🔗 Share this article

T pushed through wall after wall of icy precipitation during the approach into the city. A growing unease settled over me during the trip, only deepening as I walked through the arrivals hall. I resented returning to the city where I had grown up, after residing on the opposite end of the world for what had felt like a an eternity.

After a couple of days, I headed out to get a haircut. My thoughts was miles away, back across an ocean, when I became aware of something smack into the ground. I glanced down to see a pigeon on its wings, splayed out, and twitching.

The fall took place just as children were filing out from the local grade school and so within moments a small chorus of children had assembled, flanked by their mums and dads. This group of bemused faces peered down at the bird, unsure what to do or say. The kids were more decisive: “Papa, she needs a vet, can we call an emergency service?” I removed my coat, knelt down and scooped the pigeon up into it. “Don’t worry, dear, the kind man will take care of her!” remarked one parent with a audible relief. I had become the emergency transport for this pigeon that had just landed abruptly, involuntarily, as I had a couple of days prior.

I made my way home, arms stiffly extended, with the bird nestled inside the coat.

I had no idea that my impromptu decision to medivac the bird (the name I gave my new friend) would lead me to a network of Mancunians giving up significant amounts of effort to provide not only ambulances for street birds but X-rays, respite care, and even “pigeon physio”.

I found a cardboard box for Belinda, lined it with an old T-shirt, and put her inside. Every short while, I’d peek inside just long enough for us to make brief contact.

Those periods of shared confusion interrupted my frantic search for what to do after that. I contacted friends for guidance and one proposed trying Facebook, where, to my amazement, I stumbled upon a Manchester Pigeon Rehab group, and submitted a request to participate.

A Grassroots Network

Over 3,000-strong, the group follows an organic model: someone in Manchester finds an ailing pigeon, a pleading post is made, then a comment section “triage” follows. If the bird is deemed in need of an X-ray, someone with a connection to a clinic can organize it; if it needs rehabilitation, a “rehabilitator” will step forward to foster the bird.

Carers each have their own finely honed skills, whether it’s mending broken wings or dressing wounds. Their tremendous, collective effort for the pigeons of the city depends completely on volunteerism.

Belinda was rapidly assessed with a neurological issue, likely a head injury, and assigned to a rehabber who would give pain relief and a regimen of careful physio. We never found out exactly what made her to drop from above. I took up the role of pigeon ambulance once more, boarding the streetcar across the city with Belinda in a shoebox on my lap so she could receive the attention she deserved.

Rediscovering Home

After discovering this underground pigeon “NHS”, I began to feel much more positive about being back in my home town. I doubt any of the places I had lived in while away could claim anything remotely similar. It also struck me that this was not the first time I’d been connected to a pigeon recovery: almost 20 years earlier I’d observed one fall from the sky into the schoolyard of my high school. Again, children gathered around the bird, but only one – my friend at the time – had the courage to pick it up and take it to safety.

The individual has since been lost – one of several 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 returning home so hard.

Pigeons as Companions

Pigeons have a history as “companion” animals, especially in the North. Workers started to keep the birds because they gave them solace and an excuse to gaze up at the open air between long shifts of subterranean gloom. During the hard times, workers on the dole also found solace in pigeons, but keeping them was seen as a sign of “despair”.

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 the bird here, leave it in the lot and we’ll end its life.”

It? Not this bird. Although unlikely to ever fly again , she has taken to her newly land-based life with success in a volunteer’s extra room. Each satisfied call, often prompted by her favourite food, peas, feels like a example in adaptability and strength – and I am eternally thankful to her for showing me a different facet to the city I thought I knew.