{"id":4816,"date":"2025-11-06T09:41:42","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T09:41:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/?p=4816"},"modified":"2025-11-06T09:41:44","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T09:41:44","slug":"birds-of-a-feather-how-to-raise-a-common-crane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/birds-of-a-feather-how-to-raise-a-common-crane\/","title":{"rendered":"Birds of a Feather: How to Raise a Common Crane"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In September 1465, George Neville marked his enthronement as Arch Bishop of York with a feast said to contain 4,000 mallard and teal, 1,000 partridges, 400 woodcock, 204 bittern, 200 pheasants, 100 curlew and 204 common crane. The scale of the festivity marks how common these birds once were – but less than 100 years later, Britain saw its last breeding pair of cranes. Over hunting and loss of wetland habitat drove the common crane to extinction as a native breeding bird. Today, at least 80 breeding pairs can be spotted in Britain, thanks to the exceptional work of conservationists who protected and restored their habitats. Even with the natural arrival of birds from continental Europe, the slow breeding rate of cranes meant that numbers remained small. To boost their populations, the Great Crane project, a partnership between WWT<\/a>, RSPB<\/a> and Pensthorpe Conservation Trust<\/a>, decided to go one step further and become crane parents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First impressions<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Rearing cranes in captivity takes creativity. They are intelligent birds and can be challenging offspring to raise \u2013 particularly if you are a human. The major hurdle that the team had to overcome was imprinting. In the wild, young creatures of many different species imprint on the first thing they see \u2013 usually mum or dad. This helps the youngsters follow their parents and in the future it can help them to pair up with the correct species. Imprinting on humans could be dangerous for both bird and human so to prevent the young cranes from becoming too familiar with humans, the team dressed up as adult cranes whenever they interacted with the birds. \u201cWe dressed up in this wee willy winky kind of costume, a sack cloth, covered our faces with gorse \u2013 we looked more like beekeepers actually. The business end of the costume was initially a litter picker which we had designed to look more like a crane,\u201d says Nigel Jarett, Conservation Breeding Manager at WWT. Through their careful disguises and props, the team were able to interact with the young cranes without ever revealing their true identities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
\"\"
Crane parent feeding a common crane chick in a coop in the crane facility at Slimbridge<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Teaching crane what to eat<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Hatching<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The eggs were brought over to the UK from Germany and incubated at WWT Slimbridge Wetland Centre<\/a> in the south west of England. \u201cWhen you place eggs  in incubators, it\u2019s just like waiting for bread to beak<\/a>[NJ1]<\/a> . You don\u2019t know what is going on inside the eggs, <\/a>[NJ2]<\/a> you can do everything you can in terms of providing the right conditions but you\u2019re really in the lap of the gods<\/a>[NJ3]<\/a> , or rather the eggs!\u201d says Nigel. In the later stages of development, the chick takes its first breath in the air pocket which has developed inside the egg. These precious first breaths cause a build-up of carbon dioxide which could become dangerous for the chick, but this build-up of CO2 acts as a signal to a muscle in the chick\u2019s neck, causing it to begin twitching \u2013 stimulating the pipping process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
\"\"
Checking Common Crane eggs<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Once free from the egg, the young crane needs to be encouraged to start drinking, which, as Nigel says, is surprisingly hard. \u201cWhat is strange about cranes is for a wetland species they are quite difficult to persuade to get started with drinking, so you\u2019ve got to have water dripping from a dummy head into a petri dish with marbles in. They\u2019re in there to stop the chicks falling in and getting wet and also to sparkle a bit. Once they are drinking they are off.\u201d There is still one thing that the team needs to see to know that the chick is okay \u2013 their first poo. \u201cIt\u2019s really quite nasty to look at but it means that everything inside is working and it makes us really happy to see,\u201d says Nigel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
\"\"
Common Crane with a chick at Slimbridge<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Crane School<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Once the chicks are ready, it is time to start lessons with their adopted parents. Dressed in their adult crane outfits, the team would spend hours every day walking the youngsters around their enclosures. \u201cIn nature, cranes walk miles every day when they are foraging. It is really important for baby cranes to get a lot of exercise in order for their legs to grow straight and long. Birds have got growth pads at the ends of their long bones which are stimulated by footfall. So in order to get your cranes to grow nicely, you\u2019ve got to walk them a lot,\u201d says Nigel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Crane parent feeding a chick<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
\"\"
Common Cranes chasing off a fox near Slimbridge<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Independence<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

After around 10 weeks of crane school at WWT Slimbridge, the young cranes were ready to take their first steps towards adulthood. After a short trip down the road, the birds are led into a wetland enclosure where they would remain until they were ready to be released into the wild. \u201cIt was one of those stressful moments where you\u2019re just praying that they are not going to do the wrong thing like fly into a fence, but they behaved beautifully,\u201d says Nigel. The project set a goal of 20 breeding <\/a>[NJ1]<\/a> pairs by 2025 but the success has been such that they reached their target early, with 30 breeding pairs in 2023. Today, work is still ongoing to monitor their activities, protect their habitat and engage communities. Local school children have been recruited to name the cranes and Nigel still sees individuals with names like Lofty, Swampy, Pickles, Mildred, Wally, Twinkle and Pecky <\/a>[NJ2]<\/a> flying over WWT Slimbridge. \u201cIts very similar to if you have grown up kids, you watch them grow up and become independent and go off and do their thing,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Great Crane project was funded by Viridor Credits. To find out more about WWT\u2019s work to protect wetland species and habitats, visit their website<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
\"\"
A family of common cranes on south lake at WWT Slimbridge. Bart, Ruby.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Common Cranes, Chris and Monty, in wetlands<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once extinct in Britain, the common crane is making a comeback thanks to dedicated conservationists. This article shows how the Great Crane Project raises young cranes using creative methods\u2014from crane costumes to \u201ccrane school\u201d\u2014to prepare them for life in the wild.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":4829,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[934],"tags":[],"topics":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-4816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-conservation1"],"acf":[],"author_meta":{"display_name":"Ellen Bradley","author_link":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/author\/ellenbradley1\/"},"featured_img":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/11\/RS32030_RS32030_WWT_100512_0093-1-1-Kopie-600x402.jpg","coauthors":[],"tax_additional":{"categories":{"linked":["Conservation<\/a>"],"unlinked":["Conservation<\/span>"]}},"comment_count":"0","relative_dates":{"created":"Posted 5 months ago","modified":"Updated 5 months ago"},"absolute_dates":{"created":"Posted on November 6, 2025","modified":"Updated on November 6, 2025"},"absolute_dates_time":{"created":"Posted on November 6, 2025 9:41 am","modified":"Updated on November 6, 2025 9:41 am"},"featured_img_caption":"Common Crane chick at Crane School learning to feed from a crane head spoon (Great Crane Project)","series_order":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4816"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4816\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4833,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4816\/revisions\/4833"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4816"},{"taxonomy":"topics","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topics?post=4816"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.zeiss.com\/sports-optics\/birding\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=4816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}