An Experience That Changed My Perspective: A Dove Plummeted From Above – Guiding Me to a Covert Below-the-Radar Salvation Group

Our aircraft pushed through wall after wall of icy precipitation on its descent into its destination. A growing unease settled over me during the trip, intensifying as I walked through the arrivals hall. I felt bitter over returning to the city where I had grown up, after living on the far side of the world for what had felt like a an age.

After a couple of days, I headed out to get a haircut. My thoughts was far away, lingering over an ocean, when I heard something smack into the sidewalk. I gazed down to see a pigeon on its side, sprawled, and twitching.

The fall took place just as kids were streaming out from the local elementary school and so within moments a small chorus of children had gathered, surrounded by their mums and dads. This circle of puzzled faces peered down at the pigeon, uncertain what to say or do. The kids were more certain: “Daddy, she needs hospital, can we call an ambulance?” I slipped off my coat, crouched down and picked up the pigeon into it. “Don’t worry, dear, the gentleman will take care of her!” exclaimed one mum with a sigh of relief. I had been transformed into the emergency transport for this pigeon that had just landed abruptly, involuntarily, as I had a few days before.

I trudged home, arms stiffly extended, with the bird curled up inside the jacket.

I had no idea that my impromptu decision to medivac my feathered charge (the name I chose for my patient) would guide me to a community of city dwellers sacrificing significant amounts of their time to provide not only rescue services for street birds but diagnostic imaging, respite care, and even “bird rehabilitation”.

I retrieved a small container for Belinda, placed inside 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 awkwardly lock eyes.

Those periods of mutual bewilderment punctuated my frantic search for what to do after that. I called friends for suggestions and one suggested trying Facebook, where, to my amazement, I found a bird rehabilitation group, and submitted a request to participate.

A Grassroots Network

With a large membership, the group has an anarchic system: someone in Manchester finds an hurt pigeon, a urgent post is published, then a comment section “evaluation” takes place. If the bird is deemed in need of an X-ray, someone with a connection to a clinic can get it one; if it needs therapy, a “rehabilitator” will volunteer to foster the bird.

Volunteers each have their own carefully cultivated skills, whether it’s mending broken wings or cleaning wounds. Their significant, cooperative effort for the pigeons of the city is powered solely by goodwill.

Belinda was rapidly assessed with brain trauma, likely a head injury, and matched with a rehabber who would administer medication and a course of careful physio. We never discovered exactly what made her to plummet. I took up the role of pigeon ambulance once more, riding the tram across the city with Belinda in a container on my lap so she could receive the treatment she needed.

An Unexpected Lesson

After stumbling across this underground pigeon “health service”, I began to feel much differently about being back in my home town. I question any of the places I had resided in while away could claim anything comparable. It also dawned on me that this was not the first time I’d been involved in a pigeon recovery: almost 20 years earlier I’d observed one fall from the sky into the schoolyard of my secondary school. Again, children surrounded the bird, but only one – my best friend at the time – had the gall to scoop it up and take it to a safe place.

The friend in question has since passed away – one of a number of companions to die in the years before my departure from Manchester. I came to see that this had been a big part of what had made returning home so difficult.

A History of Comfort

Pigeons have a history as “therapy” animals, especially in the certain regions. Laborers started to care for the birds because they gave them company and an excuse to look up at the heavens between long shifts of darkness below. During the economic downturn, workers on the assistance also found comfort in pigeons, but keeping them was considered a sign of “social malaise”.

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

It? Not her. Although unlikely to ever soar , she has adapted to her newly earthbound life with grace in a volunteer’s spare bedroom. Each satisfied call, often elicited by her favourite snack, frozen peas, feels like a example in adaptability and strength – and I am forever grateful to her for showing me a new dimension to the city I thought I knew.