🔗 Share this article

The plane pushed through successive sheets of icy precipitation during the approach into the city. A sense of dread had accompanied me during the journey, intensifying as I walked through the terminal. I was unhappy about returning to the place where I had been raised, after making a home on the far side of the world for what had felt like a an eternity.

After a few days, I went out to get a my hair cut. My thoughts was far away, focused on an sea, when I became aware of something hit the ground. I gazed down to see a rock dove on its back, splayed out, and convulsing.

The crash occurred just as kids were streaming out from the local elementary school and so within a short time a group of little ones had assembled, flanked by their parents. This circle of puzzled faces stared down at the creature, uncertain what to say or do. The kids were more definitive: “Papa, she needs hospital, can we call an animal ambulance?” I removed my anorak, knelt down and scooped the pigeon up into it. “No problem, love, the gentleman will help her!” exclaimed one mother with a sense of relief. I had been transformed into the rescue vehicle for this pigeon that had just come down hard, involuntarily, as I had a couple of days prior.

I walked slowly home, arms stiffly extended, with the bird tucked safely inside the jacket.

Little did I know that my impromptu decision to rescue the bird (the name I chose for my patient) would direct me to a web of Mancunians giving up significant amounts of their time to provide not only rescue services for city pigeons but diagnostic imaging, convalescence, and even “pigeon physio”.

I located a small container 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 confusion punctuated my desperate search for what to do next. I phoned friends for guidance and one recommended trying social media, where, to my astonishment, I found a bird rehabilitation group, and sent a request to become a member.

A Community Effort

Boasting thousands of members, the group follows an anarchic model: someone in Manchester stumbles across an injured pigeon, a urgent post is published, then a comment section “evaluation” takes place. If the bird is considered in need of an examination, someone with a vet link can arrange it; if it needs physio, a “carer” will offer to foster the bird.

Volunteers each have their own finely honed specialities, whether it’s mending broken wings or treating wounds. Their tremendous, cooperative effort for the pigeons of the city depends completely on kindness.

Belinda was promptly assessed with neurological problems, likely a head injury, and placed with a rehabber who would provide medication and a course of careful physio. We never discovered exactly what made her to fall from the sky. I took up the role of bird taxi once more, boarding the light rail across the city with Belinda in a box on my lap so she could receive the attention she required.

A New Perspective

After finding this underground pigeon “health service”, I began to feel much more positive about being back in my hometown. I doubt any of the places I had resided in while away could have anything comparable. 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 witnessed one fall from the sky into the grounds of my secondary school. Again, children surrounded the bird, but only one – my friend at the time – had the gall to scoop it up and take it to a safe place.

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

Pigeons as Companions

Pigeons have a longstanding role as “therapy” animals, especially in the north of England. Workers started to raise the birds because they gave them solace and an excuse to stare at the heavens between long shifts of subterranean gloom. During the Depression, workers on the dole also found a distraction in pigeons, but keeping them was considered a sign of “social malaise”.

Nowadays, pigeons are often dismissed as unintelligent, unclean or a pest. Before finding the rehab group, I had called a vet, who told me: “if you bring that here, leave that in the car park and we’ll euthanise it.”

The bird? Not this bird. Although unlikely to ever take to the skies , she has taken to her newly grounded life with grace in a volunteer’s home. Each happy call, often caused 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 was familiar with.