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T pushed through layer after layer of sleet during the approach into the city. A sinking feeling had accompanied me during the journey, only deepening as I shuffled through the arrivals hall. I felt bitter over returning to the town where I had grown up, after living on the opposite end of the world for what had felt like a an eternity.

After a couple of days, I ventured out to get a trim. My attention was distant, lingering over an vast expanse of water, when I heard something smack into the sidewalk. I looked down to see a bird on its back, splayed out, and twitching.

The impact occurred just as schoolchildren were streaming out from the local elementary school and so within moments a little crowd of children had formed, accompanied by their mums and dads. This ring of bemused faces looked down at the bird, uncertain what to do or say. The kids were more definitive: “Daddy, she needs hospital, can we call an emergency service?” I slipped off my jacket, bent down and gently lifted the pigeon into it. “Don’t worry, dear, the nice man will look after her!” exclaimed one mum with a sigh of relief. I had become the emergency transport for this pigeon that had just fallen suddenly, unintentionally, as I had a short time earlier.

I made my way home, arms stiffly extended, with the bird nestled inside the coat.

Unbeknownst to me that my on-the-spot decision to aid my feathered charge (the name I gave my new friend) would direct me to a network of Mancunians sacrificing significant amounts of effort to provide not only ambulances for city pigeons but diagnostic imaging, respite care, and even “avian physiotherapy”.

I found a shoebox for Belinda, lined it with an old piece of cloth, and put her inside. Every short while, I’d open the box just long enough for us to make brief contact.

Those periods of mutual perplexity punctuated my hectic search for what to do from there. I called friends for guidance and one suggested trying Facebook, where, to my astonishment, I discovered a local pigeon rescue group, and submitted a request to join.

A Grassroots Network

Over 3,000-strong, the group operates on an anarchic method: someone in Manchester discovers 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 vet link can arrange it; if it needs rehabilitation, a “rehabilitator” will volunteer to care for the bird.

Volunteers each have their own finely honed expertise, whether it’s mending broken wings or cleaning wounds. Their significant, collective effort for the pigeons of the city depends completely on volunteerism.

Belinda was promptly assessed with a neurological issue, likely a head injury, and placed with a rehabber who would provide pain relief and a regimen of careful physio. We never discovered exactly what caused her to drop from above. I resumed the role of pigeon ambulance once more, riding the light rail across the city with Belinda in a container on my lap so she could receive the treatment she needed.

An Unexpected Lesson

After discovering this underground pigeon “health service”, I began to feel much differently about being back in my home town. I am skeptical 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 connected to a pigeon aid mission: almost 20 years earlier I’d observed one plummet from the sky into the playground of my secondary school. Again, children gathered around the bird, but only one – my best friend at the time – had the nerve to pick it up and take it to safety.

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

Pigeons as Companions

Pigeons have a tradition as “emotional support” animals, especially in the north of England. Workers started to care for the birds because they gave them solace and an reason to gaze up at the heavens between long shifts of subterranean gloom. During the economic downturn, workers on the unemployment also found a distraction in pigeons, but keeping them was considered a sign of “social malaise”.

Nowadays, pigeons are often dismissed as unintelligent, dirty or a general nuisance. Before finding the rehab group, I had contacted a veterinarian, who told me: “if you bring that here, leave it in the parking lot and we’ll end its life.”

It? Not her. Although unlikely to ever soar , she has adapted to her newly earthbound life with aplomb in a volunteer’s extra room. Each happy sound, often elicited by her favourite treat, vegetables, feels like a example in perseverance and resilience – and I am always appreciative to her for revealing to me a different facet to the city I believed I understood.