Apollo came to me when he was just a baby.

He wasn’t growing right.

And he couldn’t fly.

I took them to the vet, and the vet said there’s something wrong with one of his wings.

And he’ll fly eventually.

But it will take him so long to learn how to fly that he won’t learn how to be a crow.

I don’t think he’s releasable.

So why don’t you just keep him as an education bird?

As the vet predicted, he is flighted.

But people are his flock.

There is no way he could survive in the wild.

Now, he's been with me, I believe, for six years.

I am giving him the best life I can, but it could be better.

I’ve been doing this for 15 years.

I take in injured and orphaned songbirds.

So we have one very healthy juvie crow.

You can tell he’s young because of the pink mouth.

To get to see these birds up close and to nurture them and release them, I think it is a gesture of respect.

There is a roost of wild crows at Shirlington.

It has been there for at least 30 years.

The minute I discovered crows.

I never looked back because thus began the love affair.

Ok my little friend.

Come on, come on!

Go on!

Alright!

Well hello!

You want pats?

There you go.

You must be in a very good mood.

There is a researcher in Kansas who wants to research crow learning abilities, crow vocalization.

So she’s looking for a crow that she can spend eight hours a day with, teaching them how to verbalize or figuring out how they learn.

A large part of me, the responsible adult part of me, says that’s where Apollo should be.

I don’t know how he would react.

Because crows maintain relationships throughout their lives like people do.

Do you know who Apollo is?

It’s like a spaceship I think?

So I have made a real effort to expose him to lots of folks, because that’s what he needs to be able to do as an education bird.

Thank you!

And thank you for loving wildlife and be like your sister and love wildlife too okay!

With crows, there are associations with death.

They’re black.

Unless you get up close and you can see, actually, they’re not just black.

It’s iridescent.

But he’s, lived with me since he was probably about two months old.

So he basically he thinks he’s a person.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, he’s been brought up around humans... So one of the things I’m here to do is just correct misperceptions.

Crows are very playful.

They’re like feathered toddlers, which is good and bad because they can be utterly charming or a complete pain in the neck.

Apollo’s discovered that when he talks, people go, oh, my God, it’s a crow.

It’s talking.

And so then he becomes the center of attention.

What what what what?

Basically, he mimics me because when I go by, he calls at me and I would just go, what?

Like, what do you want?

What what what?

Are they really understanding the meaning of the words?

Is it just mimicry?

There are birds that just repeat things, right?

Whereas Apollo deploys his.

What what what?

Very strategically.

He knows something.

I just don’t know what.

Living a life on the screen porch and doing occasional education programs it’s not ideal.

In Kansas, Apollo can educate us all about crow language learning ability.

What prompts them to want to learn to speak?

This researcher will give him the attention that he needs to keep his brain going.

Do you want to take another sun bath?

Yeah.

Hello!

Hello my little cuteness.

I raised him from a baby.

He’s on my back porch.

We have our routine.

We have our relationship.

There are a lot of wonderful things about rehabbing.

But there’s also a lot of heartbreak.

It’s going to be hard.

But like my human babies, sometimes the best thing you can do for them is to let them go.