Just in time for Father’s Day, Canada’s most notorious crow has welcomed some new family members.
Canuck, his partner Cassiar and their new baby birds live in East Vancouver. Shawn Bergman, who runs social media for Canuck under the name “Canuck and I,” said in 2015 that his landlord’s son helped rehabilitate the black bird when he fell from a nest.
“He and I became friends on the day he was released, when we met,” Bergman told HuffPost. “He hopped up on my arm and we’ve been friends ever since.”
Canuck made international headlines in 2016 for allegedly stealing a knife from a crime scene. Witnesses reported the bird — who has a distinctive red tag on one foot — picked up the knife dropped by a suspect and flew off with it.
“It was really strange. In my 20-plus years reporting from crime scenes, I’ve never seen anything like that crow trying to take a knife,” Vancouver Courier reporter Mike Howell told the CBC.
Canuck’s past exploits include attacking a cyclist, getting his own art exhibit and going to bird hospital after a head injury. He was voted as Vancouver’s unofficial ambassador, besting the likes of Michael J. Fox and Seth Rogen, by a CBC readers’ poll in 2018.
According to Bergman, Canuck and his partner Cassiar likely welcomed three chicks this week.
“I’m thinking that there’s three, but it’s all a mystery until they start coming out of the nest,” he said.
This isn’t the first time Canuck and Cassiar have tried to start a family. Bergman says the pair hatched two chicks last year, but. In early May of this year, they were killed by a predator.
Bergman says he hopes the new chicks inherit Canuck’s unique personality.
“I would really, really like it if he would bring them to introduce them to me,” he told HuffPost. “But we’ll see what the parents decide.”
This is basically akin to a royal birth if Prince Harry was a knife-stealing crow. Whether the chicks will follow in their father’s knife-stealing footsteps (wing flaps?) remains to be seen. But for now, congratulations to the happy couple!
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