WHOOPING CRANE CHICK: DAY 05

        Photo by Damien Ossi, 
        USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center

Photo by Damien Ossi, 
USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center

Our chick discovers the great outdoors! Most whoopers in the crane chick building can go into their outside run around day five. By then they know how to get back inside for food, water, and shelter. The outdoor run is long and wide with plenty of room to run and play and hunt for bugs and worms. The green strip overhead is an awning that prevents rain from blowing into the building.

In the top photo, it's hard to see our small chick in the grassy run. He's on the right hand side, near the gate. The grass is kept short so that the chick won't get lost in it, and so he'll learn that walking in short grass is safest. In the wild, predators can hide in tall vegetation.  

The picture on the left shows the chick's view of his pen. Even short grass seems like a forest to him. The exercise he gets walking on natural sod will help him develop strong legs and feet. Whoopers do a lot of walking in their life as they search for food. The chicks will eat grass, too. We often find them fighting with tall weeds or daffodil stalks.

Check on our chick tomorrow!

Cool Facts:

How do we know our chick is a "he"? Well, actually, we don't. There isn't any way to tell the sex of a whooper chick without a blood test. Since each chick is a distinct individual, with his or her own personality and temperament, the staff often dubs each one as "he" or "she" in a random way. We know we have a 50% chance of being right! We don't name all the chicks, but when we do, we try to pick names that could be given to either sex, such as "Patuxent," "Chesapeake," and "Laurel." The chicks will have a blood test to determine their sex when they're older. We enjoy checking the results with our guesses.

 See this page for more cool facts each day.

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

Please help us name our newly hatched chick!*  Our choices are:

Patuxent ("Tux" for short) - for the name of our Research Center
Chesapeake ("Chessie" for short) - for the Chesapeake Bay
Laurel - for the town in Maryland where the chick hatched and for the flowering plant

*This contest was run in May, 2000. If you follow the progress of the chick you will find out the results.