Our aircraft pushed through successive sheets of freezing rain as it landed into the city. A growing unease had accompanied me during the trip, growing stronger as I walked through the airport. I resented returning to the town where I had spent my youth, after residing on the other side of the world for what had felt like a an eternity.
After a couple of days, I headed out to get a my hair cut. My attention was miles away, back across an vast expanse of water, when I became aware of something smack into the ground. I glanced down to see a pigeon on its side, sprawled, and trembling.
The impact happened just as schoolchildren were filing out from the local elementary school and so within moments a little crowd of children had assembled, surrounded by their parents. This circle of bemused faces looked down at the pigeon, unsure what to do or say. The kids were more certain: “Papa, she needs hospital, can we call an ambulance?” I removed my jacket, bent down and scooped the pigeon inside it. “Don’t worry, love, the kind man will take care of her!” said one parent with a audible relief. I had turned into the ambulance for this pigeon that had just landed abruptly, unintentionally, as I had a short time earlier.
I trudged home, arms stiffly extended, with the bird nestled inside the jacket.
Unbeknownst to me that my on-the-spot decision to rescue the bird (the name I chose for my new friend) would guide me to a web of local residents devoting significant amounts of their time to provide not only transport for feral pigeons but diagnostic imaging, convalescence, and even “pigeon physio”.
I located a small container for Belinda, prepared it with an old shirt, and put her inside. Every half hour or so, I’d lift the lid just long enough for us to make brief contact.
Those instances of common confusion marked my frantic search for what to do next. I phoned friends for advice and one recommended trying social media, where, to my astonishment, I discovered a local pigeon rescue group, and sent a request to become a member.
An Anarchic Model
With a large membership, the group has an organic system: someone in Manchester stumbles across an injured pigeon, a urgent post is created, then a comment section “assessment” ensues. If the bird is judged in need of an examination, someone with a connection to a clinic can arrange it; if it needs physio, a “rehabilitator” will step forward to care for the bird.
Volunteers each have their own finely honed skills, whether it’s mending broken wings or cleaning wounds. Their momentous, collective effort for the pigeons of the city runs entirely on goodwill.
Belinda was quickly diagnosed with neurological problems, likely a head injury, and assigned to a rehabber who would provide medication and a course of patient physio. We never found out exactly what made her to fall from the sky. I took up the role of bird taxi once more, riding the light rail across the city with Belinda in a container on my lap so she could obtain the attention she needed.
An Unexpected Lesson
After finding this hidden pigeon “NHS”, I began to feel much more positive about being back in my hometown. I doubt any of the places I had resided in while away could have anything even close. It also dawned on me that this was not the first time I’d been part of a pigeon rescue: almost 20 years earlier I’d observed one drop from the sky into the schoolyard of my secondary school. Again, children gathered around the bird, but only one – my closest friend at the time – had the nerve to pick it up and take it to security.
The aforementioned friend has since been lost – one of several friends to die in the years before my departure from Manchester. I realised that this had been a major reason of what had made returning home so difficult.
Pigeons as Companions
Pigeons have a history as “companion” animals, especially in the North. Laborers started to keep the birds because they gave them comfort and an reason to gaze up at the sky between long shifts of underground work. During the Depression, workers on the unemployment also found solace in pigeons, but keeping them was viewed as a sign of “social malaise”.
Nowadays, pigeons are often dismissed as simple, diseased or a general nuisance. Before finding the rehab group, I had contacted a vet, who told me: “if you bring the bird here, leave that in the car park and we’ll euthanise it.”
That? Not this bird. Although not expected to ever soar , she has taken to her newly earthbound life with success in a volunteer’s extra room. Each satisfied call, often elicited by her favourite food, frozen peas, feels like a example in perseverance and strength – and I am eternally thankful to her for revealing to me a new dimension to the city I thought I knew.
