. . . or probable death, anyway. I last wrote on I think June 2nd about the crow with white wing feathers who had taken to visiting our garden regularly. We would see him every day, skulking in the undergrowth and making quick forays onto our lawn. He was a weak flyer, and would hop from branch to branch to climb back to a safe height in the tree.
Crow has disappeared, it's a couple of weeks since we last saw him. My guess has to be that something has got him. He can't have been in very good health; even when we put food out specially for him, most of it was taken by other birds, before Crow dared make his way out of cover. We saw him attacked by a cat once, and he saw the beast off without too much difficulty - he could be quite feisty when roused, and that beak's a nasty weapon - but maybe another of the local cats got lucky.
What is probably more likely is that he has been driven off by the other local crows. I say this because his disappearance from our garden coincided with the arrival of some boisterous young crows, the product I assume of the nest not too far away in the wood. It's clear that crows will attack one of their own species that is somehow different from the norm, and we have seen it happen to our Crow earlier in the season. Whether it is the white feathers or something else about his behaviour that triggers the attack I don't know, but the world of nature can be cruel to our eyes. All I can say is that I'm sad that he's no longer with us.
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