Monday, April 02, 2012

Crow twice 'saves' baby penguin pigeon from busy road

A crow rescued a baby pigeon from certain death by twice dragging it to ­safety from a busy road after it fell out of its nest. The helpless bird was left floundering - unable to fly - in the middle of a road full of cars when it was picked up and rescued by a passing black crow as cars sped past. The footage was caught by Chuka Okey, 28, who started filming on his phone because he had never seen a baby pigeon before. He said: “It was truly astonishing to watch.

“The baby pigeon looked completely doomed but the crow twice swooped in to take it to safety. I was amazed that a bird like the crow could be so empathetic and aware that the pigeon was in danger.” He began filming the pigeon last Saturday near his home in Brockley, South London, after noticing the bird had fallen out of its nest on a nearby bridge. After a passing car drove past the bird - narrowly avoiding killing it - Chuka almost stepped in to rescue it.



But then the crow appeared on the pavement, looking left and right, before darting into the road to help the distressed pigeon. The crow swiftly picked it up in his beak and moved it to the safety of the gutter - seconds before two more cars zoomed past. In a final act, the bird dashed one more time into the road to picked up the pigeon, placing in safely on the pavement. Chuka added: “It just goes to show that acts of kindness are not just reserved to humans. I have no doubt that the pigeon’s days would have been numbered had the crow not stepped in.”

However, ornithologists were slightly more sceptical that the crow was trying to save the life of the pigeon. Paul Stancliffe, a spokesman for the British Trust of Ornithology said: “Crows are extremely intelligent creatures and very aware of their surroundings. Some crows have brains the size of walnuts so I’m sure this crow knew what it was doing. Unfortunately, crows survive from eating road kill so it is most likely that the crow was trying to move the bird out of the road so it could eat it later but you never know.”

Video.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Err How does a PENGUIN fall out of a tree to start with :-)

arbroath said...

Oops!

Yesterday was a long day! :)

Anonymous said...

I too think the crow may have had the baby bird on its menu. I never knew that crows actually killed things, like birds, until a few years ago when a neighbor down my street reported that a crow had killed a sparrow and was using the neighbor's bird-bath to wash his kill off with. Weird.

Lurker111

Anonymous said...

Anthropomorphism FTW! That's what happens when you're reading Susan Sontag's drivel instead of paying attention in science class.