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The plane pushed through wall after wall of icy precipitation during the approach into its destination. A sinking feeling filled me during the trip, growing stronger as I walked through the terminal. I was unhappy about returning to the place where I had been raised, after making a home on the opposite end of the world for what had felt like a lifetime.

After a short while, I ventured out to get a trim. My thoughts was far away, lingering over an vast expanse of water, when I became aware of something strike the sidewalk. I gazed down to see a bird on its wings, splayed out, and twitching.

The impact happened just as children were filing out from the local elementary school and so within minutes a small chorus of little ones had assembled, flanked by their mothers and fathers. This ring of puzzled faces stared down at the creature, not knowing what to say or do. The kids were more decisive: “Daddy, she needs help, can we call an ambulance?” I slipped off my anorak, bent down and picked up the pigeon inside it. “It’s okay, love, the nice man will help her!” said one mother with a sigh of relief. I had become the emergency transport for this pigeon that had just landed abruptly, involuntarily, as I had a few days before.

I trudged home, arms ramrod straight, with the bird nestled inside the coat.

Unbeknownst to me that my impromptu decision to medivac my feathered charge (the name I gave my avian patient) would lead me to a network of city dwellers sacrificing significant amounts of their time to provide not only ambulances for feral pigeons but scans, convalescence, and even “pigeon physio”.

I located a small container for Belinda, prepared 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 instances of common bewilderment marked my frantic search for what to do from there. I called friends for suggestions and one suggested trying social media, where, to my amazement, I found a bird rehabilitation group, and submitted a request to participate.

A Community Effort

Over 3,000-strong, the group follows an anarchic model: someone in Manchester stumbles across an ailing pigeon, a urgent post is made, then a comment section “triage” takes place. If the bird is judged in need of an X-ray, someone with a veterinary contact can get it one; if it needs rehabilitation, a “rehabber” will offer to care for the bird.

Volunteers each have their own highly developed specialities, whether it’s repairing broken wings or cleaning wounds. Their momentous, cooperative effort for the pigeons of the city depends completely on volunteerism.

Belinda was promptly assessed with neurological problems, likely a blow to the head, and placed with a rehabber who would administer pain relief and a regimen of patient physio. We never found out exactly what made her to fall from the sky. I assumed the role of avian courier once more, riding the light rail across the city with Belinda in a shoebox on my lap so she could obtain the treatment she required.

A New Perspective

After stumbling across this underground pigeon “NHS”, 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 have anything remotely similar. It also struck me that this was not the first time I’d been involved in a pigeon aid mission: almost 20 years earlier I’d witnessed one fall from the sky into the grounds of my old school. Again, children circled the bird, but only one – my closest friend at the time – had the gall to pick it up and take it to a safe place.

The aforementioned friend has since died – one of four friends to lose their lives 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 “therapy” animals, especially in the certain regions. Miners started to care for the birds because they gave them company and an excuse to look up at the open air between long shifts of underground work. During the Depression, workers on the dole also found solace in pigeons, but keeping them was considered a sign of “despair”.

Nowadays, pigeons are often dismissed as simple, diseased or a general nuisance. Before finding the rehab group, I had spoken to a vet, who told me: “if you bring it here, leave it in the parking lot and we’ll euthanise it.”

The bird? Not our Belinda. Although not expected to ever take to the skies , she has taken to her newly grounded life with success in a volunteer’s extra room. Each contented sound, often prompted by her favourite treat, vegetables, feels like a lesson in adaptability and resilience – and I am eternally thankful to her for revealing to me another side to the city I was familiar with.