As a camp counselor for several years, I became very good at doing quick head counts and making sure all my charges were in view.  It was a bit disconcerting, then, when I found myself out in the North Field during morning exercise looking out at a landscape that appeared devoid of crane chicks. 

The DAR chicks and I had been foraging in a marshy area in the middle of the North Field.  The marsh grasses reached well over the chicks’ heads as they poked around in little pools of water in the midst of a maze of vegetation.  Suddenly, from the north came the unison call of a pair of Sandhill Cranes.  Number 32-09 took off like a rocket, jogging out of the marsh, up over the hill and out of sight in the direction of the day pen before I had even gotten out into the open again. 

The other chicks followed #32-09 to the edge of the marsh, but moved more slowly and kept looking back at me as I fought my way through the vegetation towards them.  They looked nervous, but they didn’t seem out of control.  However, as soon as we got out of the marsh, the remaining chicks took off as well, three disappearing into the North Marsh due west, and the other two rounding the corner and disappearing in the same direction as #32-09 had disappeared.

I had gone from having six chicks to having no chicks in less than five minutes.  Luckily, Marianne Wellington had told us what to do in this situation.  Instead of thrashing around in the marsh (ostensibly looking for the chicks, but more likely scaring them), I stood calmly in the middle of the North Field with my recorded crane calls blaring.  Occasionally I heard the sound of something moving through the tall grass at the edge of the North Marsh, and I hoped that it was a chick, rather than something out to eat a chick.

I wasn’t chick-less for long, thankfully.  After five or ten minutes, there was more rustling in the grass and suddenly, out popped a little crane head!  The other two chicks that had gone into the North Marsh in that spot soon appeared as well and we were all able to walk back down towards the day pen to find the rest of the cranes.  Soon, five chicks were enticed to leave their hiding places and follow us back to the day pen to eat. 

Number 32-09 had not come out yet.  Marianne found her at the edge of the North Marsh, just north of the day pen.  She was foraging in the water and happy as a clam, clearly recovered from her sudden fright of less than twenty minutes ago.  It took a lot of cajoling to get her back into the night pen!

Update by Kate Wyman, DAR Intern.