Canuck the crow settles down: East Vancouver's bad boy bird now a father

Is Canuck the crow finally settling down? He's stolen a knife from a crime scene and hitched a ride on a SkyTrain, but Canuck the crow is finally settling down.

He's hitched a ride on a SkyTrain and even stolen a knife from a Vancouver crime scene, but Canuck the crow might be done sowing his wild oats in the city.

It appears as though East Vancouver's infamous bad boy bird is now a father.

Canuck most recently made headlines last month after forming an unlikely bond with Canada Post carrier Tyler McLoed, whom he'd been terrorizing for months.

But the avian antagonist appeared distracted when CTV News visited him Friday.

"He's got a family to take care of now," McLeod said.

The human-raised bird's behaviour changed suddenly Saturday after weeks of tending to his nest with lady friend Cassiar.

"We've pretty much determined it’s a hatching that has happened," said Shawn Bergman, Canuck's human ambassador.

"She's going through what looks like a lot of feeding motions, bending down feeding and coming back up and looking at what I assume to be the young in the nest and going back down to feed again," Bergman said.

As for Canuck, it looks as though his days of pestering McDonald's patrons and dive-bombing postal workers are behind him--at least for now.

"Whenever Canuck goes back to the nest, he looks quite proud," Bergman said. "He sits on the edge the nest looking down--he looks like a proud papa."

But an expert is warning that nesting season brings out crows' protective instincts and can lead them to attack.

"Especially where there are crows this time of year, you have to keep your head up," said Jim O'Leary, an instructor of geographic information systems at Langara College.

O'Leary and fellow instructor Rick Davidson developed an interactive map called CrowTrax, which keeps track of local attacks during peak season.

Crow babies remain in the nest for four to five weeks.

"He hasn't started attacking many people to defend the nest, but we'll see how that goes now that the babies are in the nest," Bergman said.

With a report from CTV Vancouver's Shannon Paterson