I was in my city centre last night and I watched a flock of little birds fluttering around a tree. I think they were wagtails but it was dark apart from the streetlight and lights from passing cars so I'm not entirely sure. Then I noticed one bird was fluttering around the base of the tree and had a large autumn leaf seemingly caught around its legs. It kept trying to fly but it couldn't get far off the ground because of the leaf. It flew across a busy road, not able to get further than a few feet off the ground, and around the shops and restaurants on the other side. It was flying in circles very low and obviously in distress. I chased after it and thought about trying to catch and rescue it but it kept flying out of reach and I wasn't sure how to do so without hurting it. I lost sight of it when it flew back onto the road and crawled under a parked bus.
The whole thing was very upsetting. Has anyone else seen anything similar? Was there anything I could have done to intervene?