Fluffy Causes Crow Catastrophe
We’ve written before about how corvids can recognize people who do them harm (and also those who do them well), plaguing evildoers for eternity. We also just mentioned how their cousins the Grackle are known to ferociously attack anyone who messes with their babies.
This morning in my hometown of Zagreb, a little white cat set off a chain of events that now has two firetrucks, squad cars, and a circle of bystanders in a frenzy outside of the local corner store. In an act of extremely poor judgement, the cat went for a breakfast prowl and caught itself a hatchling, leaving the other to flounder out of the nest into the bushes below. The mother bird, a Hooded Crow, erupted into a fit and began to attack everyone nearby. The sad news is that in situations like this, it is rare for the first thought to be about the bird, so no specialists were contacted. The firemen instead spent all morning trying to catch it until the second baby was ‘eaten’ (highly unlikely – my guess is they took it away) at which point the crow flew away to mourn her terrible circumstance.
My main inspiration for conveying this story is to offer advice to anyone who may encounter a similar situation. The answer is simple – you need to leave the bird alone. Crows (and blackbirds especially) become extremely vicious when their young are threatened, and in the case of this particular mommy, the only thing that will calm her is for her baby to be returned to safety – an act which can only be done by a trained wildlife rehabilitator or wildlife officer. For this reason, involvement of your local WPA or Audubon is essential to safely relocate the nest and assure that visitors to the area do not continue to be assaulted. Of course in this case, Fluffy and the firemen will likely become targets for life, but do they deserve our pity?
