“I thought to myself, ‘Am I hearing things?’”
The small town of North Rustico lies on the northern shore of Prince Edward Island in Canada. It’s a homey sort of place, where neighbors are always sure to greet one another as they go about their day.
And that sense of friendliness and warmth is apparently contagious.
One day a few months back, local resident Lisa Sandoval was walking near the waterfront when she heard somebody speak to her.
“I heard someone call out to me, ‘Hello! Hello!” Sandoval said. “I turned around and no one was there. Then I heard the voice again. ‘Hello! Hello!’ I got a little scared, then thought to myself, ‘Am I hearing things?’”
It was then that Sandoval noticed the only other soul around was a crow perched nearby.
“I stopped and said, ‘Hello?’” Sandoval continued. “And to my shock, he answered me back. ‘Hello! Hello!’”
Sandoval later came to learn that she wasn’t the only one in town to have encountered the talking crow. Rumor has it, years earlier, the bird had been found injured as a baby and nursed back to health by an elderly man living nearby, who often spoke to him during his recovery.
“He let the crow go free when he was well,” Sandoval said. “That bird had learned to say hello.”
“He talks but doesn’t caw,” Sandoval said.
Sandoval calls him the Hello Crow.
Crows, much like parrots, are indeed capable of learning to mimic human language. So, if the rumors of his origin are true, his uncanny vocalizations may very well reflect the voice of the elderly man who’d saved him.
“He passed away years ago,” Sandoval said, noting his legacy lives on in the friendly, feathered bird. “[The crow] is popular here in North Rustico. He is around a lot, [but] I am one of the only people who have been able to capture him on video talking. He is so funny.”