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T forced its way through layer after layer of sleet during the approach into the city. A sinking feeling settled over me during the trip, only deepening as I made my way through the airport. I was unhappy about coming back to the place where I had been raised, after residing on the far side of the world for what had felt like a lifetime.

After a short while, I headed out to get a haircut. My mind was distant, back across an sea, when I became aware of something smack into the ground. I looked down to see a pigeon on its back, splayed out, and twitching.

The fall occurred just as kids were streaming out from the local elementary school and so within a short time a small chorus of children had gathered, accompanied by their parents. This ring of bemused faces peered down at the pigeon, not knowing what to do or say. The kids were more decisive: “Daddy, she needs hospital, can we call an ambulance?” I removed my coat, crouched down and gently lifted the pigeon inside it. “It’s okay, sweet, the nice man will help her!” remarked one parent with a sense of relief. I had been transformed into the emergency transport for this pigeon that had just come down hard, involuntarily, as I had a few days before.

I made my way home, arms held out, with the bird tucked safely inside the jacket.

Little did I know that my on-the-spot decision to medivac the bird (the name I chose for my patient) would lead me to a web of city dwellers sacrificing significant amounts of time to provide not only rescue services for street birds but diagnostic imaging, convalescence, and even “bird rehabilitation”.

I retrieved a cardboard box for Belinda, placed inside it with an old piece of cloth, and put her inside. Every half hour or so, I’d lift the lid just long enough for us to make brief contact.

Those periods of mutual bewilderment marked my hectic search for what to do after that. I called friends for guidance and one suggested trying online groups, where, to my astonishment, I stumbled upon a bird rehabilitation group, and put in a request to join.

A Grassroots Network

Boasting thousands of members, the group has an anarchic model: someone in Manchester finds an ailing pigeon, a heartfelt post is created, then a comment section “triage” ensues. If the bird is judged in need of an scan, someone with a connection to a clinic can arrange it; if it needs therapy, a “rehabilitator” will step forward to care for the bird.

Rehabbers each have their own carefully cultivated expertise, whether it’s setting broken wings or cleaning wounds. Their momentous, cooperative effort for the pigeons of the city depends completely on volunteerism.

Belinda was promptly assessed with neurological problems, likely a blow to the head, and assigned to a rehabber who would give comfort and a course of careful physio. We never discovered exactly what made her to fall from the sky. I took up the role of pigeon ambulance once more, taking the streetcar across the city with Belinda in a box on my lap so she could obtain the care she needed.

Rediscovering Home

After discovering this hidden pigeon “NHS”, I began to feel much better about being back in my hometown. I question any of the places I had lived in while away could have anything comparable. It also dawned on me that this was not the first time I’d been part of a pigeon recovery: almost 20 years earlier I’d witnessed one plummet from the sky into the playground of my old school. Again, children circled the bird, but only one – my closest friend at the time – had the gall to rescue it and take it to a safe place.

The friend in question has since been lost – one of several friends to die in the years before my exit from Manchester. I understood that this had been a big part of what had made the return so difficult.

Pigeons as Companions

Pigeons have a tradition as “emotional support” animals, especially in the North. Workers started to care for the birds because they gave them company and an reason to look up at the open air between long shifts of subterranean gloom. During the Depression, workers on the unemployment also found a distraction in pigeons, but keeping them was considered a sign of “social malaise”.

Nowadays, pigeons are often dismissed as simple, unclean or a general nuisance. Before finding the rehab group, I had contacted a vet, who told me: “if you bring it 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 grounded life with aplomb in a volunteer’s spare bedroom. Each happy sound, often prompted by her favourite treat, peas, feels like a demonstration in resilience and fortitude – and I am always appreciative to her for unveiling for me a different facet to the city I believed I understood.