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Our aircraft pushed through wall after wall of freezing rain on its descent into the city. A sense of dread had accompanied me during the trip, growing stronger as I walked through the arrivals hall. I was unhappy about coming back to 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 lifetime.

After a couple of days, I headed out to get a my hair cut. My thoughts was far away, back across an sea, when I heard something hit the pavement. I looked down to see a pigeon on its back, spatchcocked, and convulsing.

The fall occurred just as schoolchildren were streaming out from the local elementary school and so within minutes a small chorus of youngsters had assembled, surrounded by their mums and dads. This ring of bemused faces looked down at the pigeon, uncertain what to think or act. The kids were more certain: “Daddy, she needs hospital, can we call an emergency service?” I removed my anorak, bent down and scooped the pigeon into it. “Don’t worry, dear, the kind man will look after her!” remarked one mum with a audible relief. I had become the rescue vehicle for this pigeon that had just come down hard, involuntarily, as I had a few days before.

I walked slowly home, arms ramrod straight, with the bird curled up inside the garment.

I had no idea that my impromptu decision to rescue the bird (the name I chose for my avian patient) would lead me to a network of city dwellers giving up significant amounts of effort to provide not only ambulances for feral pigeons but diagnostic imaging, respite care, and even “avian physiotherapy”.

I located a small container for Belinda, lined it with an old piece of cloth, and put her inside. Every half hour or so, I’d lift the lid just long enough for us to awkwardly lock eyes.

Those periods of common perplexity interrupted my desperate search for what to do from there. I called friends for guidance and one proposed trying Facebook, where, to my surprise, I discovered a local pigeon rescue group, and put in a request to participate.

A Grassroots Network

With a large membership, the group operates on an anarchic method: someone in Manchester finds an ailing pigeon, a pleading post is published, then a comment section “evaluation” takes place. If the bird is judged in need of an examination, someone with a veterinary contact can get it one; if it needs rehabilitation, a “rehabilitator” will step forward to look after the bird.

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

Belinda was rapidly assessed with neurological problems, likely a head injury, and assigned to a rehabber who would provide pain relief and a program of careful physio. We never learned exactly what caused her to drop from above. I took up the role of avian courier once more, taking the streetcar across the city with Belinda in a shoebox on my lap so she could obtain the attention she deserved.

An Unexpected Lesson

After discovering this secret pigeon “NHS”, I began to feel much differently about being back in my hometown. I question any of the places I had called home while away could have anything even close. 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 seen one drop from the sky into the schoolyard of my secondary school. Again, children gathered around the bird, but only one – my best friend at the time – had the gall to pick it up and take it to a safe place.

The aforementioned friend has since been lost – one of four friends to die in the years before my leaving from Manchester. I realised that this had been a big part of what had made the return so difficult.

A History of Comfort

Pigeons have a history as “companion” animals, especially in the North. Miners started to raise the birds because they gave them comfort and an reason to look up at the open air between long shifts of underground work. During the hard times, workers on the unemployment also found a distraction in pigeons, but keeping them was seen as a sign of “social malaise”.

Nowadays, pigeons are often dismissed as unintelligent, diseased or a general nuisance. Before finding the rehab group, I had called a animal doctor, who told me: “if you bring the bird here, leave it in the car park and we’ll euthanise it.”

The bird? Not this bird. Although improbable to ever soar , she has embraced her newly earthbound life with success in a volunteer’s extra room. Each happy sound, often elicited by her favourite food, peas, feels like a example in resilience and fortitude – and I am always appreciative to her for unveiling for me another side to the city I believed I understood.