Dear Readers, I am walking along East Finchley High Road when I see a crow flying off with what looks like a little bag in its beak. Instantly, a young man sitting on a bench nearby leaps up and runs after it.
“Blimey”, I think, “Did that crow steal the man’s lunch or something?”
And then I get to the ‘lawn’ in front of the block of flats, and there, in the grass, is a baby wood pigeon.
I look at the man, and he looks at me, and we both look at the pigeon, who is blinking in the sunlight. The crow is circling overhead.
Both of us humans are a bit unsure about what to do.
“I have racing pigeons,” says the man, “and I could just pop the baby under one of my hens, but then he’ll grow up thinking he’s a racing pigeon”.
I had never noticed how big the beaks are on young pigeons. The crow comes a bit lower, and the pigeon tilts his head to look at his nemesis.
“If you hop over the fence and pick him up, I’ll try to get some help”, I say.
And two minutes later I’m heading for home with a baby pigeon in my hands. The nestling seems relatively calm – I can see that there are the first signs of wing feathers. A few more weeks and he’d have been big enough to leave the nest.
I pop into the RSPCA shop – they run around trying to find a box to put him in, but have no contacts to help, although the man behind the counter is very kind and empathic. I know that vets generally can’t/won’t help with wild animals either (with some notable and honourable exceptions), so I call in the hive-mind on our street.
One of my neighbours fosters cats, and is a great source of all things animal-related. Within minutes she sends me a phone number. The person that I call puts me in touch with a lady who is involved with London Wildlife Protection, a group who rescue pigeons and other birds all over London.
I talk to Babs, who says she will take ‘the little woodie’. She lives close to Old Street, so we agree to meet at the Northern Line station.
Little Woody has what must be a most surprising trip in a box to Old Street, where Babs appears on a bike with a backpack where she’s constructed a little ‘nest’ for Woody.
“Will you let me know how he gets on?” I ask, but she grimaces.
“I’ve got 4 already, and I’m so busy with them”, she says. “And he’ll be passed on to a rehabber with an aviary so I won’t have him for very long. ”
I understand. Who wants to be sending texts and stuff when you’re up every hour feeding baby birds? Much better that the birds are looked after.
” He looks good, though”, she says. “He’ll survive”.
And so she pedals off, and I head for home, thinking about how everyone has tried to save this little bird, from the man with the racing pigeons and the man in the RSPCA shop to my neighbour, to the network of bird rehabbers. What a complicated species we are, bombing the life out of one another on the one hand and yet coming together to save a pigeon on the other.
Hmm. Interesting. I wonder why you “saved” it from a native, natural crow which is, I imagine, feeling rather hungry? I regularly euthanase wood pigs which have been hit by cars or injured by cats, and leave them out for the sparrowhawk/red kites/foxes/badgers. There are plenty of wood pigs about and they are not a conservation concern. Would you have “saved” it from sparrowhawk, I wonder? Is a crow in some way less deserving? More philosophising in another column would be welcome. X
Hi Trevor, a good question and one that I thought about too…and yes, in this instance I would have saved it from a sparrowhawk too. I would also have left it to its fate/euthanised it if it appeared to be injured, but it seemed as if it was intact. The crow was already circling the nest, where no doubt the woodpigeon had brothers and sisters.
These decisions are made in a fraction of a second. Isn’t it a human instinct to try to save the defenceless? Not always a sensible one, I agree, but very human.
How uplifting to read this kindness of human(e) strangers .
Yes, I would have tried to save it somehow too. A very uplifting story! 👍👍😊
I too thought about the hungry crow, but it’s very likely I too would have rushed to save the pigeon. Seeing an animal in distress brings out the savior in me and, I imagine, many. I very much doubt the crow had trouble finding another meal.
Once, I spent quite a while intimidating a raccoon away from a family of baby Mallards. The mother had been trying unsuccessfully to protect her babies. He did eventually shamble off. Mallards are not endangered and I’m sure the raccoon was hungry but, well, I was Team Duck in that instance.
I once watched a black-backed gull trying to take a duckling in St Jame’s Park – the gull had one wing of the duckling, its mother had the other wing. The gull was definitely winning, until a chap in a very smart suit hopped over the fence and waved his umbrella at the very irritated gull. The duckling ran back to his mother and the whole family departed with a great deal of quacking.
I love the picture that forms in my mind of the man in the very smart suit wielding his umbrella for duckling justice in St James Park. So very English. All he needs is a monocle! I can’t quite imagine the same scenario in Central Park.
Makes me wish I’d had an umbrella with which to menace the raccoon!