Little injured hooded crow baby, just arrived with us.

I suddenly received a phone call saying that a small hooded crow had been found, lying for several days in the sun, with no parent crows or nest anywhere nearby. I rushed over, and together with the woman who found the chick, we called 1812 (Animal Protection Hotline), who unfortunately couldn’t really help.
So I ended up taking the little one home to care for her.

Together with my partner Gry, the first thing we did was remove a huge amount of mites, fleas, and other parasites from her feathers and even her nostrils. I could clearly see marks on her neck from a cat or some other predator that had grabbed her.

From one of her nostrils, tiny mites or worms suddenly poured out, so we immediately started cleaning the wound there and the wound by her beak, which we disinfected. After a thorough cleaning, we worked on her feathers, treated her for fleas, and slowly Baby June — as we named her — began to look a bit more alive than dead.

She was completely dehydrated and overheated, so our focus was cooling her down and getting fluids into her. Hydrating a crow can be tricky, because you can easily drown it if you try to make it drink water directly.
So I tried different alternatives — for example, soaking peas in water, gently crushing them with my fingers, and feeding them to her so she would get moisture safely.

Different types of baby food puree also helped, and we could sneak that into her without any trouble. The next day she was already improving massively. She was FAR too young to be out of the nest, and only the gods know which animal grabbed her or how she ended up where she was found. She couldn’t walk, crawl, or fly — someone definitely planned to eat her, but must have been interrupted and fled, leaving poor little June behind in the sun.

We later had her injuries checked, and they looked free from infection. She started grooming herself and generally looked happier and more comfortable.

Every now and then, our little jackdaw Nova was allowed to help with the feeding. Her presence made Baby June open her beak, because she thought Nova was her mother coming with food — which made it much easier for us to quickly sneak in a bite for her.

It eventually worked: I managed to rehabilitate June. Her broken wing healed, she learned to fly, and I had begun introducing her to the local crows. She even met my crow friends at Moesgård and was lucky enough to be with me when TV2 Østjylland suddenly appeared and filmed us.
So for a while, she was probably one of Denmark’s most famous hooded crows, with over a million views online and shown on TV in every region of the country.

Sadly, June passed away very suddenly. Everything had been going well, and she looked like she was about to be accepted into the local crow flock. Then out of nowhere, she became dizzy and couldn’t put weight on one of her legs. She had been flying around, and we had been playing and enjoying ourselves in the field by my home.
Suddenly she behaved strangely, kept falling onto her side, and couldn’t sit on my arm or shoulder without falling off.

When we got home, I made a little nest for her close to the ground so she could rest. She crawled inside and fell asleep.
When I returned about an hour later to check on her, she had passed away peacefully. <3

It completely knocked the wind out of me, because I had truly fallen in love with that little crow.
I later buried her in my garden and made a small memorial bed for her, with tiny shelters for the other animals that visit the yard.