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T battled through successive sheets of sleet during the approach into the city. A sinking feeling settled over me during the journey, only deepening as I made my way through the terminal. I resented having to be the city where I had grown up, after making a home on the opposite end of the world for what had felt like a lifetime.

After a couple of days, I went out to get a my hair cut. My attention was miles away, back across an vast expanse of water, when I was startled by something smack into the sidewalk. I looked down to see a rock dove on its side, splayed out, and trembling.

The crash occurred just as children were filing out from the local elementary school and so within minutes a small chorus of youngsters had formed, flanked by their mothers and fathers. This ring of confused faces peered down at the creature, not knowing what to say or do. The kids were more decisive: “Dad, she needs help, can we call an animal ambulance?” I took off my jacket, bent down and scooped the pigeon inside it. “No problem, love, 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 come down hard, against its will, as I had a few days before.

I trudged home, arms stiffly extended, with the bird tucked safely inside the garment.

Little did I know that my impromptu decision to rescue my feathered charge (the name I chose for my new friend) would guide me to a community of local residents sacrificing significant amounts of time to provide not only transport for city pigeons but diagnostic imaging, recovery care, and even “bird rehabilitation”.

I located a shoebox for Belinda, prepared 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 make brief contact.

Those periods of mutual bewilderment interrupted my desperate search for what to do from there. I contacted friends for suggestions and one suggested trying online groups, where, to my astonishment, I found a bird rehabilitation group, and sent a request to join.

An Anarchic Model

Over 3,000-strong, the group has an organic method: someone in Manchester stumbles across an ailing pigeon, a pleading post is made, then a comment section “evaluation” takes place. If the bird is deemed in need of an examination, someone with a connection to a clinic can organize it; if it needs therapy, a “carer” will offer to care for the bird.

Rehabbers each have their own carefully cultivated expertise, whether it’s setting broken wings or treating wounds. Their tremendous, collective effort for the pigeons of the city depends completely on goodwill.

Belinda was quickly assessed with a neurological issue, likely a blow to the head, and placed with a rehabber who would give pain relief and a regimen of gentle physio. We never discovered exactly what caused her to plummet. I resumed the role of bird taxi once more, taking the light rail across the city with Belinda in a box on my lap so she could obtain the attention she required.

Rediscovering Home

After stumbling across this underground pigeon “NHS”, I began to feel much differently about being back in my home town. I am skeptical any of the places I had called home while away could boast anything remotely similar. It also struck me that this was not the first time I’d been part of a pigeon aid mission: almost 20 years earlier I’d witnessed one fall from the sky into the grounds of my old school. Again, children gathered around the bird, but only one – my closest friend at the time – had the courage to pick it up and take it to a safe place.

The aforementioned friend has since been lost – one of four friends to die in the years before my departure from Manchester. I understood that this had been a major reason of what had made coming back so painful.

A History of Comfort

Pigeons have a tradition as “therapy” animals, especially in the certain regions. Miners started to raise the birds because they gave them comfort and an excuse to stare at the heavens between long shifts of underground work. During the hard times, workers on the assistance also found a distraction in pigeons, but keeping them was seen as a sign of “idleness”.

Nowadays, pigeons are often written off as unintelligent, dirty 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 lot and we’ll euthanise it.”

It? Not her. Although improbable to ever fly again , she has adapted to her newly earthbound life with success in a volunteer’s home. Each contented sound, often elicited by her favourite treat, peas, feels like a demonstration in perseverance and resilience – and I am eternally thankful to her for revealing to me a new dimension to the city I thought I knew.