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Our aircraft forced its way through wall after wall of sleet as it landed into the city. A growing unease settled over me during the journey, only deepening as I walked through the terminal. I resented having to be the city where I had been raised, after making a home on the opposite end of the world for what had felt like a an age.

After a short while, I ventured out to get a my hair cut. My thoughts was miles away, focused on an ocean, when I was startled by something smack into the ground. I gazed down to see a bird on its side, splayed out, and convulsing.

The impact happened just as kids were streaming out from the local grade school and so within a short time a group of children had assembled, accompanied by their mothers and fathers. This ring of puzzled faces looked down at the pigeon, unsure what to say or do. The kids were more certain: “Dad, she needs a vet, can we call an ambulance?” I slipped off my anorak, crouched down and scooped the pigeon inside it. “It’s okay, love, the nice man will look after her!” exclaimed one mum with a audible relief. I had turned into the ambulance for this pigeon that had just come down hard, against its will, as I had a couple of days prior.

I trudged home, arms ramrod straight, with the bird tucked safely inside the jacket.

I had no idea that my spontaneous decision to medivac Belinda (the name I bestowed upon my new friend) would lead me to a web of local residents giving up significant amounts of their time to provide not only rescue services for city pigeons but diagnostic imaging, respite care, and even “pigeon physio”.

I located a cardboard box for Belinda, prepared it with an old piece of cloth, and put her inside. Every 20 minutes or so, I’d peek inside just long enough for us to awkwardly lock eyes.

Those moments of mutual perplexity marked my desperate search for what to do after that. I phoned friends for suggestions and one proposed trying online groups, where, to my astonishment, I found a local pigeon rescue group, and sent a request to become a member.

A Grassroots Network

Over 3,000-strong, the group operates on an decentralized method: someone in Manchester discovers an hurt pigeon, a pleading 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 therapy, a “rehabber” will step forward to care for the bird.

Carers each have their own carefully cultivated skills, whether it’s repairing broken wings or dressing wounds. Their tremendous, cooperative effort for the pigeons of the city is powered solely by kindness.

Belinda was rapidly assessed with brain trauma, likely a head injury, and placed with a rehabber who would provide pain relief and a regimen of patient physio. We never learned exactly what made her to drop from above. I assumed the role of avian courier once more, riding the streetcar across the city with Belinda in a shoebox on my lap so she could receive the treatment she needed.

Rediscovering Home

After stumbling across this hidden pigeon “NHS”, I began to feel much more positive about being back in my city. I question any of the places I had called home while away could have anything comparable. It also struck me that this was not the first time I’d been part of a pigeon rescue: almost 20 years earlier I’d witnessed 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 gall to rescue it and take it to safety.

The individual has since been lost – one of several friends to lose their lives in the years before my leaving from Manchester. I realised that this had been a significant factor of what had made returning home so difficult.

Pigeons as Companions

Pigeons have a longstanding role as “companion” animals, especially in the North. Miners started to care for the birds because they gave them solace and an opportunity to look up at the heavens between long shifts of subterranean gloom. During the Depression, workers on the dole also found comfort in pigeons, but keeping them was viewed as a sign of “idleness”.

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

That? Not her. Although improbable to ever soar , she has adapted to her newly land-based life with success in a volunteer’s extra room. Each happy sound, often prompted by her favourite treat, peas, feels like a lesson in perseverance and resilience – and I am always appreciative to her for unveiling for me a different facet to the city I was familiar with.