Our aircraft forced its way through successive sheets of freezing rain as it landed into Manchester. A sense of dread settled over me during the journey, growing stronger as I walked through the terminal. I felt bitter over coming back to the town where I had been raised, after living on the other side of the world for what had felt like a an age.
After a couple of days, I went out to get a trim. My attention was distant, back across an vast expanse of water, when I was startled by something hit the pavement. I glanced down to see a pigeon on its wings, splayed out, and trembling.
The impact took place just as children were emerging from the local grade school and so within a short time a group of little ones had formed, surrounded by their mums and dads. This circle of puzzled faces peered down at the creature, uncertain what to say or do. The kids were more certain: “Daddy, she needs hospital, can we call an emergency service?” I took off my jacket, knelt down and scooped the pigeon inside it. “No problem, dear, the nice man will look after her!” said one parent with a sense of relief. I had become the rescue vehicle for this pigeon that had just come down hard, unintentionally, as I had a short time earlier.
I made my way home, arms stiffly extended, with the bird tucked safely inside the coat.
Little did I know that my impromptu decision to aid my feathered charge (the name I chose for my avian patient) would lead me to a community of Mancunians devoting significant amounts of effort to provide not only ambulances for street birds but diagnostic imaging, recovery care, and even “pigeon physio”.
I found a shoebox for Belinda, lined it with an old shirt, and put her inside. Every short while, I’d lift the lid just long enough for us to make brief contact.
Those moments of shared bewilderment punctuated my frantic search for what to do after that. I phoned friends for advice and one suggested trying social media, where, to my surprise, I found a bird rehabilitation group, and sent a request to participate.
Over 3,000-strong, the group has an anarchic model: someone in Manchester finds an injured pigeon, a heartfelt post is created, then a comment section “assessment” follows. If the bird is judged in need of an X-ray, someone with a veterinary contact can get it one; if it needs physio, a “rehabilitator” will volunteer to look after the bird.
Carers each have their own finely honed skills, whether it’s mending broken wings or dressing wounds. Their significant, cooperative effort for the pigeons of the city runs entirely on goodwill.
Belinda was quickly assessed with brain trauma, likely a head injury, and assigned to a rehabber who would provide medication and a course of patient physio. We never discovered exactly what caused her to plummet. I assumed the role of avian courier once more, taking the light rail across the city with Belinda in a box on my lap so she could obtain the care she required.
After stumbling across this underground pigeon “NHS”, I began to feel much more positive about being back in my hometown. I doubt any of the places I had called home while away could have anything remotely similar. It also struck me that this was not the first time I’d been part of a pigeon rescue: almost 20 years earlier I’d seen one fall from the sky into the schoolyard of my secondary school. Again, children circled the bird, but only one – my best friend at the time – had the courage to pick it up and take it to safety.
The aforementioned friend has since passed away – one of several friends to lose their lives in the years before my leaving from Manchester. I came to see that this had been a major reason of what had made the return so hard.
Pigeons have a longstanding role as “emotional support” animals, especially in the north of England. Workers started to keep the birds because they gave them comfort and an opportunity to stare at the sky between long shifts of darkness below. During the Depression, workers on the unemployment also found a distraction in pigeons, but keeping them was seen as a sign of “idleness”.
Nowadays, pigeons are often disparaged as unintelligent, unclean or a annoyance. Before finding the rehab group, I had contacted a animal doctor, who told me: “if you bring the bird here, leave it in the parking lot and we’ll put it down.”
That? Not her. Although unlikely to ever fly again , she has taken to her newly land-based life with aplomb in a volunteer’s spare bedroom. Each satisfied sound, often prompted by her favourite snack, frozen peas, feels like a demonstration in perseverance and resilience – and I am forever grateful to her for revealing to me another side to the city I was familiar with.
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