a heartfelt post is published, then a comment section “evaluation” ensues. If the bird is considered in need of an examination, someone with a vet link can organize it; if it needs therapy, a “rehabber” will offer to care for the bird.

Volunteers each have their own highly developed expertise, whether it’s setting broken wings or cleaning wounds. Their momentous, collective effort for the pigeons of the city depends completely on volunteerism.

Belinda was rapidly diagnosed with brain trauma, likely a concussion, and matched with a rehabber who would provide comfort and a program of patient physio. We never learned exactly what caused her to drop from above. I resumed the role of bird taxi once more, riding the light rail across the city with Belinda in a box on my lap so she could obtain the treatment she deserved.

A New Perspective

After stumbling across this secret pigeon “health service”, I began to feel much better about being back in my city. I am skeptical any of the places I had called home while away could boast anything remotely similar. It also occurred to me that this was not the first time I’d been connected to a pigeon rescue: almost 20 years earlier I’d observed one fall from the sky into the schoolyard of my old school. Again, children circled the bird, but only one – my best friend at the time – had the nerve to pick it up and take it to safety.

The aforementioned friend has since passed away – one of four friends to pass away in the years before my departure from Manchester. I realised that this had been a big part of what had made the return so difficult.

A History of Comfort

Pigeons have a tradition as “therapy” animals, especially in the certain regions. Miners started to care for the birds because they gave them company and an reason to look up at the open air between long shifts of darkness below. During the hard times, workers on the assistance also found solace in pigeons, but keeping them was viewed as a sign of “social malaise”.

Nowadays, pigeons are often written off as unintelligent, diseased or a general nuisance. Before finding the rehab group, I had called a animal doctor, who told me: “if you bring it here, leave it in the car park and we’ll put it down.”

That? Not her. Although improbable to ever soar , she has adapted to her newly grounded life with aplomb in a volunteer’s spare bedroom. Each contented call, often caused by her favourite food, frozen peas, feels like a example in perseverance and fortitude – and I am forever grateful to her for unveiling for me another side to the city I was familiar with.