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Nests & Eggs!

ICF’s captive Whooping Cranes are laying eggs and the wild Whooping Cranes are nesting in Wisconsin. Breeding season is here!

A tradition at ICF is to follow our “Egg Score Card,” which tracks the Whooping Crane eggs from our captive flock and wild nests in Wisconsin. We’ll be posting updates to our score card on our website and Facebook, so check back often in the coming weeks to view our progress.

Save the date! Join us for our next Crane Chick Cam live chat, Whooping Cranes in the Field, on Tuesday, July 23rd from 11:30 – 12:00 CDT.

Request an email reminder and view our full chat schedule.

 

Whooping Crane eggs laid at ICF (Final update 7/09/13)

Highlights: We’ve had two new females begin laying eggs this year! McGee, a eight year-old female hatched at ICF, laid her first egg 5/2 (read the story), and seven year-old Sage laid her first egg 5/8. Sage arrived at ICF in 2010 from the Calgary Zoo.

Click here to follow photographer Tom Lynn’s chronicle of Latka’s hatch on June 13th.

Total chicks at ICF: 11 (2 chicks died, Soap  6/28 and O.P. 7/8)

Following our 2013 naming theme – television sitcoms and characters from the 1970s – our current “cast” is Squiggy, Radar, Hawkeye, Maude, Barbarino, Fonzi, Epstein, Hunnicut, Klinger, Mork, and Latka (follow the chicks on our live Crane Chick Cam).

Total eggs laid at ICF: 43

Fertile: 23 (7 hatched at ICF/4 embryos died/1 egg too small to be viable)*

Infertile: 17

Broken: 3

Unknown (too young or too dark to determine fertility): 0

Additional eggs removed from wild nests in Wisconsin at ICF: 4 hatched (1 died) (view photos of our first hatch on May 21st)!

Additional fertile eggs received from Calgary Zoo: 3 hatched

*1 fertile egg shipped to Calgary Zoo and 10 fertile eggs shipped to Patuxent Wildlife Research Center for hatching; an additional 12 eggs recovered from wild nests in Wisconsin have also been shipped from ICF to Patuxent.

 

Wild Whooping Crane nests in Wisconsin (7/08/13): 

Sadly, pair #5-10 and 28-08 have lost their remaining chick, #W1-13  (read about #W1-13’s hatch and the nesting success study of this population).

Pair #9-03 and #3-04 re-nested and have hatched at least one chick, #W3-13 (hatch date estimated June 29th).

Pair #7-07 and #39-07 had a late first nest but did not hatch out any chicks (two eggs were recovered from their nest).

Visit ICF on Facebook for updates on the 2013 Whooping Crane breeding season.