🔗 Share this article

Our aircraft battled through layer after layer of freezing rain on its descent into its destination. A growing unease settled over me during the trip, intensifying as I shuffled through the terminal. I resented coming back to the town where I had been raised, after residing on the other side of the world for what had felt like a an eternity.

After a couple of days, I went out to get a trim. My thoughts was far away, focused on an ocean, when I heard something smack into the pavement. I glanced down to see a pigeon on its back, sprawled, and trembling.

The crash happened just as children were filing out from the local grade school and so within minutes a little crowd of children had assembled, surrounded by their parents. This ring of bemused faces peered down at the bird, uncertain what to say or do. The kids were more definitive: “Daddy, she needs a vet, can we call an ambulance?” I slipped off my coat, bent down and scooped the pigeon into it. “Don’t worry, love, the kind man will take care of her!” said one parent with a sense of relief. I had turned into the ambulance for this pigeon that had just fallen suddenly, involuntarily, as I had a short time earlier.

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

I had no idea that my on-the-spot decision to aid my feathered charge (the name I chose for my new friend) would lead me to a network of local residents sacrificing significant amounts of effort to provide not only rescue services for street birds but diagnostic imaging, respite care, and even “pigeon physio”.

I found a cardboard box for Belinda, placed inside it with an old shirt, and put her inside. Every 20 minutes or so, I’d lift the lid just long enough for us to make brief contact.

Those moments of mutual bewilderment interrupted my hectic search for what to do next. I phoned friends for suggestions and one suggested trying Facebook, where, to my amazement, I discovered a local pigeon rescue group, and put in a request to participate.

A Grassroots Network

Over 3,000-strong, the group has an organic method: someone in Manchester stumbles across an ailing pigeon, a heartfelt post is created, then a comment section “triage” follows. If the bird is deemed in need of an X-ray, someone with a veterinary contact can organize it; if it needs physio, a “rehabber” will volunteer to foster the bird.

Carers each have their own carefully cultivated specialities, whether it’s setting broken wings or cleaning wounds. Their tremendous, combined effort for the pigeons of the city depends completely on goodwill.

Belinda was rapidly diagnosed with neurological problems, likely a concussion, and placed with a rehabber who would give pain relief and a program of gentle physio. We never learned exactly what caused her to drop from above. I assumed the role of pigeon ambulance once more, riding the streetcar across the city with Belinda in a container on my lap so she could obtain the care she required.

Rediscovering Home

After stumbling across this hidden pigeon “NHS”, I began to feel much differently about being back in my home town. I question any of the places I had lived in while away could have anything even close. It also dawned on me that this was not the first time I’d been involved in a pigeon rescue: almost 20 years earlier I’d observed one drop from the sky into the grounds of my old school. Again, children circled the bird, but only one – my best friend at the time – had the gall to scoop it up and take it to security.

The friend in question has since passed away – one of a number of companions to die in the years before my leaving 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 tradition as “therapy” animals, especially in the certain regions. Laborers started to keep the birds because they gave them company and an excuse to gaze up at the sky between long shifts of subterranean gloom. During the economic downturn, workers on the dole also found comfort in pigeons, but keeping them was considered a sign of “despair”.

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

The bird? Not this bird. Although unlikely to ever take to the skies , she has adapted to her newly land-based life with success in a volunteer’s extra room. Each happy call, often elicited by her favourite food, vegetables, feels like a demonstration in adaptability and strength – and I am always appreciative to her for showing me a new dimension to the city I thought I knew.