Red crowned cranes raising chick at wildlife park

Kushiro and Hokaido, a young  pair of red crowned cranes that arrived just over two years ago, have successfully bred and raised a chick!

It is unknown yet if the fluffy ball of feathers is a young male or female, but it is thriving and growing fast.

Over the past two years Keepers have helped the cranes at the Park to thrive.

They have ensured that their enclosure has a good covering of trees and bushes. Their main Keeper Josh carved out a suitable area for them to use as a nesting site and ensured there was plenty of nesting material available.

It didn’t take them long to settle in and they were soon displaying, dancing, and singing to each other. At approximately 1.5 metres tall they are very impressive to watch.

Staff were very excited when the chick was born and put measures in place to help it grow strong and stay healthy. One of these was to close off the path near to the nest to minimise disturbance.

This really helped and let the family carry on raising a chick without feeling stressed. The path was opened again once the chick was confidently moving around the enclosure with its parents.

The chick is learning from its parents (Image: Lake District Wildlife Park)

The chick is six weeks old but is already about half the height of its parents. It seems to grow in height every day!

With close observation you can also see the chick learning how to feed. Crane beaks are like spears and very long. However, the adults will delicately pick up food and pass it gently to the youngster. They will show the chick where the food is and hold it low to the ground, showing where they have found it.

The youngster will also make what sounds like a purring noise to stimulate the adults to feed it.

In the wild, red crowned cranes are one of the largest and most endangered species of crane in the world. Found in Russia, Mongolia, China and Japan they are locally endangered. The main threat to their survival is the risk of habitat loss. Their breeding grounds are shrinking and becoming too small to sustain viable populations.

The cranes stand at 1.5m tall; the chick is already half their height (Image: Lake District Wildlife Park)

It is hoped that the youngster will go on to find a suitable mate at another wildlife park and breed in the future.

In the meantime, the Lake District Wildlife Park is doing its bit to conserve these beautiful birds and to raise awareness about their plight in the wild.

If you are visiting the Park over the holidays please do have a walk down to the crane enclosure and if you keep quiet you may be lucky enough to see the young chick.