The plane battled through layer after layer of freezing rain on its descent into its destination. A sinking feeling had accompanied me during the trip, only deepening as I walked through the terminal. I was unhappy about having to be the city where I had been raised, after making a home on the other side of the world for what had felt like a an age.
After a couple of days, I headed out to get a trim. My thoughts was far away, focused on an ocean, when I became aware of something hit the pavement. I gazed down to see a rock dove on its side, spatchcocked, and twitching.
The crash happened just as schoolchildren were emerging from the local primary school and so within moments a little crowd of children had formed, flanked by their mothers and fathers. This circle of puzzled faces stared down at the pigeon, not knowing what to think or act. The kids were more decisive: “Papa, she needs hospital, can we call an animal ambulance?” I slipped off my coat, bent down and gently lifted the pigeon into it. “It’s okay, love, the nice man will look after her!” said one mother with a sense of relief. I had become the ambulance for this pigeon that had just landed abruptly, unintentionally, as I had a couple of days prior.
I made my way home, arms ramrod straight, with the bird curled up inside the coat.
Unbeknownst to me that my on-the-spot decision to medivac my feathered charge (the name I chose for my patient) would guide me to a network of Mancunians sacrificing significant amounts of their time to provide not only rescue services for street birds but diagnostic imaging, respite care, and even “pigeon physio”.
I found a small container for Belinda, lined it with an old T-shirt, and put her inside. Every short while, I’d open the box just long enough for us to awkwardly lock eyes.
Those periods of shared perplexity punctuated my hectic search for what to do from there. I contacted friends for guidance and one suggested trying social media, where, to my astonishment, I found a Manchester Pigeon Rehab group, and sent a request to become a member.
An Anarchic Model
Boasting thousands of members, the group has an organic model: someone in Manchester stumbles across an ailing pigeon, a urgent post is published, then a comment section “assessment” follows. If the bird is judged in need of an X-ray, someone with a veterinary contact can arrange it; if it needs therapy, a “rehabber” will offer to care for the bird.
Carers each have their own highly developed expertise, whether it’s mending broken wings or treating wounds. Their momentous, collective effort for the pigeons of the city runs entirely on goodwill.
Belinda was promptly assessed with neurological problems, likely a blow to the head, and placed with a rehabber who would give comfort and a regimen of patient physio. We never discovered exactly what caused her to fall from the sky. I resumed the role of avian courier once more, taking the tram across the city with Belinda in a container on my lap so she could get the attention she needed.
An Unexpected Lesson
After discovering this secret pigeon “NHS”, I began to feel much better about being back in my home town. I doubt any of the places I had resided in while away could have anything comparable. 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 witnessed one plummet from the sky into the schoolyard of my high school. Again, children surrounded the bird, but only one – my best friend at the time – had the gall to scoop it up and take it to a safe place.
The aforementioned friend has since passed away – one of several friends to die in the years before my leaving from Manchester. I realised that this had been a major reason of what had made returning home so painful.
A History of Comfort
Pigeons have a tradition as “companion” animals, especially in the North. Laborers started to raise the birds because they gave them comfort and an opportunity to look up at the sky between long shifts of darkness below. During the Depression, workers on the dole also found a distraction in pigeons, but keeping them was viewed as a sign of “social malaise”.
Nowadays, pigeons are often written off as unintelligent, diseased or a general nuisance. Before finding the rehab group, I had called a veterinarian, who told me: “if you bring that here, leave that in the parking lot and we’ll put it down.”
It? Not her. Although unlikely to ever fly again , she has taken to her newly earthbound life with success in a volunteer’s spare bedroom. Each satisfied coo, often caused by her favourite snack, frozen peas, feels like a example in resilience and fortitude – and I am eternally thankful to her for showing me a new dimension to the city I thought I knew.