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Our aircraft battled through wall after wall of sleet as it landed into the city. A sense of dread filled me during the trip, only deepening as I shuffled through the airport. I was unhappy about having to be the place where I had grown up, after making a home on the opposite end of the world for what had felt like a lifetime.

After a short while, I went out to get a trim. My thoughts was far away, focused on an sea, when I heard something hit the sidewalk. I glanced down to see a rock dove on its wings, splayed out, and convulsing.

The fall occurred just as schoolchildren were emerging from the local elementary school and so within minutes a little crowd of youngsters had assembled, accompanied by their mums and dads. This group of confused faces stared down at the pigeon, unsure what to do or say. The kids were more definitive: “Daddy, she needs a vet, can we call an emergency service?” I slipped off my jacket, knelt down and gently lifted the pigeon into it. “No problem, love, the kind man will look after her!” exclaimed one mum with a audible relief. I had turned into the ambulance for this pigeon that had just fallen suddenly, unintentionally, as I had a few days before.

I trudged home, arms ramrod straight, with the bird curled up inside the jacket.

I had no idea that my on-the-spot decision to aid the bird (the name I chose for my avian patient) would guide me to a community of local residents sacrificing significant amounts of their time to provide not only transport for city pigeons but diagnostic imaging, recovery care, and even “pigeon physio”.

I retrieved a cardboard box for Belinda, prepared it with an old T-shirt, and put her inside. Every short while, I’d lift the lid just long enough for us to share a momentary glance.

Those periods of shared perplexity interrupted my desperate search for what to do from there. I phoned friends for advice and one recommended trying Facebook, where, to my surprise, I discovered a local pigeon rescue group, and sent a request to participate.

A Community Effort

With a large membership, the group follows an anarchic method: someone in Manchester stumbles across an injured pigeon, a heartfelt post is made, then a comment section “assessment” takes place. If the bird is deemed in need of an examination, someone with a connection to a clinic can get it one; if it needs therapy, a “carer” will step forward to look after the bird.

Rehabbers each have their own highly developed expertise, whether it’s repairing broken wings or cleaning wounds. Their significant, combined effort for the pigeons of the city runs entirely on kindness.

Belinda was promptly assessed with neurological problems, likely a concussion, and matched with a rehabber who would administer pain relief and a regimen of careful physio. We never learned exactly what caused her to drop from above. I took up the role of avian courier once more, taking the streetcar across the city with Belinda in a box on my lap so she could get the care she needed.

A New Perspective

After stumbling across this secret pigeon “health service”, I began to feel much differently about being back in my hometown. I question any of the places I had lived in while away could boast anything remotely similar. It also dawned on me that this was not the first time I’d been part of a pigeon recovery: almost 20 years earlier I’d seen one drop from the sky into the grounds of my old school. Again, children gathered around the bird, but only one – my friend at the time – had the nerve to scoop it up and take it to safety.

The individual 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 returning home so difficult.

Pigeons as Companions

Pigeons have a history as “emotional support” animals, especially in the north of England. Miners started to raise the birds because they gave them comfort and an excuse to stare at the open air between long shifts of darkness below. During the hard times, workers on the assistance also found comfort in pigeons, but keeping them was considered a sign of “social malaise”.

Nowadays, pigeons are often disparaged as unintelligent, diseased or a annoyance. Before finding the rehab group, I had spoken to a vet, who told me: “if you bring that here, leave it in the car park and we’ll put it down.”

It? Not our Belinda. Although not expected to ever soar , she has taken to her newly grounded life with grace in a volunteer’s home. Each contented sound, often caused by her favourite treat, peas, feels like a demonstration in perseverance and fortitude – and I am always appreciative to her for showing me a different facet to the city I believed I understood.