Whooping Crane Photo Gallery |
This 5 day old whooper has a coat of fluffy cinnamon-colored down, bright blue eyes, and a good appetite. He can already catch crickets (though sometimes they get away!), and he's learned to eat crumbles from a bowl. His "mother" and "father" are a stuffed model and a puppet head in his pen, but he has a live whooper adult as a neighbor next door. Watching that adult will help him learn how to be a whooper himself. Everything the chick is exposed to--the stuffed model, the puppet, and the live adult--helps in proper imprinting. (Photo by Damien Ossi, USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center) |