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T forced its way through layer after layer of freezing rain as it landed into the city. A sense of dread filled me during the journey, only deepening as I shuffled through the airport. I was unhappy about having to be the place where I had spent my youth, after making a home on the far side of the world for what had felt like a an age.

After a couple of days, I headed out to get a trim. My thoughts was far away, back across an ocean, when I was startled by something strike the ground. I gazed down to see a bird on its back, sprawled, and trembling.

The crash took place just as children were streaming out from the local grade school and so within moments a little crowd of children had formed, accompanied by their mothers and fathers. This ring of bemused faces stared down at the bird, uncertain what to do or say. The kids were more decisive: “Dad, she needs a vet, can we call an ambulance?” I took off my jacket, knelt down and scooped the pigeon up into it. “Don’t worry, love, the nice man will take care of her!” said one mother with a sense of relief. I had been transformed into the rescue vehicle for this pigeon that had just come down hard, against its will, as I had a couple of days prior.

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

I had no idea that my spontaneous decision to medivac my feathered charge (the name I bestowed upon my avian patient) would guide me to a community of local residents devoting significant amounts of effort to provide not only ambulances for city pigeons but diagnostic imaging, respite care, and even “pigeon physio”.

I retrieved a cardboard box for Belinda, placed inside it with an old shirt, and put her inside. Every 20 minutes or so, I’d open the box just long enough for us to make brief contact.

Those moments of shared confusion marked my hectic search for what to do next. I phoned friends for advice and one suggested trying Facebook, where, to my astonishment, I stumbled upon a Manchester Pigeon Rehab group, and put in a request to participate.

An Anarchic Model

With a large membership, the group follows an anarchic system: someone in Manchester stumbles across an injured pigeon, a urgent post is published, then a comment section “evaluation” follows. If the bird is judged in need of an X-ray, someone with a connection to a clinic can organize it; if it needs rehabilitation, a “carer” will step forward to look after the bird.

Rehabbers each have their own carefully cultivated specialities, whether it’s setting broken wings or treating wounds. Their momentous, cooperative effort for the pigeons of the city depends completely on goodwill.

Belinda was promptly assessed with a neurological issue, likely a head injury, and placed with a rehabber who would provide medication and a course of patient physio. We never learned exactly what made her to fall from the sky. I assumed the role of bird taxi once more, boarding the streetcar across the city with Belinda in a box on my lap so she could get the treatment she required.

Rediscovering Home

After finding this secret pigeon “support system”, I began to feel much differently about being back in my city. I doubt any of the places I had lived in while away could claim anything comparable. It also struck me that this was not the first time I’d been part of a pigeon aid mission: almost 20 years earlier I’d seen one drop from the sky into the schoolyard of my old school. Again, children circled the bird, but only one – my friend at the time – had the gall to rescue it and take it to safety.

The friend in question has since passed away – one of a number of companions to die in the years before my leaving from Manchester. I realised that this had been a big part of what had made coming back so painful.

Pigeons as Companions

Pigeons have a history as “therapy” animals, especially in the North. Laborers started to keep the birds because they gave them comfort and an opportunity to stare at the open air between long shifts of subterranean gloom. During the hard times, workers on the unemployment also found solace in pigeons, but keeping them was viewed as a sign of “idleness”.

Nowadays, pigeons are often written off as simple, dirty or a pest. Before finding the rehab group, I had called a animal doctor, who told me: “if you bring that here, leave it in the car park and we’ll end its life.”

It? Not this bird. Although unlikely to ever fly again , she has adapted to her newly grounded life with grace in a volunteer’s home. Each contented sound, often caused by her favourite treat, vegetables, feels like a lesson in perseverance and resilience – and I am eternally thankful to her for unveiling for me another side to the city I was familiar with.