Found a crow on the ground? Read this before picking it up

From April to July, calls to wildlife rescue centres about crows "found on the ground" increase dramatically. Most of these animals don't need rescuing.

Not because they're fine by luck — but because what looks like a problem is actually a normal phase of their development.

The brancher: a bird that can't fly yet

Young corvids (carrion crows, jackdaws, magpies) leave the nest before they can fly fully. For days they stay on the ground or on low branches, clumsy, with tufts of downy feathers still showing, while the parents continue to feed them.

This stage is called branching and lasts one to two weeks.

A brancher you find on the ground:

Has bright, alert eyes
Moves, even if clumsily
Reacts to your presence by trying to get away or hop off
Has legs that can bear its body weight

If it matches this description, leave it there. The parents are watching from a nearby tree and will return to feed it. Picking it up means interrupting this process and condemning it to weeks of rehabilitation instead of just a few days.

When intervention really is necessary

Intervene if:

It's injured: drooping wing, bent leg, visible wounds, blood
It's been taken by a cat (even without visible injuries — bacteria from a cat's mouth are lethal within 24–48 hours)
It's completely motionless and unresponsive
It's in a place with immediate risk: busy road, loose dog, direct sun with no shade

What to do if it's in danger but not injured: Move the animal a few metres away, out of the road or immediate danger, then step back. The parents will find it.

How to handle it if you do need to pick it up

Adult crows bite — their strong beak is built for cracking nuts, so it hurts. Use gloves or a cloth.

For juveniles, wrap them in a towel and put them in a cardboard box with ventilation holes. Dark, quiet, room temperature.

Don't try to feed them: corvids have a complex omnivore diet that's hard to replicate at home, and feeding them badly does more damage than leaving them unfed for a few hours.

The problem of unnecessary "rescue"

Every summer, rescue centres receive dozens of perfectly healthy branchers that didn't need rescuing. Every animal that occupies a space in a centre is an animal that can't go to someone who really needs it, and every young corvid separated from its parents during the learning phase has more difficulty readapting to the wild.

Responsible rescue starts with understanding whether there's really a problem.

Legal protection

Crows, magpies and jackdaws are protected under the Birds Directive (2009/147/EC). They cannot be kept, raised or caged without authorisation. The hooded crow (Corvus cornix) in some regions is subject to authorised population management programmes — but this has nothing to do with rescuing injured animals, which is always protected by law.