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The plane pushed through wall after wall of freezing rain as it landed into its destination. A growing unease filled me during the journey, only deepening as I made my way through the airport. I resented returning to the town where I had spent my youth, after making a home on the other side of the world for what had felt like a an age.

After a few days, I ventured out to get a my hair cut. My attention was far away, back across an vast expanse of water, when I heard something smack into the sidewalk. I gazed down to see a bird on its back, splayed out, and twitching.

The fall occurred just as children were emerging from the local primary school and so within moments a small chorus of children had formed, accompanied by their mothers and fathers. This ring of puzzled faces peered down at the pigeon, uncertain what to say or do. The kids were more definitive: “Dad, she needs hospital, can we call an ambulance?” I removed my jacket, bent down and picked up the pigeon inside it. “No problem, sweet, the gentleman will look after her!” exclaimed one mother with a sense of relief. I had been transformed into the emergency transport for this pigeon that had just fallen suddenly, unintentionally, as I had a few days before.

I walked slowly home, arms held out, with the bird nestled inside the jacket.

Unbeknownst to me that my spontaneous decision to medivac Belinda (the name I bestowed upon my new friend) would lead me to a community of Mancunians giving up significant amounts of time to provide not only transport for city pigeons but X-rays, recovery care, and even “avian physiotherapy”.

I located a small container for Belinda, placed inside it with an old T-shirt, and put her inside. Every short while, I’d open the box just long enough for us to make brief contact.

Those periods of shared bewilderment interrupted my hectic search for what to do after that. I called friends for guidance and one recommended trying online groups, where, to my amazement, I stumbled upon a Manchester Pigeon Rehab group, and put in a request to join.

An Anarchic Model

With a large membership, the group operates on an anarchic system: someone in Manchester finds an ailing pigeon, a urgent post is published, then a comment section “assessment” takes place. If the bird is judged in need of an scan, someone with a connection to a clinic can organize it; if it needs physio, a “rehabilitator” will volunteer to care for the bird.

Carers each have their own finely honed expertise, whether it’s setting broken wings or treating wounds. Their momentous, collective effort for the pigeons of the city depends completely on kindness.

Belinda was promptly assessed with a neurological issue, likely a head injury, and matched with a rehabber who would administer comfort and a program of careful physio. We never found out exactly what made her to plummet. I resumed the role of bird taxi once more, taking the light rail across the city with Belinda in a shoebox on my lap so she could obtain the attention she needed.

Rediscovering Home

After discovering this hidden pigeon “health service”, I began to feel much differently about being back in my city. I doubt any of the places I had called home while away could boast anything even close. It also struck me that this was not the first time I’d been part of a pigeon recovery: almost 20 years earlier I’d seen one drop from the sky into the grounds of my secondary school. Again, children surrounded the bird, but only one – my closest friend at the time – had the gall to pick it up and take it to safety.

The aforementioned friend has since been lost – one of several friends to die in the years before my exit from Manchester. I realised that this had been a big part of what had made returning home so hard.

Pigeons as Companions

Pigeons have a longstanding role as “therapy” animals, especially in the certain regions. Miners started to keep the birds because they gave them solace and an opportunity to gaze up at the sky between long shifts of underground work. During the hard times, workers on the dole also found comfort in pigeons, but keeping them was seen as a sign of “idleness”.

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

It? Not her. Although improbable to ever take to the skies , she has embraced her newly land-based life with grace in a volunteer’s extra room. Each contented call, often caused by her favourite treat, frozen peas, feels like a demonstration in adaptability and strength – and I am always appreciative to her for unveiling for me another side to the city I believed I understood.