Tag: chicks

Whooping Cranes Not Hatching

  • One of the goals of the Partnership is to get more cranes to raise young in the wild, but so far, only one crane chick has been successfully hatched and gone on to migrating. (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

Wildlife experts are trying to bring back a flock of migrating whooping
cranes in the eastern United States. But there’s a problem. Scientists are
having trouble getting the whoopers to hatch chicks in the wild. Chuck
Quirmbach reports – researchers are taking a closer look at the ten-year-old
rehabilitation effort:

Transcript

Wildlife experts are trying to bring back a flock of migrating whooping
cranes in the eastern United States. But there’s a problem. Scientists are
having trouble getting the whoopers to hatch chicks in the wild. Chuck
Quirmbach reports – researchers are taking a closer look at the ten-year-old
rehabilitation effort:

It’s not easy to get whooping cranes to reproduce, but here in Baraboo,
Wisconsin, researchers have had success at getting captive cranes to produce
chicks.

For the last ten years, the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership has created a
flock of more than 100 whoopers. Researchers hatched the birds
– and trained them to migrate by flying behind ultralight aircraft ….or to
follow adult cranes. The birds now fly between the upper Midwest and
southeastern U.S.

But one of the goals of the Partnership is to get more cranes to raise young
in the wild. So far, only one crane chick has been successfully hatched and
gone on to migrating.

Jeb Barzen is with the International Crane Foundation. He says they can’t
keep supplying the flock with chicks hatched in captivity:

“It’s expensive. it’s expensive in time, expensive in money…expensive in overall conservation effort, because what you put into whooping crane reintroduction you can’t put into other conservation projects at that time. so to be fully successful …you want that population to be
able to survive on it’s own.”

So far, about 16 million dollars has gone into re-introducing whoopers to
the eastern u.s. More than half of that money came from private donors.

The birds’ main summer home is here at the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge
in Wisconsin.

It’s not that the cranes don’t get close to each other. If you watch the cranes here, you can spot single cranes and the occasional couple.

Jeb Barzen pauses to watch two tall white cranes having a territorial dispute:

“Ooh! these birds are threatening each other. that’s a preen behind the wing
threat…that the second bird is doing…so these are not birds of the same
pair.”

Researchers don’t know why the birds are not raising more wild chicks. But
they do have some theories. Even when cranes do make nice and produce an
egg – the relatively young cranes may be too inexperienced to be patient
parents. Black flies may drive the birds off their nest. Or the parents
may be low on body fat and take off to find food.

The crane researchers are gathering data to find out what cranes need for a
successful nesting site. They’re using tracking radios to follow some of the
birds.

Anne Lacy is with the International Crane Foundation. Today she’s driving
around southern Wisconsin listening for the whoopers.

“it’s important to look at what choices they make as a young bird
before they breed…to know how they choose those areas….they need for
water for roosting at night…they need that eventually for nesting.”

This kind of research is being ramped up this spring. That’s because an
independent report raised some concerns about the crane recovery effort.
The report was done by consultants hired by the Whooping Crane Eastern
Partnership. It mentions problems with financial oversight, scientific
coordination, and whether the birds’ main summer home – at the Necedah
wildlife refuge – is the best place for them.

Louise Clemency is with the US Fish and Wildlife Service. And
she is a co-chair of the eastern partnership. She says the crane recovery
effort won’t make any big changes overnight.

“We’re trying to the time to draw the right conclusions so we can
take the right next step.”

Clemency says decisions on the whooping crane experiment could come next
year. In the meantime..she hopes that some crane eggs laid this spring at
the Necedah refuge will hatch.

For The Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

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Osprey Nest Near Fish Hatchery

  • The osprey is a bird that scoops fish out of rivers and lakes (Photo courtesy of the National Parks Service)

Ospreys are birds of prey that eat fish. Todd Melby tells us about a pair of osprey that tried to nest near a fish hatchery:

Transcript

Ospreys are birds of prey that eat fish. Todd Melby tells us
about a pair of osprey that tried to nest near a fish hatchery:

The osprey is a raptor that scoops fish out of rivers and lakes.

So when a pair of osprey decided to mate near a DNR fish hatchery south of
Minneapolis, biologists were delighted and worried.

Ospreys rarely nest so far south. So that was good news. What worried biologists was
whether the birds would eat the fish. Biologists decided these fish were too small.

Another worry was the ospreys’ choice of a nesting site. In this case, the birds picked an
electrical power pole.

Lisa Gelvin-Innvaer is with the Minnesota DNR.

“They like high areas. Places that have room for them to put their nest. Transmission
poles often provide that.”

Biologists decided that was a bad idea, so they’ve built a tall nesting platform near the
power pole.

“We’re hopeful with the new nesting platform, that they’ll come back and attempt to nest
again.”

For The Environment Report, I’m Todd Melby.

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Lead Poisoning and California Condors

  • Adult California Condor in flight (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

It’s been decades, but there are now more California Condors in the wild than there
are in captivity. That’s thanks to two condor chicks who recently left their nests in
the Grand Canyon. As Sadie Babits reports, biologists are thrilled, but one of the
problems that caused the decline in condors still exists:

Transcript

It’s been decades, but there are now more California Condors in the wild than there
are in captivity. That’s thanks to two condor chicks who recently left their nests in
the Grand Canyon. As Sadie Babits reports, biologists are thrilled, but one of the
problems that caused the decline in condors still exists:


At the World Center for Birds of Prey in Boise, Idaho, there’s a wood fence that
protects the California Condors that live behind it.

“Just lately in order to minimize the exposure of our adult breeding pairs to humans,
we’ve built this security fence or actually it’s a visual barrier, we call it.”

That’s Bill Heinrich. He overseas the California Condor Recovery program at the
Center.

There is this one small break in the fence – a part that hasn’t been built yet. And
behind some chain link, I can see some very large birds…

Sadie: “Is that a Condor right there??”

Bill: “Yeah… you can see an adult condor standing, a pair of them on a perch.”

Sadie: “Ooohhhh!”

Bill: “You can kind of get an idea of just how big they really are.

Sadie: “They’re huge!”

Bill: “They weigh anywhere from 18-25 pounds and have close to a 10 foot wingspan.”

In the early 1980s the California Condors almost went the way of the Dodo –
extinct. Only 22 of these birds remained in the wild.

The big birds were killed by hunters. They died from lead poisoning after eating
animals killed with lead bullets. And their own genetic makeup didn’t help much
either.

These birds, shall we say, have a low sex drive. Rather than produce chicks every
year and gamble that they’ll survive, condors lay one egg every other year. That
hasn’t worked so well.

So biologists thought they’d help. They started capturing the endangered condors to
begin a captive breeding program. In 1987, the last wild bird was caught.

Bill Heinrich recalls there was plenty of controversy over that decision.

“People thought well you should let them go extinct with dignity or you can try to
breed them in captivity but you might fail and then you would have lost them in the
wild that much quicker.”

But the move saved the birds from being killed by hunters or from eventual lead
poisoning.

And, the breeding program, well, let’s just say the numbers speak for themselves.
Down to 22 birds in 1987, today there are now 327 California Condors. And more
than half of those birds are back in the wild.

Bill Heinrich says next spring some of these condors will be released some where
around the Grand Canyon in Arizona.

That’s where the birds will once again be exposed to one of the factors that lead to
their decline. It’s not hunters these days. The birds are protected by the Endangered
Species Act. But lead poisoning. Condors feed on gut piles and carcasses left by
hunters. If a hunter uses lead bullets, the bullet will explode sending tiny fragments
of lead through the meat. It’s enough to make a condor sick. Heinrich says lead
poisoning remains the single biggest threat to the birds.

“You know if hadn’t been for the lead issue coming up, I would have thought, I
didn’t have any reservations about it being successful until the lead problem cropped
up.”

Every year, biologists have to test the birds for lead poisoning. They’ve been working
with the Arizona Game and Fish Department to hand out free non-lead bullets to
hunters in the area. Last year, not a single condor died from lead poisoning. This
year, biologists have had to treat six birds, all of which are expected to make a full
recovery.

In California, the state has banned lead ammunition because of the lead poisoning
concern. But hunters don’t think lead bullets are a real problem, and they really
don’t want to pay for different kinds of bullets because that is a lot more expensive.

For The Environment Report, I’m Sadie Babits.

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City Chickens and Urban Eggs

  • Linda Nellet brought a few of her birds to a backyard-chicken seminar in Chicago. She and other seasoned urban chicken keepers hope to keep chicken-raising legal and neighborly in their tight, urban landscape. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

Maybe it’s easy to imagine chickens
cooing and clucking on American farms, but
how about in big-city backyards? Well,
keeping chickens is legal in the nation’s
three largest cities, but in one of them,
chicken-lovers nearly lost that right.
Shawn Allee tells how some urban
chicken-keepers were nearly caught off guard,
and how they plan to keep their chickens in
the coop:

Transcript

Maybe it’s easy to imagine chickens
cooing and clucking on American farms, but
how about in big-city backyards? Well,
keeping chickens is legal in the nation’s
three largest cities, but in one of them,
chicken-lovers nearly lost that right.
Shawn Allee tells how some urban
chicken-keepers were nearly caught off guard,
and how they plan to keep their chickens in
the coop:

No one’s sure how many chickens are in Chicago’s backyards. But honestly, few people
thought about it until last year.

That’s when one woman showed up at a city hearing.

“Hi. My name is Edie Cavanaugh, and I’ve lived in Chicago, since 1968.”

Cavanaugh told aldermen she’d caught messy, noisy chickens clucking around her
neighborhood.

She was stunned the city wouldn’t round them up.

“I was told chickens are permitted as pets in Chicago, and I said that’s impossible,
this is a city.”

Cavanaugh’s story ruffled plenty of feathers.

You see, even some aldermen didn’t know that keeping chickens as pets or for eggs in
Chicago is okay.

“I was riding down the street, and I seen a rooster. I was like, ‘What is this?’”

For a month, it seemed Chicago’s city council would ban chicken-keeping.

People who already had chickens worried their birds were destined for the stew pot.

But Chicago aldermen kept chicken-raising legal.

Chicago’s pro-chicken contingent saw the fight as a wake-up call. Some figured, if they
wanted to keep birds, they’d better police themselves.

“So, welcome everybody for coming to the first-ever Chicago backyard Chicken
workshop.”

Martha Boyd is starting seminars about urban chickens.

She’s part of the Angelic Organics Learning Center, a group that promotes urban
agriculture.

Boyd is confident city-people can raise more of their own food if they’re neighborly
about it.

“So the idea of the backyard chicken workshop is so we can have this thing grow
without creating more problems and potentially, then, having the backlash to the
backyard chickens.”

For this first seminar, Boyd invited chicken-raising veterans to a church basement.

One is Tom Rosenfeld.

His advice to urban chicken lovers? Talk to your neighbors. And, hey, if they cringe, get
creative.

“It also helps to bribe them, because if they think they’re going to get some eggs out
of the deal or they think they’re kids come over and pet them or whatever, then of
course they’ll be a little more understanding when one day you leave the door open
and there’re chickens running around the yard or other issues.”

Rosenfeld says those ‘other issues’ arise pretty quickly. In fact, just a few hours after
chickens eat.

“A lot about chicken keeping is about poop because they do it a lot. They do it in
surprisingly large quantities at a time.”

Rosenfeld says you can literally get ankle deep in the stuff if you’re not vigilant.

But bribery helps here, too. Rosenfeld says chicken poop makes excellent garden
compost.

“Our neighbors love it. They’ll come by with a bucket and that’s their way of
participating.”

Rosenfeld says the last issue that ticks off neighbors is noise.

There’s no such thing as a chicken muzzle, but there’s still a solution – and there’s no
bribe necessary.

You see, male chickens are the noisy bunch, so if you just want eggs…

“You don’t need a rooster. It’s a sad reality as a male chicken keeper to realize that
roosters aren’t necessary. They’re only necessary if you want chicks.”

Rosenfeld says urban chicken-raising could catch on where it’s legal – if people keep a lid
on noise and smells.

As for places where it’s not legal?

You might want to change the law at city hall – just don’t try to bribe your alderman with
fresh eggs.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Whooping Cranes’ Poor Parenting

  • Whooping cranes have been abandoning their nests, and eggs, in search of food (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

The experiment to create a migrating flock
of whooping cranes in the Eastern US is having a
parenting problem. Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

The experiment to create a migrating flock
of whooping cranes in the Eastern US is having a
parenting problem. Chuck Quirmbach reports:

About 70 whooping cranes now migrate between the Southeast US and the Midwest.
Wildlife experts have been hoping that more pairs of the birds would start hatching eggs
and raising chicks in the wild.

This spring, at their northern home in Wisconsin, several female cranes did lay eggs and
sat on the nests during cold weather. But when it warmed up, the adult birds abandoned
their nests to look for food.

George Archibald is co-founder of the International Crane Foundation.

“If there is a food stress, when it becomes warmer their drive to feed may increase much
more than when it’s cold.”

Some of the crane eggs were saved and hatched out by wildlife centers.

For The Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

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First Wild Whooper Hatch in Midwest

For the first time in 100 years in the Midwest, whooping
crane chicks have hatched in the wild. But wildlife agencies say the
young birds may be especially vulnerable to predators. The GLRC’S
Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

For the first time in 100 years in the Midwest, whooping crane chicks have hatched in the
wild. But wildlife agencies say the young birds may be especially vulnerable to predators.
The GLRC’S Chuck Quirmbach reports:


Government and private wildlife agencies have been working for several years to re-
establish a migrating flock of whooping cranes in the Eastern U.S. This spring, two
crane eggs taken from the wild birds hatched in captivity, and now two more eggs have
hatched in the wild, at the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin. But Rachel
Levin of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says being in the wild means potential
predators:


“These crane chicks will be with their parents and will be vulnerable to raccoons and
other types of predators that might be on the refuge.”


Levin says it’s possible the managers at Necedah will trap some raccoons. By the end of
the summer, the crane chicks will get their flight feathers and should be able to more
easily get away from dangers on the ground.


For the GLRC, I’m Chuck Quirmbach

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Whooping Cranes Following by Example

Researchers began a program to reintroduce whooping cranes in the eastern U.S. in 2000. This winter, some young cranes are learning how to migrate south from older birds. The biologists tracking the birds say so far, the new recruits are catching on. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Christina Shockley reports:

Transcript

Researchers began a program to reintroduce whooping cranes in the
eastern U.S. in 2000. This winter, some young cranes are learning how
to migrate south from older birds. The biologists tracking the birds say
so far, the new recruits are catching on. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Christina Shockley reports:


At first, humans led the new flock of whooping cranes from Wisconsin
to Florida by flying ultra light planes. Now, some of those birds are
teaching a few younger cranes how to make the trip.


Kelley Tucker is with the International Crane Foundation, one of the
groups involved in the reintroduction project. She says this winter, four
young whooping cranes are flying with older cranes and sandhill cranes
on the migratory path. They’re relying partly on instinct, partly on the
lead of the older birds.


“The birds will be a couple miles apart, but some of the biologists have
said ‘I have a sense that the younger birds know where the older birds
are.’ Sometimes they’ll roost within a mile or two of the older birds.”


Tucker says eventually she hopes all the chicks will learn to migrate
from older birds, and the ultra light planes won’t be used. She says it’s
important for the cranes to make it back to Wisconsin in the spring to
mate.


For the GLRC, I’m Christina Shockley.

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Study Reveals Coots Can Count

A new study in the journal Nature reveals that some birds can count. Researchers have found that they’re able to identify and tally their eggs in order to improve their reproductive success. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett explains:

Transcript

A new study in the journal Nature reveals that some birds can count. Researchers have found that
they’re able to identify and tally their eggs in order to improve their reproductive success. The
Great Lakes Consortium’s Sarah Hulett explains:


Bruce Lyon is a biologist at the University of California Santa Cruz. He made the discovery while
doing research on the reproductive behavior of American Coots. Coots are dark gray, duck-like
waterbirds that live in the northern U-S and southern Canada. They’re parasitic birds. That means
they lay some of their eggs in other coots’ nests – tricking the host birds into incubating eggs that
aren’t theirs.


But Lyon found that some females are able to recognize the foreign eggs by counting and ignoring
the imposters. Lyon says taking care of other birds’ eggs means a slimmer chance of their own
chicks surviving.


“There’s not enough food to go around, and if you end up raising somebody else’s chick, it
probably means you’ve lost one of your own.”


Lyon says a female coot will protect her babies by identifying eggs that aren’t her own, and burying
them or pushing them to the edge of the nest.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Sarah Hulett.

Falcons Hatch a Complete Recovery

Thirty years ago, peregrine falcons were nearly extinct in the Midwest. Today, environmental protection efforts have succeeded in returning the fast-flying raptors to their earlier numbers… and even better. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Diane Richard has more:

Transcript

Thirty years ago, peregrine falcons were nearly extinct in the Midwest. Today, environmental protection efforts have succeeded in returning the fast-flying raptors to their earlier numbers… and even better. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Diane Richard has more:


A twenty-year program to restore peregrine falcons is seeing new signs of
success this summer: hatchlings.


Experts estimate that as many as 300 peregrine falcons will hatch this year.


In the sixties, DDT all but wiped out the population. But the peregrine
falcon is back, thanks to a ban on the pesticide and conservation efforts by the Midwest Peregrine Falcon Restoration Program.


Since the eighties, this regional partnership has released birds bred in captivity. Today, it’s monitoring peregrine falcons at 30 sites across 13 U.S. states and two Canadian provinces.


Mark Martell is a conservation coordinator with the restoration program. He
says the challenge now is to keep the population thriving.


“We don’t have a lot of experience with taking a species from zero
individuals up to a stable population. So we want to make sure this
population stays stable.”


To do so, Martell says researchers will spend the next 20 years keeping tabs
on the falcons and their chicks.


For Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Diane Richard.