From the Contact Station July 2021

Summer and a Crane Update

Summer certainly is here.  If you have been down on the River ‘S’ lately, you can see how very, very dry the grasses are already.  All the spring rains made for an abundance of fast-growing grasses, but the extremely hot days of late June have turned much of the area golden.  Usually, the refuge waits until mid-July to start the haying.  That gives extra time for the young animals to be safer from predators and to move out of the way during the cutting process.  But this year is so dry, you will see some of the fields being cut earlier.  When this happens, look for the Vultures to hang out around the cut fields.  There is always some loss of field critters and the vultures do take advantage.  We should see the Kestrels begin to hunt the cut fields again. High grasses are not the best hunting grounds for them.  Likewise, the Northern Harriers might reappear to hunt the fields.

There have been several reports on the sightings board about young birds.  Virginia Rail and Tree Swallow babies are out.  Look for the baby Coots and Pied-billed Grebes soon. They are always so fun to watch, and they look so different in coloring from their parents.

This year continues to be good for the parent Sandhill Cranes and their colt.  We estimate that the colt was hatched around the first of May. The egg incubation by both parents would have started 30 days before the hatch.  Young are nidifugous, i.e., they leave the nest as soon as 8 hours to 24 hours after hatching and are covered with orange-brown natal down, great for camouflage in brown grasses. At hatching, the bill is orange-pink, darker toward tip. The whitish egg tooth is gone on our colt. It is usually lost within two weeks. On May 27^th, photographer Anne Myers was able to get this photo from the auto tour road looking across and into the Kiwa Trail area.  By 20 to 30 days of age, young acquire about half of their adult leg and wing length, though mass increases more slowly. You can see by the photo with the adults that the legs appear not quite half adult size. Forty days after hatching, legs are almost full-grown and by 60 days, the bill and wings are nearly adult size.

Colts enjoy extended biparental care.  Cranes are opportunistic, omnivorous foragers that consume a variety of plant materials, small vertebrates, and invertebrates. As seen here, the parent is feeding a morsel to the chick.  For about the first 10 days chicks are mainly fed bill-to-bill by parents and if food items are too large to take whole the parent will break it up to feed the chick.  After half grown, the colt self-feeds. The parents often move food toward the chick to encourage feeding activity. Fledging, when the colt can take flight, varies with different crane populations and can be 7 to 10 weeks after hatch.  Growth will not be complete until 10 to 12 months old when birds reach adult mass. Meanwhile, staff will be watching the behavior of the cranes (from a distance) to determine if the colt has successfully fledged.  That will give it an increased ability to move away from predators.  Coyotes, raccoons, and Great Horned Owls are still a threat, with coyotes being the biggest problem.  About two weeks after these photos were taken, the refuge Biotechs spotted the family again (mid-June).  The colt had grown substantially, going from chicken size to turkey size according to one staffer.   We are hoping to see the family of three moving around the greater refuge in the not-too-distant future.  When that happens, we will have our opportunity to walk the Kiwa Trail too.

-Susan Setterberg, Contact Station Volunteer