Photo: Marianne Wellington	Meet the 2009 DAR Whooping Crane Chicks!
	Crane DAR #37-09
	Date Hatched	June 16 , 2009
	Gender	Female
	Pre-Migr. Weight: 5.2 Kg	Egg Source: USGS Patuxent WRC
	Permanent Leg Bands	Left Leg W/R Right Leg R/G/W
	Read more about the raising and naming of the DAR chicks. *Scroll to bottom for most recent history.*

Personality
DAR #37-09 has enjoyed food from day one and is growing like a weed. Due to her weight gain, she has been limit-fed and exercised by a swimming routine for several weeks. She is also an aggressive bird so we give her extra exercise on her own. After moving from ICF to nearby Necedah NWR on July 21, she calmed down some. We hope it will take only a few days for her to outgrow her aggression enough to be put with other chicks. We have started short exercise sessions with four of the other DAR chicks but 37-09 and 35-09 still seem to be in competition with each other. Chick #37-09 has a yellow band on her left leg.

By the end of August 37-09 was a good flyer with the other DAR cranes (except the youngest one). She sometimes harrassed the two youngest when their protective buddy 39-09 was not around to chase them off.

October weather brought sun, wind, rain and snow. The chicks seemed to enjoy testing their wings in the winds. Several days they birds made flights where they were almost out of view flying both to the north and south of their pen site. A couple of times they were out of view for a period of time, and someof the flew over to visit the ultralight chicks in their pen! We couldn't tell which chicks did that because they didn't get banded until Oct. 13. They are building up their flight strength in these final days or weeks before migration.

The nine DAR cranes were released on the evening of October 24 on the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge. Signals from the radio transmitters on the birds' leg bands will help biologists from ICF and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service as they track movements of the released DAR cranes now and throughout their migration. Stay tuned!

Notes by Marianne Wellington, ICF. Thank you!

Fall 2009: DAR 37-09 was released with DAR 36-09 on northeastern Sprague Pool near adult cranes #311 and 312. DAR 37-09 then roosted near or on a large sandhill crane roost on eastern Sprague Pool while 36-09 flew away to roost on another pool. But the two joined the other DAR birds at Site 3/ERP on October 27. On November 1 37-09 joined all the other DAR juveniles (except 36-09 and 42-09) as they flew in undirected flight over Monroe and Juneau Counties for at least 70 minutes before returning to Site 3. Are they getting restless? Will they soon follow older cranes to learn their migration route, as experts hope they will?

Migration History

Back to "Meet the Flock 2009"

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