Esther the Crow

The week we provided hospice care for a fledgling

I found her on a roundabout in town, looking fierce and exhausted. Luckily I have a habit of carrying around a canvas bird catching bag for exactly these occasions so I scooped her up and took her home, driving with her nestled between my lap and the steering wheel.

As it is almost impossible to sex crows, I arbitrarily designated her as female and named her Esther after the author Esther Woolfson, whose book Corvus I had recently finished. It seemed like the best sort of serendipity.

She looked scraggly, her leg was clearly injured and she was dehydrated and underweight. Too young and sickly to simply be left in a highly urban area, we decided to give her some time. Sometimes that’s all they need.

We set her up over night in our dogs old crate, a large stick through the middle, water and food, a bed and a dark corner so she could move and hide as she wanted. At night we closed the door but during the day she would hop and flap around our living room, exploring this new furnished land.

In the end, as she got brighter and her leg seemed better, she also became increasingly frustrated with her inability to fly. We discovered she had McDonald’s disease, causing her feathers to be brittle. She was to be grounded for the foreseeable future, possible forever.

Too old to be domesticated, her spirit was already wild and so we passed her over to the SSPCA to be humanely put to sleep while we had a little cry in her honour. And that is the story of how we almost had a pet crow.

As a rule, you should leave fledgling birds alone, they are usually just finding their wings with parents nearby. But if not, the SSPCA in Scotland (RSPCA in England & Wales, or your own country’s equivalent service) are wonderful resources for information and help.