WHOOPING CRANE CHICK: DAY 13

 
       Photo by Marty Folk, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission 

    
Photo by Steve Nesbitt, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission 

Photo by Joe Duff, Operation Migration

We have been releasing juvenile whooping cranes in Florida since 1992 in the hopes of establishing a new, non-migratory flock of whoopers similar to the one that once existed in Louisiana. Some of the released birds have been parent-reared, but the majority are costume or hand-reared. Some have worried that whoopers raised by humans might not successfully reproduce. This year, for the first time in history, two hand-reared whoopers bred in the wild and produced two chicks without any intervention from humans. The female came from the International Crane Foundation, and the male from Patuxent. This picture shows the parents caring for the two young chicks. We hope someday that Tux will join this pair in being a successful wild parent in Florida.

As is typical in the wild, only one chick has survived. However, he is healthy and thriving and over forty days old. Films taken of the "First Family" show the parents feeding the chick a wide variety of food, including crayfish, insects, and snakes. Other whooper pairs have been nest-building in Florida, however the state has suffered drought conditions for the last three years, and none of the other nests have been successful. Parenting is a learned skill, and it is not unusual for new pairs to lose their first few eggs. Experience may give them the skills to be as successful as this pair has been.

To save the whooping crane, we will need to establish more than one new flock. In 1997, the organization Operation Migration began working with Patuxent in preliminary studies with sandhill cranes. We need to determine if cranes can be taught to migrate behind an ultralight  aircraft, yet remain wild enough to survive on their own. Operation Migration has already had success with geese and swans. This year, OM is again working with sandhills raised at Patuxent, and plans to lead them from Wisconsin to Florida to investigate a potential route for a new migratory flock of whooping cranes. We hope that next year these studies will enable us to begin introducing a migratory flock of whoopers.

Check our site tomorrow!

Cool Facts:

Photo by Nell Baldacchino, USFWS

At Patuxent, non-endangered sandhill cranes act as substitutes for the whooper, to enable us to do studies that might be too dangerous to risk with rare whooping cranes. New medications, medical techniques, or food items are tried first on sandhills. Sandhills also act as surrogate incubators for the extra whooping crane eggs we produce. However, they do not raise whooping crane chicks, even though many of them are excellent parents. This would cause the whoopers to become imprinted on sandhills, and would try to mate with sandhills when they matured. Sandhills have been critical in our migration studies, and we have learned a great deal from them. Sandhills were also essential in release studies done in Florida years before the first whoopers were sent there.

 See this page for more cool facts each day.

Click here to ask questions about our chick or Patuxent's crane program.