BHOPAL: Shiva Kewat, a daily wager in Shivpuri ’s Sumela village, furtively looks heavenwards every time he steps out of his house. He isn’t praying as much as trying to see where the aerial attack will come from that day. Because it will.Barely has he taken a few steps that they come cawing and clawing for him. A squadron of crows, or sometimes a lone ranger, swoops down on him, talons extended and beak lunging for a bite.This has been happening every day, and every time he leaves home. For locals, it’s daily amusement. They hang around his home and wait for him to come out to see the crows launch their aerial attacks.It started three years ago, on the day Kewat tried to rescue a crow chick that was stuck in iron netting. “It died in my hands. If only I could explain to them, I was only trying to help,” says Kewat , who now carries a stick at most times. He is careful never to hit any crow. “I just wave it around to shoo them off. Poor things, they believe I killed the chick,” he said.For all his empathy, Kewat has the scars to show for how he has bled in this one-sided battle. “The assaults are sudden and frightening,” he says. He has been injured several times in the head. “The crows attack him like they show fighter jets diving towards a target in movies,” say villagers.When word got around, a local journalist went to meet Kewat to see if it was for real. “You might have heard several stories on revenge by cobras and elephants, but this is the first time I have come across crows bent on vengeance and targeting one individual. There is video footage of crows attacking him, squawking in anger” said Ranjit Gupta, a freelance journalist in Shivpuri. "Kewat says he didn’t take these airborne attacks seriously till he found that no one else in his village was ever targeted. What surprises him is that crows apparently hold grudges and can remember human faces.Professor Ashok Kumar Munjal, who teaches genetics at Barkatullah University in Bhopal and researches bird and animal behaviour, believes that crows are more intelligent than most birds, and they do tend to show behavior similar to revenge. “It may not be as complex as in humans, but they do have a tendency of remembering individuals and targeting those who have wronged them,” he told TOI.Multiple researches in Seattle and University of Washington have revealed that crows have sharp memory and can remember faces of humans who have offended them. They even have the ability to gather other crows and conduct coordinated attacks.Read this story in Bengali