I actually wrote a blog yesterday which I never got round to scheduling/posting due to a 'corvid incident'.
We had to catch this regal-looking [scared witless and really hecking angry] lad yesterday. He's sick, possibly salmonella or something, with a drooping wing and very pale feathers. He can't fly for more than a metre or so (which is good only when it came to catching him).
We had to chase him for a very long time, herding him into trees and corners and trying not to get him (or us) run over by cars. In the end, we chased him in straight lines until he was too tired to run.
I feel intensely bad for him. Chasing a creature until it's so exhausted that it's throwing up is not nice. It also requires a weird balance of deeply caring for the creature [such that you're mad enough to want to do this in the first place] while also being a calculating predator [so you can actually catch the damn thing].
He was, apparently, unlikely to have survived winter out on his own. The rest of the crow flock here had ostracised him already. We have good relations with the crows, and we were worried about them turning on us after seeing essentially hunt one of their own. But they simply... did not care. They were actively soliciting us for peanuts while the chase was in progress.
I wish him well. If he makes it and returns, he'll probably never forgive us -- and, fair enough. But hopefully, he gets to stick around to hate us.
I'll stick yesterday's draft blog on schedule to post later.