An Experience That Altered Me: A Dove Plummeted Out of the Sky – Guiding Me to a Hidden Undercover Salvation Group

The plane battled through layer after layer of freezing rain as it landed into the city. A sense of dread settled over me during the journey, growing stronger as I shuffled through the arrivals hall. I was unhappy about coming back to the place 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 couple of days, I went out to get a haircut. My thoughts was far away, back across an sea, when I heard something hit the pavement. I glanced down to see a bird on its back, sprawled, and convulsing.

The fall happened just as children were streaming out from the local primary school and so within a short time a group of little ones had assembled, surrounded by their mothers and fathers. This group of puzzled faces stared down at the pigeon, uncertain what to do or say. The kids were more definitive: “Daddy, she needs help, can we call an emergency service?” I removed my coat, bent down and gently lifted the pigeon inside it. “It’s okay, sweet, the gentleman will look after her!” remarked one mother with a audible relief. I had become the rescue vehicle for this pigeon that had just come down hard, unintentionally, as I had a couple of days prior.

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

Unbeknownst to me that my on-the-spot decision to rescue Belinda (the name I gave my avian patient) would lead me to a web of local residents giving up significant amounts of time to provide not only rescue services for city pigeons but X-rays, respite care, and even “pigeon physio”.

I found a small container for Belinda, lined it with an old T-shirt, and put her inside. Every short while, I’d open the box just long enough for us to awkwardly lock eyes.

Those periods of shared confusion interrupted my hectic search for what to do from there. I contacted friends for advice and one proposed trying social media, where, to my surprise, I found a Manchester Pigeon Rehab group, and put in a request to participate.

An Anarchic Model

With a large membership, the group follows an anarchic system: someone in Manchester finds an hurt pigeon, a heartfelt post is created, then a comment section “evaluation” takes place. If the bird is considered in need of an examination, someone with a connection to a clinic can organize it; if it needs physio, a “rehabber” will offer to look after the bird.

Carers each have their own carefully cultivated expertise, whether it’s mending broken wings or treating wounds. Their momentous, collective effort for the pigeons of the city runs entirely on volunteerism.

Belinda was rapidly diagnosed with neurological problems, likely a blow to the head, and assigned to a rehabber who would provide pain relief and a program of patient physio. We never found out exactly what made her to fall from the sky. I assumed the role of avian courier once more, taking the tram across the city with Belinda in a box on my lap so she could receive the treatment she required.

A New Perspective

After discovering this secret pigeon “health service”, I began to feel much differently about being back in my city. I doubt any of the places I had lived in while away could have anything even close. It also struck me that this was not the first time I’d been involved in a pigeon recovery: almost 20 years earlier I’d observed one plummet from the sky into the schoolyard of my old school. Again, children surrounded the bird, but only one – my best friend at the time – had the gall to pick it up and take it to safety.

The aforementioned friend has since passed away – one of four friends to pass away in the years before my departure from Manchester. I understood that this had been a significant factor of what had made coming back so painful.

Pigeons as Companions

Pigeons have a longstanding role as “emotional support” animals, especially in the north of England. Laborers started to care for the birds because they gave them solace and an opportunity to look up at the heavens between long shifts of darkness below. During the Depression, workers on the assistance also found solace in pigeons, but keeping them was seen as a sign of “idleness”.

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

That? Not this bird. Although not expected to ever fly again , she has adapted to her newly land-based life with grace in a volunteer’s extra room. Each contented sound, often elicited by her favourite food, vegetables, feels like a demonstration in perseverance and resilience – and I am eternally thankful to her for unveiling for me a new dimension to the city I believed I understood.