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Our aircraft battled through wall after wall of freezing rain as it landed into the city. A sinking feeling settled over me during the flight, growing stronger as I walked through the arrivals hall. I resented having to be the city where I had been raised, after residing on the other side of the world for what had felt like a an age.

After a few days, I headed out to get a haircut. My mind was far away, focused on an vast expanse of water, when I became aware of something smack into the ground. I gazed down to see a rock dove on its wings, sprawled, and trembling.

The crash happened just as kids were filing out from the local primary school and so within minutes a small chorus of little ones had assembled, flanked by their parents. This circle of bemused faces looked down at the bird, uncertain what to say or do. The kids were more definitive: “Daddy, she needs hospital, can we call an ambulance?” I slipped off my jacket, knelt down and scooped the pigeon up into it. “No problem, love, the nice man will help her!” exclaimed one parent with a audible relief. I had become the rescue vehicle for this pigeon that had just landed abruptly, against its will, as I had a couple of days prior.

I trudged home, arms stiffly extended, with the bird nestled inside the jacket.

I had no idea that my impromptu decision to aid Belinda (the name I bestowed upon my avian patient) would direct me to a community of Mancunians sacrificing significant amounts of time to provide not only ambulances for feral pigeons but scans, respite care, and even “avian physiotherapy”.

I found a small container for Belinda, lined it with an old shirt, and put her inside. Every short while, I’d open the box just long enough for us to share a momentary glance.

Those periods of shared perplexity punctuated my frantic search for what to do after that. I called friends for guidance and one recommended trying social media, where, to my astonishment, I discovered a bird rehabilitation group, and submitted a request to join.

A Grassroots Network

With a large membership, the group operates on an organic method: someone in Manchester stumbles across an hurt pigeon, a urgent post is created, then a comment section “evaluation” takes place. If the bird is judged in need of an examination, someone with a veterinary contact can arrange it; if it needs therapy, a “rehabilitator” will offer to foster the bird.

Carers each have their own highly developed expertise, whether it’s mending broken wings or treating wounds. Their significant, collective effort for the pigeons of the city runs entirely on kindness.

Belinda was rapidly assessed with brain trauma, likely a head injury, and matched with a rehabber who would administer comfort and a course of patient physio. We never discovered exactly what caused her to drop from above. I assumed the role of avian courier once more, taking the light rail across the city with Belinda in a container on my lap so she could receive the care she needed.

A New Perspective

After finding this secret pigeon “health service”, I began to feel much better about being back in my hometown. I question any of the places I had lived in while away could claim anything even close. It also dawned on me that this was not the first time I’d been connected to a pigeon rescue: almost 20 years earlier I’d witnessed one fall from the sky into the schoolyard of my old school. Again, children gathered around the bird, but only one – my closest friend at the time – had the gall to rescue it and take it to a safe place.

The friend in question has since died – one of several friends to die in the years before my leaving from Manchester. I understood that this had been a significant factor of what had made coming back so painful.

A History of Comfort

Pigeons have a history as “therapy” animals, especially in the North. Workers started to keep the birds because they gave them comfort and an excuse to gaze up at the open air between long shifts of subterranean gloom. During the Depression, workers on the unemployment also found comfort in pigeons, but keeping them was considered a sign of “despair”.

Nowadays, pigeons are often dismissed as unintelligent, unclean or a annoyance. Before finding the rehab group, I had spoken to a animal doctor, who told me: “if you bring the bird here, leave it in the car park and we’ll end its life.”

The bird? Not her. Although not expected to ever take to the skies , she has taken to her newly earthbound life with grace in a volunteer’s spare bedroom. Each satisfied sound, often elicited by her favourite food, peas, feels like a example in resilience and resilience – and I am forever grateful to her for showing me another side to the city I thought I knew.