I cannot overstate how incredibly helpful our Palomacy Help Group is! It is a huge help to me and so many others each and every day. It is where I refer everyone who wants, needs or offers help. This amazing community asks, explores and answers all the questions. People and birds find support, resources, understanding. It is a beautiful gathering place for our volunteers, fosters, adopters and supporters and I love seeing new friendships blossom. It is a go-to destination for pigeon and dove rescue matters of all sorts.

Palomacy’s small volunteer team of help group moderators provides fast, trustworthy support, information and referrals to help birds every day 24/7/365 for people all around the world. They attend to more than 1,000 posts every month, heroically keeping up with every request for help in an active group of more than 6,400 members (and growing fast)! Our mods are busy people- juggling big workloads, pressing family responsibilities, constant local bird rescue issues and still they generously volunteer hours of their time, energy and patience to provide excellent, compassionate palomatic online customer service in support of thousands of needy birds and their humans. If we paid them by the keystroke, they’d all be millionaires. Unfortunately, we don’t have funding to pay them at all.

Palomacy, originally created to rescue, foster and adopt pigeons and doves in the San Francisco Bay Area, faced so much unmet need, we created a Palomacy Help Group on Facebook where people from all over can turn for rescue and care help. It has been incredibly effective! While there are lots of resources for people interested in breeding and using pigeons and doves for sport, business and hobbies, there are far fewer for those of us interested in rescuing and helping them compassionately. While we rescuers are greatly outnumbered, we are finding ever-growing effectiveness by coming together, sharing our skills, talents and support. Collective action is a powerful thing. It is inspiring to see our community members helping each other and it is powerful to see the casual cruelty of breeders, racers and hobbyists challenged, politely but firmly. We are working to create a more compassionate, honest world.

In four years, our group has grown from 457 members to 6,686 today: pigeon and dove ambassadors from all over the world committed to rescuing and helping pigeons and doves! We network to help injured birds get emergency help, to find adopters, to pair adoptable birds with great homes, to share ideas, hopes, dreams, worries and ambitions. Our group members are mostly in the US but we also have many in the UK, Canada, Australia, India, Germany, South Africa, Mexico, Spain, Italy, Poland, Romania, Philippines, Norway, France, Brazil, Argentina, New Zealand, Portugal, Hong Kong, Pakistan, Ireland and beyond. One of my favorite things about our group is it is a place where both vegans and meat-eaters connect, working side by side peaceably toward common goals. I’ve been told more than a few times by our members that our group restores their faith in humanity.

Creating this group has also created a super effective bootcamp-style Palomacy University. We’re too small and too stretched to have resources for the luxury of training time. Everything has to do double-duty. Our outreach volunteers are learning and building their bird knowledge and skills as they help staff our events. Our help group mods learn everything Palomacy does while they are on the job. They are faced with every kind of question, situation, emergency, opportunity and challenge that you can imagine (and many you couldn’t). We work together, pool our resources and expertise, our wisdom and our humor to figure it out. Thanks to the past four years of daily coaching, assisting, researching, learning and teaching, we now have a team of Palomacy experts helping birds and people all over the country from Seattle WA to Oceanside CA to Tulsa OK to Minneapolis MN to Monroe, NY to Blackstock Ontario and beyond.

Another huge benefit (and challenge) that I didn’t anticipate would develop is that our mods have also become rescuers for the birds in their areas. More birds are being saved. Thousands more. Sanctuaries are being created and I know of at least three rescues devoted to pigeons and doves that have been inspired by the previously invisible need that we are publicizing and the work that we are doing.

Group member Miriam Hoyt writes, “I suffer from depression but I come here to feel better. It’s wonderful to see people treat any animal well, but stories about adopting dogs, for example, are kind of expected because dogs are accepted by society as valuable. But pigeons are usually unnoticed or disliked. So seeing people go out of their way to treat them kindly makes me feel like there are truly good people out there. It also reminds me that all acts of kindness matter. Saving one bird makes a world of difference to that bird. Seeing people love these underdog animals makes me so happy.”

People find a bird in trouble, post for help and are quickly, kindly assisted. People post questions they’ve had for years about birds rescued long ago and get new insights into their old friends. People share their happy moments, their worries, their heartbreaks. Together we learn more and better ways to care for the birds we love. We coach against unsafe and exploitive practices. We expose the truth behind cruel “sports” like pigeon racing and businesses like “dove release”. Together, through our posts and sharing, we are exponentially increasing awareness and advocacy for these amazing birds who have been so egregiously exploited and neglected.

Moderator Ashley Dietrich writes, “Rescue can be mentally and physically strenuous work, and we’re dealing daily with the aftermath of human disregard for animals. As a new rehabber, I struggled (mostly alone) to find resources and accurate information, so I know how vital the help group is. Modding has shown me that there are many caring people out there who want to help birds.  Whereas rescue work can be isolating, we foster a supportive community. It’s wonderful to be part of a team that empowers others to give a pigeon or dove that life-saving chance, allowing us to make an impact beyond our local areas.”

Our volunteer moderators, lovingly called our Mod Squad, spend long hours and precious energy managing the tone and accuracy of the content posted. As challenging as helping the birds is, it is only through people that we can help them so exceptional people-skills are required. Moderators have to be very empathetic and solution-oriented. Moderators have to manage their own stress and concerns to gently, constructively coach group members about unsafe situations without ruffling feathers and hurting feelings. They have to diplomatically referee differing opinions about a vast array of topics across myriad communication styles. Moderators do their best to attend to everyone’s needs and feelings but even so, sometimes drama flares and conflicts erupt. We are not the group for everyone. People can be touchy online. Members agree to our group’s rules (don’t breed, be kind, don’t be rude, safe bird practices) when they join, but even so issues arise sometimes. This member’s response to the gentle guidance against breeding was to curse us and so they were removed from the group.

The Internet can be a maddening place and our mods work hard to keep our group polite, friendly, accurate and bird-first. When selecting moderators, we choose members who are exceptionally patient, positive, solution-oriented, with a give-them-the-benefit-of-the-doubt sort of approach. This work is so hard and our mods are some of our hardest working volunteers! To me, the people & calm communication skills are what’s most important. The rest- all our principles and practices-  can be learned. The only way we can help the birds is by helping the people interacting on their behalf. Meet our amazing Mod Squad here.

Group member April Salem writes, “With so many members, there is a lot of input and variety of ideas of how to rescue or care for our birds. Over the years I have come to “know” some of the pidgies that get posted. Its a very friendly group and everyone wants the best outcome. When birds are ill or too injured when rescued this is a place to vent sadness and get emotional support. The members love their pidgies and respect their “natural pidgie ways”. Here we learn “oh thats normal behavior” or ways to help both pidge and adoptive family.”

Member Bee Nellis writes, “90% of my time on Facebook goes to this group. Looking through posts. Seeing what everyone and their pigeons are up to. Getting ideas of how to make life better for the boys. This group is also a huge support system and people go above and beyond to help each other, and that is such a reaffirming thing to see. It really helps you feel like you can ease in to the life of a pigeon parent because there’s a village. It’s also uplifting to see all the volunteer events, the outreach that Palomacy is doing, etc. Just a wonderful group all around. it also gives me more of an excuse to spam people with photos of the tall bois.”

One of our newest mods, Jenna Close writes, “I often tell people that Palomacy’s Facebook group exemplifies everything good about social media. I never would have known what to do when I first found a dove and, later, two pigeons who needed help. I got helpful answers immediately, and felt so welcomed. It’s one of the only places on Facebook I want to hang out in every night. So… becoming a moderator seemed like a natural step; a way to give back to an organization that helped me, a way to learn more about these amazing birds, and a way to hang out with the coolest flock of people on the planet. I’m new to moderating (but not to the group itself) and I absolutely love it.”

To all of you who are Palomacy Help Group members, thank you for sharing this wonderful, important, challenging and much needed work! And if you’re not yet, you are invited to join in with our pigeon and dove-loving Palomacy Help Group rescue community at www.Facebook.com/groups/Palomacy We’ll look forward to seeing you and your birds!