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The plane pushed through successive sheets of sleet during the approach into the city. A sense of dread settled over me during the trip, growing stronger as I shuffled through the terminal. I felt bitter over having to be the town where I had been raised, after living on the opposite end of the world for what had felt like a an eternity.

After a short while, I ventured out to get a my hair cut. My thoughts was far away, focused on an sea, when I was startled by something strike the pavement. I looked down to see a bird on its back, splayed out, and convulsing.

The fall happened just as schoolchildren were emerging from the local primary school and so within a short time a small chorus of little ones had gathered, accompanied by their mothers and fathers. This circle of confused faces stared down at the creature, not knowing what to say or do. The kids were more definitive: “Dad, she needs hospital, can we call an emergency service?” I removed my anorak, crouched down and scooped the pigeon inside it. “No problem, dear, the nice man will look after her!” said one mum with a audible relief. I had become the emergency transport for this pigeon that had just landed abruptly, against its will, as I had a couple of days prior.

I trudged home, arms held out, with the bird curled up inside the garment.

Unbeknownst to me that my on-the-spot decision to rescue Belinda (the name I chose for my new friend) would lead me to a community of local residents sacrificing significant amounts of their time to provide not only rescue services for city pigeons but diagnostic imaging, respite care, and even “avian physiotherapy”.

I found a cardboard box for Belinda, placed inside it with an old T-shirt, and put her inside. Every half hour or so, I’d open the box just long enough for us to share a momentary glance.

Those moments of shared confusion interrupted my desperate search for what to do from there. I phoned friends for advice and one recommended trying online groups, where, to my amazement, I stumbled upon a bird rehabilitation group, and submitted a request to become a member.

A Grassroots Network

With a large membership, the group has an anarchic system: someone in Manchester stumbles across an ailing pigeon, a urgent post is created, then a comment section “triage” takes place. If the bird is considered in need of an scan, someone with a connection to a clinic can get it one; if it needs therapy, a “carer” will volunteer to care for the bird.

Carers each have their own carefully cultivated skills, whether it’s mending broken wings or dressing wounds. Their significant, collective effort for the pigeons of the city runs entirely on kindness.

Belinda was rapidly diagnosed with brain trauma, likely a head injury, and assigned to a rehabber who would give comfort and a course of gentle physio. We never found out exactly what made her to plummet. I resumed the role of pigeon ambulance once more, riding the streetcar across the city with Belinda in a container on my lap so she could receive the treatment she required.

A New Perspective

After finding this underground pigeon “support system”, I began to feel much differently about being back in my city. I am skeptical any of the places I had resided in while away could boast anything remotely similar. It also occurred to me that this was not the first time I’d been connected to a pigeon recovery: almost 20 years earlier I’d witnessed one plummet from the sky into the playground of my secondary school. Again, children circled the bird, but only one – my closest friend at the time – had the gall to pick it up and take it to security.

The friend in question has since been lost – one of four friends to lose their lives in the years before my leaving from Manchester. I understood that this had been a big part of what had made coming back so difficult.

A History of Comfort

Pigeons have a tradition as “therapy” animals, especially in the North. Laborers started to keep the birds because they gave them company and an reason to look up at the heavens between long shifts of darkness below. During the hard times, workers on the unemployment also found comfort in pigeons, but keeping them was viewed as a sign of “social malaise”.

Nowadays, pigeons are often dismissed as stupid, dirty or a annoyance. Before finding the rehab group, I had called a veterinarian, who told me: “if you bring that here, leave it in the car park and we’ll euthanise it.”

The bird? Not our Belinda. Although improbable to ever soar , she has embraced her newly earthbound life with aplomb in a volunteer’s home. Each happy call, often caused by her favourite treat, vegetables, feels like a lesson in perseverance and strength – and I am forever grateful to her for revealing to me a new dimension to the city I thought I knew.