Two adult Whooping Cranes walk toward their brown-feathered chick, which is visible in a small clearing in the vegetation at left. Photo by Richard Urbanek, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Less than a week after a pair of endangered Whooping Cranes in the reintroduced Wisconsin population hatched a captive-produced egg, another pair has hatched an egg that was laid in the wild. The chick hatched on June 14 or 15 from a nest on the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge.
Biologist Richard Urbanek, who tracks adult cranes on the refuge, has seen and photographed the chick (shown at left in the photo above).
The parent cranes, known as 11-02 and 17-02, are the same birds from the so-called "first family." They raised two chicks on the refuge for most of the summer in 2006 before one was lost to a predator. The other, a female known as W1-06, learned the migration route to Florida from its parents and today is paired with a male on the refuge.
The adults were among a handful of pairs that renested this spring after their first nests failed in April and May. One other pair was incubating eggs as of my last blog post, but the nest failed on Sunday, June 14. (We reported on the spring nest failures in "Birding Briefs" in our August issue, which we posted to our site today. The issue hits newsstands June 30.)
The two newly hatched cranes are the first for the reintroduction program since 2006.
Also in the news today:
Condor chick in Mexico: A pair of endangered California Condors in the Sierra San Pedro de Mártir National Park in Baja California, Mexico, have hatched a chick (pictured at left). The California Condor Recovery Program said the chick is approximately 45 days old.
On Tuesday, June 16, San Diego Zoo field biologists rappelled 330 feet down a rocky cliff to vaccinate the chick against West Nile virus.
"Our efforts to save this species are long and often arduous," said Mike Wallace, team leader of the recovery program and a scientist with the zoo's Institute for Conservation Research. "Still, nothing is more rewarding than the arrival of a chick from reintroduced birds breeding in the wild. The 45-day-old chick is the most successful effort by our growing population in Baja California so far."
The chick is only the second condor to hatch in Mexico since the San Diego Zoo reintroduced the species to the area in 2002. A different condor breeding pair hatched the first chick in 2007, but it disappeared from the nest one month later and was never found.
Swan chicks in Chicago: A pair of captive Trumpeter Swans at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago hatched three cygnets on Tuesday, June 9. They will be released into the wild this fall after spending the summer with their parents.
The zoo contributes the young produced by its pair to the Trumpeter Swan Project operated by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. To date, the zoo has released 34 swans into the wild – all of them the offspring of this same adult pair.
In 2006, a swan that hatched at the zoo became one of the first to nest in Illinois in more than 100 years. Trumpeter Swan is not listed as threatened or endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, but several states list it. To see a map of the conservation status throughout its range, visit the NatureServe page for the species and click "distribution." --M.M.
Condor photo, courtesy San Diego Zoo: The 45-day-old California Condor chick, shortly before being vaccinated for West Nile virus. Photo by Mike Wallace, San Diego Zoo
Swan photo, courtesy Lincoln Park Zoo: An adult Trumpeter Swan leads its three cygnets at the Lincoln Park Zoo.
Read our story about the Whooping Crane recovery project from our April 2007 issue.
Read our story about the California Condor recovery project from our December 2007 issue.
Read our story about Red Rock Lakes NWR in Montana, home of a Trumpeter Swan recovery project, from our August 2005 issue.