Last week our youngest chick stayed in the night pen for the first time with numbers 39-09, 40-09 & 41-09.  All went well.  She was up and ready for exercise early the next morning.  Although we have started working on socializing the nine younger chicks, it is going slowly.  Number 42-09 gets chased and stays a distance from the costume and other chicks due to being chased.  Number 36-09 has turned out to be the most aggressive at this point.  However, #37-09 does put #36-09 in her place at times. 

Our oldest chick, #32-09, is gliding above the ground for 100 ft. or so.  She does short flights to stick around the costume.  When she does fly it attracts the attention of a pair of adult Whooping Cranes.  They have flown over to see who is in the area.  So far it has not been an issue of territory, but all the chicks are wary of the pair being close by. 

We have seen another pair of adult Whooping Cranes over the hill from our training site.  The other adult pair will fly past us to defend the southern part of our training site from this pair.  It may be different pairs of cranes showing up since we can't always see the leg bands of these adult birds.

We are not certain what predator killed DAR chick #33-09--the necropsy may tell us more.  Julie Longenecker, DAR Intern, found a large snapping turtle with #33-09.  Julie did a great job of keeping the snapper close by until we could arrive to remove the turtle from the open day pen.  I am extremely grateful to Patuxent Wildlife Research Center aviculturist, Robert Doyle, for helping us capture the turtle.  It weighed approximately 42.5 lbs.  The snapping turtle was relocated to another body of water away from the crane chicks. 

Update and photo by Marianne Wellington, ICF Aviculturist/WCEP DAR Co-chair.

The snapping turtle next to a garbage can lid!