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The plane battled through successive sheets of freezing rain as it landed into the city. A growing unease settled over me during the trip, growing stronger as I made my way through the terminal. I felt bitter over coming back to the city where I had been raised, after living on the other side of the world for what had felt like a lifetime.

After a short while, I went out to get a my hair cut. My attention was far away, back across an ocean, when I heard something strike the pavement. I glanced down to see a pigeon on its side, spatchcocked, and twitching.

The crash happened just as children were filing out from the local primary school and so within moments a small chorus of little ones had assembled, flanked by their mothers and fathers. This ring of bemused faces looked down at the bird, unsure what to do or say. The kids were more decisive: “Papa, she needs a vet, can we call an emergency service?” I slipped off my anorak, crouched down and scooped the pigeon up into it. “Don’t worry, dear, the kind man will take care of her!” said one parent with a sigh of relief. I had become the ambulance for this pigeon that had just fallen suddenly, against its will, as I had a few days before.

I walked slowly home, arms ramrod straight, with the bird tucked safely inside the coat.

I had no idea that my on-the-spot decision to aid Belinda (the name I bestowed upon my patient) would lead me to a web of Mancunians devoting significant amounts of time to provide not only ambulances for feral pigeons but scans, respite care, and even “bird rehabilitation”.

I located a shoebox 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 shared confusion punctuated my frantic search for what to do from there. I contacted friends for guidance and one suggested trying online groups, where, to my astonishment, I stumbled upon a Manchester Pigeon Rehab group, and submitted a request to become a member.

A Grassroots Network

Over 3,000-strong, the group has an anarchic system: someone in Manchester stumbles across an hurt pigeon, a heartfelt post is created, then a comment section “evaluation” ensues. If the bird is deemed in need of an examination, someone with a vet link can arrange it; if it needs rehabilitation, a “rehabilitator” will volunteer to care for the bird.

Carers each have their own finely honed expertise, whether it’s mending broken wings or dressing wounds. Their momentous, cooperative effort for the pigeons of the city runs entirely on goodwill.

Belinda was rapidly assessed with brain trauma, likely a concussion, and placed with a rehabber who would give comfort and a course of patient physio. We never discovered exactly what caused her to fall from the sky. I took up the role of pigeon ambulance once more, boarding the streetcar across the city with Belinda in a container on my lap so she could obtain the treatment she required.

An Unexpected Lesson

After discovering this underground pigeon “NHS”, I began to feel much differently about being back in my city. I question any of the places I had lived in while away could boast anything remotely similar. It also dawned on me that this was not the first time I’d been connected to a pigeon rescue: almost 20 years earlier I’d seen one fall from the sky into the playground of my old school. Again, children surrounded the bird, but only one – my friend at the time – had the gall to scoop it up and take it to a safe place.

The friend in question has since been lost – one of four friends to lose their lives in the years before my exit from Manchester. I understood that this had been a significant factor of what had made the return so painful.

A History of Comfort

Pigeons have a longstanding role as “emotional support” animals, especially in the North. Laborers started to care for the birds because they gave them comfort and an opportunity to stare at the open air between long shifts of subterranean gloom. During the Depression, workers on the assistance also found solace in pigeons, but keeping them was viewed as a sign of “despair”.

Nowadays, pigeons are often disparaged as unintelligent, dirty or a general nuisance. Before finding the rehab group, I had called a vet, who told me: “if you bring the bird here, leave it in the car park and we’ll euthanise it.”

The bird? Not our Belinda. Although not expected to ever soar , she has embraced her newly land-based life with grace in a volunteer’s spare bedroom. Each happy call, often elicited by her favourite snack, vegetables, feels like a demonstration in perseverance and fortitude – and I am forever grateful to her for unveiling for me a new dimension to the city I was familiar with.