Thank you for the idea about soaking the mealworms. I prefer not to have the live ones around - they do smell! We put them out for tits and they are usually soaked by the rain, but it's been fairly dry here recently. The crows can't reach that feeder. The pair had been feeding their young from grain and seeds spilled from one of our bird feeders, but it's a good idea to put meal worms out for Crow, to speed up his foraging.
We once had a sort of pet crow when we lived in Edinburgh. It was a young bird which had injured a wing and was starving. It appeared beside Mr F when he was working outside, and hopped around him until he cottoned on it was hungry. It lurked around for a few weeks until it could manage alone, then left but visited now and again
They are indeed so intelligent and surprisingly lovable. Hoodie and Crow are not pets, but they do live here, and appear especially at sheep feeding time. It will be sad not to see Hoodie around. We buried her under her favourite perching tree, the tallest around.
We know the small piece of woodland where Crow and Hoodie nested, but not precisely which tree, and it's not on our land, so taking over feeding the young would be difficult (uncooperative neighbour - he would just shoot them). The little piece of woodland is only about 100yds away from our feeders, so not far for Crow.
roddycm - Hoodie is a Hooded Crow (they are all called 'hoodies' round here), Crow is a Carrion Crow. They are known to hybridise. When we looked closely at Hoodie's corpse, her back feathers, which are normally a bright grey, were grey with a black shading, so we think she might herself be a hybrid, so I suppose any young would be blacker than a hoodie.
I'm off to see if crows normally share parenting, such as brooding the young as well as feeding.