As the Feather Turns

UPDATE: The crow is doing fine.


There has been a bit of drama in the backyard as of late.

It all started a couple of weeks ago when the neighbor's cat, Max, managed to tackle a crow.  the crow somehow escaped and ran off to tell all its crow friends.  The next couple of days were filled with a cacophony of crow cawing and posturing.  Max couldn't even step outside, and anytime our dog came out she got the same treatment.  Things finally started to quiet down until a few days later when our neighbor found a baby crow across the alley who had fallen out of its nest.  It was about half the size of a full grown crow and its wings and tail weren't quite developed enough for it to fly.  Our alley is crawling with cats so our neighbor kept it in a live trap and fed it dog food for a couple of days.

 Curious

He tried to get it to fly but despite the encouragement of its crow posse it just wasn't there yet.  It ended up on top of our roof for a few hours until it made a valiant last attempt and fell all the way down.  I tried to pick it up and put it back on the roof but I'm too short so we ended up corralling it in the garage in the same dog crate that housed the poor bunny our dog dispatched early this year.  It was there overnight and we were feeding it dog food and mealworms.  We let it out today to stretch its wings and I cleaned the crate and made a perch so it's not sitting in its own filth.

 It was actually mostly wet dog food that it had dumped out and sat in

It seems strong, hungry, and in reasonably good spirits.  It's way too old to bond so it still has a healthy fear of humans, dogs, and cats.  I'm hoping it can be successfully released once it's strong enough.  I was also worried about avian flu and avian pox so we brought it to the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center.  I emailed them for a followup this morning.