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T pushed through successive sheets of icy precipitation as it landed into the city. A sense of dread settled over me during the trip, intensifying as I made my way through the airport. I resented having to be the city where I had been raised, after making a home on the far side of the world for what had felt like a lifetime.

After a few days, I ventured out to get a my hair cut. My thoughts was miles away, focused on an ocean, when I became aware of something smack into the sidewalk. I looked down to see a rock dove on its wings, sprawled, and convulsing.

The impact took place just as schoolchildren were emerging from the local primary school and so within minutes a group of children had assembled, flanked by their parents. This ring of puzzled faces stared down at the creature, uncertain what to say or do. The kids were more certain: “Papa, she needs hospital, can we call an animal ambulance?” I slipped off my jacket, bent down and gently lifted the pigeon into it. “It’s okay, love, the nice man will take care of her!” exclaimed one mother with a sigh of relief. I had turned into the ambulance for this pigeon that had just come down hard, against its will, as I had a few days before.

I walked slowly home, arms ramrod straight, with the bird curled up inside the coat.

Little did I know that my impromptu decision to rescue my feathered charge (the name I chose for my patient) would lead me to a community of city dwellers sacrificing significant amounts of their time to provide not only rescue services for feral pigeons but diagnostic imaging, recovery care, and even “bird rehabilitation”.

I located a small container for Belinda, prepared it with an old piece of cloth, and put her inside. Every 20 minutes or so, I’d open the box just long enough for us to share a momentary glance.

Those moments of mutual confusion marked my frantic search for what to do from there. I called friends for suggestions and one proposed trying social media, where, to my astonishment, I found a local pigeon rescue group, and put in a request to join.

A Community Effort

Over 3,000-strong, the group operates on an anarchic system: someone in Manchester stumbles across an hurt pigeon, a heartfelt post is published, then a comment section “evaluation” takes place. If the bird is deemed in need of an X-ray, someone with a vet link can arrange it; if it needs physio, a “rehabber” will offer to look after the bird.

Carers each have their own highly developed specialities, whether it’s repairing broken wings or dressing wounds. Their tremendous, cooperative effort for the pigeons of the city is powered solely by volunteerism.

Belinda was promptly diagnosed with neurological problems, likely a head injury, and placed with a rehabber who would give comfort and a program of careful physio. We never discovered exactly what caused her to plummet. I took up the role of avian courier once more, taking the light rail across the city with Belinda in a shoebox on my lap so she could receive the attention she deserved.

A New Perspective

After discovering this secret pigeon “support system”, I began to feel much better about being back in my hometown. I am skeptical any of the places I had resided in while away could claim anything even close. 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 seen one fall from the sky into the schoolyard of my old school. Again, children surrounded the bird, but only one – my best friend at the time – had the courage to pick it up and take it to security.

The aforementioned friend has since died – one of four friends to die in the years before my exit from Manchester. I came to see that this had been a big part of what had made the return so painful.

Pigeons as Companions

Pigeons have a longstanding role as “emotional support” animals, especially in the north of England. Miners started to care for the birds because they gave them company and an opportunity to look up at the heavens between long shifts of underground work. During the Depression, workers on the dole also found a distraction in pigeons, but keeping them was seen as a sign of “despair”.

Nowadays, pigeons are often disparaged as stupid, diseased or a pest. Before finding the rehab group, I had spoken to a animal doctor, who told me: “if you bring the bird here, leave it in the lot and we’ll euthanise it.”

It? Not her. Although improbable to ever fly again , she has taken to her newly land-based life with grace in a volunteer’s home. Each happy coo, often caused by her favourite treat, peas, feels like a lesson in perseverance and fortitude – and I am always appreciative to her for showing me a new dimension to the city I was familiar with.