An Experience That Changed My Life: A Dove Plummeted From Above – Directing Me to a Covert Below-the-Radar Rescue Network

Our aircraft battled through layer after layer of icy precipitation during the approach into its destination. A growing unease filled me during the trip, growing stronger as I made my way through the arrivals hall. I was unhappy about coming back to the place where I had been raised, after living 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 trim. My attention was miles away, back across an ocean, when I heard something strike the pavement. I glanced down to see a bird on its back, sprawled, and convulsing.

The crash occurred just as schoolchildren were emerging from the local elementary school and so within moments a little crowd of little ones had assembled, surrounded by their parents. This group of bemused faces peered down at the pigeon, unsure what to say or do. The kids were more decisive: “Dad, she needs a vet, can we call an animal ambulance?” I slipped off my coat, crouched down and gently lifted the pigeon into it. “It’s okay, dear, the gentleman will take care of her!” remarked one mum with a audible relief. I had turned into the emergency transport for this pigeon that had just come down hard, involuntarily, as I had a couple of days prior.

I trudged home, arms held out, with the bird nestled inside the coat.

I had no idea that my spontaneous decision to aid my feathered charge (the name I gave my avian patient) would lead me to a web of city dwellers sacrificing significant amounts of effort to provide not only rescue services for feral pigeons but scans, recovery care, and even “bird rehabilitation”.

I retrieved a small container for Belinda, lined it with an old T-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 periods of mutual bewilderment interrupted my desperate search for what to do next. I phoned friends for advice and one suggested trying Facebook, where, to my amazement, I found a bird rehabilitation group, and put in a request to join.

A Community Effort

Boasting thousands of members, the group operates on an anarchic system: someone in Manchester discovers an hurt pigeon, a pleading post is created, then a comment section “assessment” follows. If the bird is considered in need of an examination, someone with a veterinary contact can get it one; if it needs rehabilitation, a “rehabber” will step forward to foster the bird.

Carers each have their own carefully cultivated specialities, whether it’s repairing broken wings or dressing wounds. Their tremendous, combined effort for the pigeons of the city depends completely on goodwill.

Belinda was rapidly diagnosed with neurological problems, likely a blow to the head, and assigned to a rehabber who would administer medication and a course of patient physio. We never learned exactly what made her to drop from above. I took up the role of bird taxi once more, boarding the streetcar across the city with Belinda in a box on my lap so she could receive the treatment she required.

Rediscovering Home

After discovering this underground pigeon “NHS”, I began to feel much more positive about being back in my hometown. I am skeptical any of the places I had called home while away could have anything comparable. It also occurred to 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 grounds of my secondary school. Again, children surrounded the bird, but only one – my best friend at the time – had the courage to scoop it up and take it to a safe place.

The friend in question has since passed away – one of four friends to die in the years before my leaving from Manchester. I realised that this had been a big part of what had made coming back 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 excuse to look up at the open air between long shifts of darkness below. During the hard times, workers on the assistance also found solace in pigeons, but keeping them was viewed as a sign of “despair”.

Nowadays, pigeons are often dismissed as simple, unclean or a general nuisance. Before finding the rehab group, I had contacted a veterinarian, who told me: “if you bring it here, leave it in the lot and we’ll put it down.”

That? Not this bird. Although unlikely to ever soar , she has embraced her newly land-based life with success in a volunteer’s spare bedroom. Each satisfied coo, often elicited by her favourite treat, vegetables, feels like a demonstration in perseverance and strength – and I am eternally thankful to her for unveiling for me another side to the city I was familiar with.