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Puppets, mirrors, and elaborate costumes all help keep orphaned birds from getting attached to humans.
Minnesota wildlife rehabilitator and ornithologist Foxfeather Zenkova trades sequins for imitation bird feathers when getting dressed up for a Saturday night. Recently, Zenkova donned an elaborate costume nicknamed “Ugly Mom,” all to care for an orphaned sandhill crane (Antigone canadensis). Outfits like Ugly Mom disguise human wildlife rehabilitators as adult animals, allowing them to care for orphaned animals and lessen the risk that the baby will imprint on a human before release.
“Many times a chick is found on its own, and a young sandhill should never be alone,” Zenkova, who runs Vulture Conservancy and Foxfeather and the Foxloft, tells Popular Science. “They stick like glue to their parents’ side, not straying more than a few yards from them until they’re basically full size and it’s time for migration in the fall.”
Sandhill cranes are one of the tallest birds in North America at nearly four feet tall with an impressive seven-foot wingspan. During the summer months, they are found in small bogs, marshes, and prairies across northern North America and the southeastern United States. During the winter, large flocks of sandhill cranes are found in Bosque del Apache, New Mexico, and Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge in Texas.
“They move with a prehistoric elegance, and their loud, bugling calls can travel for miles across wetlands, sounding like something you’d hear in Jurassic Park,” Zenkova says.
Sandhill cranes are also fast learners, highly observant, have a great memory, and are considered highly intelligent. However, this intelligence and innate social behavior can be a challenge in a rehabilitation setting.
“Craving strong social bonds and with eager minds, young cranes can become attached to people surprisingly quickly,” Zenkova explains. “Because they learn social behaviors from the adults around them, human imprinting can make it difficult, or even impossible, for them to live a normal life in the wild. That’s why rehabilitators go to extraordinary lengths to keep human interaction to a minimum, using crane costumes, puppets, mirrors, and captive surrogate foster cranes to help chicks identify with their own species instead of people.”
Another rehabilitation challenge is more physical—and can get uncomfortable in the summer. Cranes also move a lot and can walk mere hours after hatching. After a few days, they cover miles a day with their parents. This movement is critical to a young crane’s health and development and they can grow up to one inch per day.
“This requires a lot of dedicated space and also time, and here during an uncommonly hot Minnesota summer this year it means me slogging around in the sun in full ‘Ugly Mom’ costume for hours a day, foraging and exercising different babies,” says Zenkova.
Currently, Zenkova’s clinic is caring for four orphaned sandhills, with a fifth on the way. Most chicks are orphaned after one or both parents are struck and killed by cars while crossing the road.
If you believe that you have found an orphaned sandhill crane chick, it’s important to keep your distance at first. It is rare that a parent will abandon a chick and they may be hidden in vegetation or nearby but out of sight.
“One of our orphaned cranes came in this year because it was parked under someone’s bird feeder for two weeks with no parents in sight,” Zenkova explains. “The homeowners [understandably] thought maybe the parents just visited occasionally like a mother deer or rabbit would, but it’s not normal for a baby crane to stay in one place alone like that and it did need help.”
Since these are wild birds, do not attempt to care for one yourself or turn to the internet for advice. According to Zenkova, it is full of misinformation that can end up harming the bird since rehabilitation is more than just feeding the animal. Reach out to a licensed animal rehabilitation center in your area as soon as possible, especially if the animal has obvious injuries or is constantly calling out. Animal Help Now can help you find licensed rehabilitators in your area. Animal rehabilitators are also always looking for volunteers to learn how to care for animals, as well as the public’s support through donations.
After orphaned or injured cranes successfully heal, complete swimming therapy to strengthen broken legs, or learn how to be social with other cranes, they can be released. In Minnesota, where Zenkova works, rehabilitated sandhill cranes can be released in the fall.
“Rehabilitating cranes is a ton of work, but watching a crane chick heal and thrive is a great privilege for me,” Zenkova says. “There’s nothing better than the feeling of seeing them re-join their counterparts once again and get a second chance at a wild life at release.”
