An Event That Transformed My Life: A Dove Plummeted From the Heavens – Guiding Me to a Hidden Underground Salvation Group

Our aircraft pushed through layer after layer of freezing rain on its descent into Manchester. A sense of dread had accompanied me during the trip, only deepening as I made my way through the arrivals hall. I was unhappy about returning to the city where I had grown up, after making a home on the other side of the world for what had felt like a an eternity.

After a few days, I went out to get a my hair cut. My thoughts was distant, focused on an ocean, when I heard something strike the pavement. I glanced down to see a bird on its wings, spatchcocked, and trembling.

The impact took place just as kids were filing out from the local primary school and so within a short time a little crowd of children had formed, accompanied by their parents. This ring of confused faces looked down at the creature, not knowing what to say or do. The kids were more decisive: “Dad, she needs a vet, can we call an emergency service?” I slipped off my coat, knelt down and picked up the pigeon up into it. “It’s okay, love, the gentleman will take care of her!” said one mum with a sense of relief. I had been transformed into the rescue vehicle for this pigeon that had just fallen suddenly, involuntarily, as I had a couple of days prior.

I made my way home, arms ramrod straight, with the bird tucked safely inside the garment.

Unbeknownst to me that my spontaneous decision to medivac Belinda (the name I chose for my avian patient) would direct me to a network of local residents devoting significant amounts of effort to provide not only ambulances for city pigeons but diagnostic imaging, recovery care, and even “bird rehabilitation”.

I found a small container for Belinda, lined it with an old T-shirt, and put her inside. Every half hour or so, I’d peek inside just long enough for us to share a momentary glance.

Those instances of common bewilderment marked my desperate search for what to do from there. I called friends for suggestions and one recommended trying online groups, where, to my surprise, I stumbled upon a Manchester Pigeon Rehab group, and submitted a request to participate.

A Community Effort

With a large membership, the group has an anarchic system: someone in Manchester stumbles across an injured pigeon, a pleading 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 therapy, a “carer” will offer to foster the bird.

Rehabbers each have their own highly developed expertise, whether it’s setting broken wings or dressing wounds. Their significant, collective effort for the pigeons of the city is powered solely by goodwill.

Belinda was quickly diagnosed with neurological problems, likely a head injury, and placed with a rehabber who would give medication and a program of careful physio. We never discovered exactly what made her to plummet. I resumed the role of bird taxi once more, taking the light rail across the city with Belinda in a container on my lap so she could obtain the treatment she needed.

Rediscovering Home

After discovering this underground pigeon “health service”, I began to feel much differently about being back in my hometown. I question any of the places I had lived in while away could claim anything remotely similar. It also struck me that this was not the first time I’d been part of a pigeon rescue: almost 20 years earlier I’d observed one fall from the sky into the schoolyard of my old school. Again, children circled the bird, but only one – my closest friend at the time – had the gall to scoop it up and take it to safety.

The individual has since been lost – one of a number of companions to pass away in the years before my leaving from Manchester. I understood that this had been a major reason of what had made coming back so difficult.

A History of Comfort

Pigeons have a history as “therapy” animals, especially in the North. Miners started to care for the birds because they gave them comfort and an excuse to look up at the heavens between long shifts of darkness below. During the hard times, workers on the unemployment also found solace in pigeons, but keeping them was viewed as a sign of “social malaise”.

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

That? Not our Belinda. Although unlikely to ever fly again , she has taken to her newly grounded life with aplomb in a volunteer’s home. Each contented coo, often caused by her favourite treat, vegetables, feels like a example in perseverance and resilience – and I am always appreciative to her for unveiling for me another side to the city I thought I knew.