Living in rural Tuscany, I have been able to indulge my love of animals. The present count is two dogs, three cats (two strays and one of their kittens) and a hooded crow.
The dogs found the crow almost two years ago in the field behind the house. She was badly injured, dragging a wing and seemed to be lame too. I called the dogs off and took them back to the house.
Then, as it was a hot day, I took the poor bird some water, placed her in the shade and went away. I knew I should let Nature take its course, plus I wasn’t really equipped to deal with an injured crow.
But a couple of nights later my husband Alan said, “I think your crow has come to see you,” and there she was, making her way slowly up our long drive, pursued by a cat. What could I do?
Crow Rescue
To cut a long story and a lot of bandaging short, I rescued her and put her in a dog crate. I knew by now she was a hooded crow rather than the more spookily named carrion crow, as she had a collar of grey feathers, the rest being a glossy black.
I named her Merlina and had got very attached to her, even though it wasn’t at all mutual. In fact much to my dismay, having saved her life and everything, she seemed to be terrified of me. I thought I had better get the professionals in and so called our local animal sanctuary, who collected her and took her to a wild bird rehab centre in Florence, Tuscany. I gave the rehab people a message that if she couldn’t be released I would like to have her back to take care of her.
Merlina Comes Home
After a short stay, the wild bird people said she was not ‘auto sufficiente,’ that is, she couldn’t take care of herself. And although they had tried to save it, they’d been forced to remove her wing, plus she had a gammy leg, although other than that she got around pretty well. So two weeks later we were reunited. I was thrilled, and maybe she was too. Hard to tell.
I built her an aviary from an old grape pergola in the garden, which took me two days, a lot of swearing and a hundred euros worth of wire netting. I set it up with some branches, trying to calculate the angle she could manage with the one wing and everything. It gave me a ridiculous amount of pleasure trying to recreate a natural kind of environment for her – trying to think like a crow. But I wasn’t completely deranged. I had a bright bird on my hands after all who needed to be kept amused.
Brain Box
It has long been known that crows are highly intelligent, some studies claim they are the most intelligent of all birds, others put them at number seven on the most intelligent animals in the world list, just behind dogs and dolphins.
After getting Merlina I decided I had better get educated in crows. I watched some incredible footage on YouTube of crows in Japan that dropped walnuts from their vantage point over a set of traffic lights. They waited for the cars to crush the nuts but didn’t swoop down and collect them till the lights had turned red.
I even watched with my mouth open as a crow fashioned a hook from a piece of wire and used it to access food which had been placed in a tube. Some crows talked, sounding like parrots. I realised I had chosen to get up close and personal with the bird equivalent of a genius.
Food Fit for a Crow
Apart from keeping her amazing brain occupied with an array of toys, I had the problem of food. I was unsure at first of what to give her to eat, but by trial and error I now have a kind of routine established. She gets a daily mix of chicken liver, insectivore pellets, salad, fruit, pine nuts (which cost a fortune), some puppy food (the most expensive kind) and dandelion leaves, when in season. I also give her a raw hen’s egg every two or three days. When we had the builders, they stood and watched incredulously as I prepared her breakfast. “Antipasti!” they laughed when they saw the plate of delicacies I’d prepared for my avian gourmet.
She also has water in various containers (for fun) and takes great delight in hiding her food under an upturned dog dish. This dish has also proved to be an excellent hiding place for her collection of small objects. Stones, beads, pinecones and even silver paper is regularly placed under the dish and then moved on a whim.
She doesn’t hate me anymore, I don’t think. She doesn’t hide when I approach the cage but just pecks at the branch she’s sitting on as I talk to her. “Ciao Merlina,” I say. I keep hoping she’ll reply. Maybe she will one day as crows can live – I now know until they are twenty years old. She sits on the highest branch in her aviary and bobs up and down cawing when we go out in the car or when I go on my daily walks with the dogs. She even tolerates the dogs sitting against her aviary and the cats sleeping on the roof, but gives a warning shriek if anything other than the animals she knows approaches. The dogs then go racing to the rescue. She is part of the family now.
Lonely hearts
She looks sleek and healthy, she hops about and keeps herself entertained, but now I worry that she is lonely. So I’m scouring the fields for any other injured hooded crows. But you can’t force these things and I think when the time is right, one will just turn up. And I really hope it will, because if one crow creates magic, just imagine what two could do.