A baby whooping crane walks toward the camera. (Photo courtesy of the USGS)
Wildlife experts hope an experimental flock of whooping
cranes will lay more eggs this spring. The first egg produced during the experiment was recently found damaged. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Transcript
Wildlife experts hope an experimental flock of whooping cranes
will lay more eggs this spring. The first egg produced during the
experiment was recently found damaged. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Scientists working on the project to develop 25 nesting pairs of
migrating whooping cranes in the eastern U.S. hope this is the year the
young cranes start to produce offspring.
But Michael Putnam of the
International Crane Foundation says one obstacle to the hatching of
crane eggs may be inexperienced parents.
“Once they do produce a fertile egg, then the birds have to exhibit the
right behaviors to tend the nest, incubate… and we’ve found some of
our birds- The females might be very good incubators at the
beginning, but it may take the male a year or two to catch on that’s
supposed to take a turn sittin’ on the egg.”
Putnam says other difficulties may include predators eating the eggs.
if the birds are successful, it’ll be the first whooping crane egg to
hatch in this part of North America in more than a century.
For the GLRC, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.