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Our aircraft pushed through wall after wall of sleet as it landed into Manchester. A growing unease filled me during the journey, growing stronger as I walked through the airport. I was unhappy about having to be the place where I had been raised, after living 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 attention was miles away, lingering over an vast expanse of water, when I became aware of something smack into the pavement. I glanced down to see a rock dove on its side, spatchcocked, and twitching.

The crash happened just as schoolchildren were filing out from the local grade school and so within minutes a small chorus of little ones had assembled, flanked by their mothers and fathers. This circle of bemused faces peered down at the creature, not knowing what to do or say. The kids were more definitive: “Dad, she needs help, can we call an ambulance?” I took off my coat, bent down and scooped the pigeon inside it. “No problem, love, the kind man will take care of her!” said one mum with a sigh of relief. I had become the rescue vehicle for this pigeon that had just landed abruptly, involuntarily, as I had a couple of days prior.

I trudged home, arms held out, with the bird nestled inside the garment.

I had no idea that my spontaneous decision to rescue Belinda (the name I gave my new friend) would lead me to a network of local residents giving up significant amounts of effort to provide not only ambulances for city pigeons but X-rays, convalescence, and even “avian physiotherapy”.

I found a cardboard box for Belinda, prepared 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 punctuated my frantic search for what to do from there. I contacted friends for advice and one suggested trying social media, where, to my astonishment, I discovered a Manchester Pigeon Rehab group, and submitted a request to participate.

A Grassroots Network

Over 3,000-strong, the group operates on an decentralized system: someone in Manchester stumbles across an hurt pigeon, a urgent post is published, then a comment section “evaluation” ensues. If the bird is deemed in need of an examination, someone with a connection to a clinic can arrange it; if it needs rehabilitation, a “rehabilitator” will volunteer to look after the bird.

Volunteers each have their own highly developed specialities, whether it’s mending broken wings or dressing wounds. Their tremendous, collective effort for the pigeons of the city is powered solely by goodwill.

Belinda was promptly assessed with brain trauma, likely a blow to the head, and assigned to a rehabber who would provide pain relief and a program of gentle physio. We never found out exactly what made her to drop from above. I assumed the role of pigeon ambulance once more, boarding the tram across the city with Belinda in a shoebox on my lap so she could obtain the treatment she deserved.

A New Perspective

After stumbling across this hidden pigeon “support system”, I began to feel much better about being back in my home town. I question any of the places I had resided 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 aid mission: almost 20 years earlier I’d seen one plummet from the sky into the schoolyard of my high school. Again, children circled the bird, but only one – my best friend at the time – had the nerve to rescue it and take it to security.

The individual has since been lost – one of four friends to die in the years before my departure from Manchester. I came to see that this had been a major reason of what had made coming back so difficult.

A History of Comfort

Pigeons have a longstanding role as “companion” animals, especially in the certain regions. Workers started to care for the birds because they gave them company and an opportunity to stare at the heavens between long shifts of subterranean gloom. During the hard times, workers on the unemployment also found comfort in pigeons, but keeping them was considered a sign of “social malaise”.

Nowadays, pigeons are often disparaged as simple, dirty or a annoyance. Before finding the rehab group, I had called a veterinarian, who told me: “if you bring that here, leave it in the lot and we’ll put it down.”

The bird? Not our Belinda. Although unlikely to ever take to the skies , she has embraced her newly land-based life with aplomb in a volunteer’s home. Each contented coo, often caused by her favourite treat, peas, feels like a example in adaptability and strength – and I am always appreciative to her for showing me another side to the city I believed I understood.