Fledgling Torresian crow death (1 Viewer)

[klm70]

I've been lucky to have the same pair of resident crows raise families in my large yard gum tree for 12 years now. Over the years we've seen them raise a number of babies successfully and some they've sadly lost. It breaks my heart every time one dies. I assume it's because they were sick to begin with as I do a pretty good job protecting my yard from predators but the last two seasons we had one 4mth old very healthy juvenile crow die, reasons not apparent. And again this season with a baby that seemed to have hatched later than the other one who seemed much bstronger and independent with the parents seemingly chasing it away from the yard. I thought this odd but apparently this can be normal behaviour if there's another young one still in the nest. In any case, I noticed this young one finally out of the nest yesterday and down on our driveway, hopping around but mostly sitting for periods at a time under or in hedges. Parents were visiting it and monitoring it regularly and seemed to be encouraging it to fly but to no avail. The bird didn't even seem to be trying to fly. It got closer to dusk and the bird seemed to get itself into a ground cover that had spikey plants and high ground cover. The parents were trying to coax it out but to no avail. It seemed exhausted trying to get out. There are neighbour cats around and the patch is close to the road so a wildlife carer suggested we bring it back into our yard and put it on top of one of our hedges which we did. The parents were not happy buy they settled down when they saw where we placed him. He seemed fine until we went to sleep later that night and the parents were above him in the tree. To my absolute horror though I woke this morning to find the poor bird dead underneath the hedge on the ground. No sign of a cat attack or visible injury and the parents were around but calling sporadically. I'm at am absolute loss as to what happened to it and beating myself up that I moved it. But the parents were nearby so perhaps they didn't feed it enough, was it too exposed on top of the hedge, was it already sick, should I have brought it inside overnight? Did another bird attack it early this morning and if so why didn't the parents protect it? What could I have done different? Leaving it alone out near the road could also have resulted in its death. So many questions and I'll never know. Now the parents are calling excessively and looking for their baby. I have wrapped it up and placed it on a chair where they can see it but surely they would have seen what happened to it earlier. I'm just so confused and upset that I tried to do the right thing but to no avail. :0(

 

[delia todd]

Hi Kim.... really sad for you. It strikes me there was something wrong with it and quite probably nothing you could have done to save it I'm afraid.

You did your best and really the right thing, putting him off the ground up in a bush. Shame it didn't work out though.

BTW I've moved your post to a more appropriate forum where more people are likely to see it.

 

[klm70]

Hi Kim.... really sad for you. It strikes me there was something wrong with it and quite probably nothing you could have done to save it I'm afraid.

You did your best and really the right thing, putting him off the ground up in a bush. Shame it didn't work out though.

BTW I've moved your post to a more appropriate forum where more people are likely to see it.

Many thanks Delia. It is indeed heartbreaking. I wish I could have monitored it all night. So many 'What ifs' going through my head right now. 😔

 

[01101001]

Do you have any photos of it (when alive) or its parents?