My friend the crow has a limp!

‘Storm Hannah’ blasted the British Isles on Friday night and through into Saturday. The weather forecaster said it was ‘unseasonably late’. To my ears that puts it in the category of unusual and severe weather events now battering the planet in many different places. Rain lashed my window deep in the night and, as I listened safe in my warm bed, my mind turned to what this storm might mean for the animals facing it outside. It is peak nesting season.

Now I have to admit that I like crows. A pair regularly come into the garden and part of the privilege of often working at home is that over the last few years I have got to know them quite well. They are larger than any of the other regular bird visitors. They are also very wary; sensible for a species that is so widely vilified, but they also know that little gifts of food are regularly available on the lawn here (a prize for which they compete with a pair of magpies). One interesting behaviour they regularly exhibit is that if they judge that the food is too dry, they soak it in the small stone bird bath for a minute or two before swallowing it or flying away with it.

On Saturday – very unusually - no crows and no magpies visited the garden. I wondered if the storm had killed them. The lawn and the streets beyond were strewn with twigs, leaves, blossom and buds that had been ripped off trees by the power of the storm. I imagined the crows trying to hold their nests together high in a widely rocking tree in the black of night. I imagined them trying to keep their fledglings safe from the punishing blasts of wind, rain and hail.

Then today (Sunday) one returned. Typically, the crows call one to another in their famously harsh voices – in part I think to advise that there is food available and no threat - but today he (or she) was silent. He (or she) was also limping. Not badly (no toes missing, no bones broken) but still clearly showing what I hope is only a strain. He picked up some food. He carefully soaked it. Then he drank long and deep from the bird bath before he flew away.

Later today, I found myself some miles away by chance looking up at a tree holding a colony of crows. I listened to their calling. Was it a little more frantic than usual? They certainly sounded busy. I could see nests, or at least remains of nests, partly hidden up behind the new leaves. Then I went to look under the tree. The ground was strewn with bodies. Near-fledgling crow youngsters, their flight-feathers not fully-formed and their freshly-dead bodies starting to draw flies. They were perhaps just a few days off leaving the nest. All the hard-work of their parents shattered in one atypical fearsome night when what should have been the relative safety of a nest high above the ground was totally destroyed.

So, in response to those who are again calling in the UK for a cull of crows (and other similar carnivorous birds), take note – there has just been a cull! I don’t doubt that the crows will ‘re-group’, those that have lost chicks, but not their mates, will probably try for a second brood. We can’t know how successful this may be.

Some will suggest that these losses – which I suspect were widespread (and did the starlings, rooks and others nesting high in trees fare any better?) – are nature in action. I don’t think so and as atypical weather events hit our wildlife over and over again, we can expect populations to suffer. Indeed, I think the key debate now should not be about culling but quite the opposite: trying to make wild populations more robust in the face of unprecedented changes.

Meanwhile, one magpie has also returned to the little patch of lawn that is my window on its world and hopefully both his partner and the crow’s will return in coming days.