its been a while

Hey all, sorry I haven't posted in so long. I've been working some extra hours lately and I just keep forgetting about this thing.
We have 12 whooping crane chicks that will be leaving for Necedah National Wildlife Refuge on July 21. Their names are Kohlrabi, Arugula, Yam, Chickpea, Parsnip, Rhubarb, Rutabaga, Fiddlehead, Cho-Cho, Tomatillo, Gobi, and Neep. They are all getting big so fast and they are super cute. Their ages range from about a week (only 1 of them) to slightly over a month old. Now that most of them are older they are more fun, because when we take them out for exercise they will do their own thing, instead of making you do all the work. The cutest is when they take baths - they look really funny. Today I had Arugula out and she made the cutest sounds while she drank. The chicks follow us pretty well but they like to go explore on their own too. The older ones are getting better at foraging on their own, so we don't have to pick/catch things for them as much. Today Arugula caught some baby grasshoppers, a small beetle, and a water strider on her own. Work has been pretty busy due to the chicks - we are all up there any time we can be. All of the chicks have to get exercised (taken out in the yards) twice a day. Some are going out for 1.5 hours, while others are going out for closer to 3 hours at a time. The three oldest can be left out on their own though so that is nice. There are also a few chicks that have to swim every day due to leg issues. There are morning and afternoon cleaning duties as well as a night check. We also constantly check temperatures in the chick runs to make sure they are in a decent range. I know some people have been wanting to see the infamous crane costume, so I got some pics today - hope you enjoy http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLanding.action?c=6avavo35.bjds1jf9&x=0&y=-vjvc0p&localeid=en_US

photos

So apparently there is no way for me to post a general link for viewing my albums. I can post this, which will take you to a slideshow of all my albums thus far. I will go ahead and post it - some of the pics are new, some are old, and I still don't have all my old pics uploaded to the site yet. When I add new photos I will post a link to their slideshow. Hope this works! http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLanding.action?c=6avavo35.am3891jd&x=0&y=-gg6ix2&localeid=en_US&cm_mmc=site_email-_-site_share-_-core-_-view_photos_album

Had a good weekend - Monday I went on a day trip with a couple girls from work. We went to Blue Mounds, WI first, where we visited Cave of the Mounds and Blue Mound State Park. We got a free tour of the cave via a reciprocal agreement with ICF. It was a lot of fun - the cave had a few neat speleothems, but nothing super amazing. It was still really cool to just see all those things I learned about in geology. I took some pictures, but they aren't the best since I was in a dark cave. One part of the tour that I really liked was when we were shown a phosphoric reaction on the rocks. We had to close our eyes while the guide flashed a really bright light on the wall, then it went out and we opened our eyes to see the wall glow-in-the-dark. It slowly faded back into darkness. Another part that I thought was cool was when we experienced total darkness. It was amazing how much darker it was than what I think of as dark. After the cave (and after getting rock candy - a must) we went to a nearby state park and hiked. From there we went to New Glarus, WI to tour the brewery. It wasn't quite what I expected, since it was an audio tour, but it was still fun.
I decided to change websites for posting my photos, because the one I was using will only show my most recent 200 pics. I am now using the Kodak site. I don't know if this link will get you there - if not, let me know. I am having a hard time finding any general link for my albums. I set it so you do not have to have an account to see the pictures. I am still working on uploading some of my older photos, but the ones from this weekend are on there. http://www.kodakgallery.com/AlbumMenu.jsp?view=1&sort_order=&

chicks!

It has been an exciting few days here. Last Monday our first whooping crane chick hatched. I didn't see him until yesterday - boy is he cute! Every year they chose a theme for whooping crane chick names and this year it is vegetables. The first chick is named Rutabaga. We have to be in crane costumes whenever whooping crane chicks can see us. I fed Rutabaga yesterday - he is doing really well, eating and drinking on his own, not needing much encouragement. I also took Rutabaga outside in the chick yard for some exercise yesterday. He followed me around as he walked, ran, and tripped. He went in the pond with me and swam for a minute, which was adorable. I fed him dandelion roots out in the yard, and he enjoyed pecking at dandelion tops. I wasn't able to get any pictures yesterday but some other interns have gotten a couple and I hopefully will soon. It is hard because we cannot let the chicks see the camera. Two nights ago two more whooping crane chicks hatched. The first out of those to hatch is named Fiddle Head. The second will be named tomorrow - we had to help him hatch because he was having trouble, and any time there is an assisted hatch we wait a couple days to name them just in case they don't make it.
I have been hanging out with girls from work . . . going hiking and birding, seeing movies, etc. This coming Monday I am planning on going bird banding with two girls from work. It is about an hour away and I believe they focus on warbler banding, so it should be pretty cool.

Last Sunday I went to Devil's Lake State Park with a guy that interns at the farm across from ICF. We visited a great blue heron rookery there, which was awesome. They nest up in the tree tops, which is a really amazing sight. We saw multiple nesting pairs and the trees continued farther than we could see. There was one chick in one of the nests that we could make out and Caylan got a nice picture of it (the one on this page). He got a good picture of one flying over as well (on this page).

Our first chick began the hatching process yesterday. He/she should hatch today or tomorrow. It was super cute yesterday because he was not only moving around but also peeping. It's really funny to hear noises coming out of an egg.

been a while

Sorry I haven't updated in forever!
A few days ago I held another crane - Berta, a sandhill - while she got a beak trim. A couple days ago I was watching some birds on live video (some of them have cameras in their yards) and saw two different female whooping cranes lay eggs. It was really cool to watch them go through labor - they circle and then hock-sit (sit on their "knee" - actually is ankle - joint called the hock) and they will open mouth breathe and wiggle around. That same day, I was switching around eggs with another girl and a red crowned crane attacked me, bit my hands some. He was not happy that we were taking his eggs - what a good dad.
Monday I went to Madison and went to Target and the Henry Vilas Zoo again. I took some pics at the zoo and still need to post them. Tuesday I got a state park pass and went to Devil's Lake State Park, which was really nice. I took a few pics there and need to post them as well. That night a group of us from ICF went bowling with a few interns at the Aldo Leopold Foundation (ALF). They seemed really nice, but we didn't really get to know them much.

Handling

Saturday I was taken out to learn crane handling. My first attempt didn't go great, but the second bird I tried (Razz - Brolga) went well. It is not easy holding a crane football-style under your arm, keeping them from getting away. I wasn't able to have anyone take a picture of me, but there hopefully will be more opportunities. Yesterday I found a Tree Swallow egg on the ground in Crane City. It is so small, but that's probably just in comparison because I keep seeing crane eggs. I took a couple pics so I'll probably post those on Flickr in the birding album.
The weather has been really nice the past couple of days, but it looks like there may be some rain tomorrow. Still going to be warm though.

Random Updates

We finally have a fertile egg - and its a Whooping Crane egg! Tomorrow I am scheduled to help with AI in the morning, so that should be fun. A couple of days ago we had a badger hole inside crane city, so we filled it in. There have been several holes since, so we are trying to get it away from the birds. I never thought I'd be helping solve a badger problem. I just hope I get to see one. There was a huge rainbow this morning on my way to work - I took a couple pics, I'll post 'em in the next couple of days. Tomorrow right after work I am going to Madison with another intern. We are going to meet up with one of my roommates and go to a powwow. It should be a neat experience.

Sorry I haven't posted in a while! I've been working long days and just haven't gotten around to updating. We have had pretty many eggs in the past few days - most recently, 4 yesterday and 2 today. We got two whooper eggs, unfortunately both are infertile. I took some pics of some of the birds at the pod (display birds) last week and I posted them in the ICF birds album on Flickr. I took a few more today and I will get those up sometime tonight or tomorrow. I really don't have a lot to talk about . . .
I've been getting questions about why so many eggs are infertile, so I guess I should explain. Female birds can lay eggs without copulating or having a mate. Some of the eggs so far have been by single females, so they are obviously not fertilized. Some pairs do not have good odds of being naturally fertile, and other times pairs simply don't copulate at the right time to fertilize the eggs. A lot of it comes down to timing, and they seem to have a hard time getting it right.

Yesterday I went to Eagle Optics in Middleton, WI to buy some binoculars. Since I was close to Madison, I stopped by the Henry Vilas Zoo, which is a large free zoo. It was colder than I expected, so I didn't stay long, but I will definitely go back. They had a lot of animals, and it is an AZA accredited zoo. I was planning on taking pictures, but my camera batteries died soon after I got there and I didn't have any extra with me. I'll post the couple pics that I took.
Today I went birding (with my new binoculars) at a place called Leopold Reserve. It is fairly close to the International Crane foundation, and there is a lot of land in the reserve. I took a few pics, which I will post. I saw a lot of birds, including a Pileated Woodpecker. The land was pretty and appeared to provide a nice habitat for a lot of birds. It was mostly all wooded area, but fairly often there were small pools of water where I found a lot of birds foraging.

Today at work one of the staff members took the interns out to practice artificial insemination (AI). We practiced on about 5 Sandhill cranes which was really neat. We did both males and females and took turns doing each thing. It takes two people, one to hold/stimulate the crane and another to actually give or receive the sample. Afterwards we took two sperm samples back to the lab so we could practice determining sperm density and motility.
We candled the Wattled crane egg today, and we are pretty sure it is infertile. I took a picture of the egg, so I will put that up on flickr soon.
Hope everyone has a good Easter!

pics

I have updated some pictures on flickr. There are more added to the Oschner Park & Zoo album and I posted a couple pics of Casper.

Update

I keep forgetting to update this, so here goes.
We got a few eggs last week, and I was able to go in and pick a couple up so that we could mark and measure them. It was a great experience. They candled three of the eggs yesterday, and unfortunately none of them were fertile. There is still at least one more that will be candled in the next few days I believe. The cranes whose eggs were infertile will hopefully lay more clutches so we can get some fertile eggs - I want some chicks!
Saturday I drove to Western Illinois University to attend an enrichment workshop. I went for a girl I work with because she was unable to attend. It was interesting and I learned some information on enrichment that I believe will be helpful in future jobs. It was fun taking the company vehicle and going on a mini "business trip."
Today I had Skyline for lunch thanks to my mom and the post office!
Hope you all are doing well.

snow :(

We got our first egg yesterday. It is from a Red-crowned Crane pair, You-Yi and Zoah Ming. They hadn't really made a nest, but today they had made a little bit more of a nest around the egg. We are letting them incubate the egg because You-Yi has a very small beak (she broke the majority of her beak off a long time ago) and they want to see if she can properly rotate the egg. If she can, they may use the pair as surrogates in the future.
I was shown the ISO facility today (the building for isolated chick rearing). It is a newer building and seems really nice. I'm excited to get to help raise the chicks - I'll have to wear a crane costume!
It started flurrying around 5 today, and it has already started accumulating a little. They are predicting around 5-7 inches, but I don't think Baraboo is supposed to get it quite as bad as Madison and other close areas.

There has not been a lot going on . . . I jumped into the work week on my own, done with training. I'm driving vans and golf carts, and learning more about the birds. Yesterday a staff member gave us a little intro to egg/incubation procedures. Eggs should be coming any time now.
I bought an Albino Clawed Frog last week. He is nameless as of right now, so I am open to suggestions. He's very small right now but will get up to about 4-5". He is really scared and not eating much at the moment so hopefully he makes it! When he gets a little less freaked out I'll try to take some pics of him.
Today I went out and explored Baraboo some more. I found a couple more neat shops downtown, and went in Baraboo Candy, which is the "home of the Cow Pie." I also went to Wisconsin Dells, which is about 10-15 minutes from my apartment. It was really weird driving through the Dells. It is a very touristy area, and is full of attractions and water parks. It reminds me a little of what I remember about Gatlinburg. I tried to snap some pictures while I was driving through, so they aren't the best pics (hard to aim while driving!). There was hotel after hotel, water park after water park, and most hotels had water parks. There were lots of other attractions and it was a little overwhelming. I stopped at one store and headed back to Baraboo before I got lost. I already put up the pics on Flickr.

Baraboo

Today was extremely nice out so I explored Baraboo some more. The town is actually really neat. I found some cute shops downtown, and I didn't even go everywhere. All these shops are making me wish I had money to spend :P I found an awesome shop that is called Wild Bird Shop. It has animals of all kinds, but there are a lot of bird things - Decorations, puzzles, feeders, houses, etc. I was in heaven! The lady that was working said she is a bird rehabilitator. Everywhere you go here there seems to be outdoor/wildlife things . . . its really nice. I visited the Oschner Park and Zoo today, which is a small free outdoor zoo and park within about 3 minutes of my apartment. They actually have some cool animals there, though some were not visibly on display today. I took some pictures that I'll post on Flickr later. Although its small, its a really nice zoo to go to. All of the animals were donated, and they use donations to work on their dispays as well. I think it would be great if there were more places like this - families could go any time they want for however long they want without spending money.

Today was my first day off. I went out and looked for jobs so I'll have some extra money and something to do on my weekends. I applied at a few places and I'm planning on looking more tomorrow. I discovered that most places around here are not open until 10am.
I also attended a 2 hour talk today given by a University of Wisconsin professor. I am trying to take full advantage of this experience. When I was going to the talk, 7 Sandhill Cranes flew over.
For anyone interested, I started a web site to post my pictures on. So far its only pictures of my apartment. http://www.flickr.com/photos/penguina08/

crane species status

My mom asked me yesterday if cranes are endangered. Many of the 15 species are at least at risk for becoming endangered. If you're interested, ICF's website has a map and data on cranes. If you just run your mouse over one of the crane pictures it will pop up on the map and show whether or not that species is endangered. I think the data may be a few years old, but it still gives you an idea. http://www.savingcranes.org/speciesfieldguide.html

random thoughts

Today I was able to assist in a couple things the vet was doing. I helped hold Tempest's head still while the vet cleaned her wounds again and gave her an anti-inflammatory. I also helped hold Elpis's head (Siberian Crane) still for a beak trim.
Today was my second to last day of training, but I was able to do some of the services on my own. Starting Wednesday I will not be training anymore. I got a set of keys yesterday, which was exciting.
I saw my first wild crane today - a Sandhill Crane flew over while we were servicing Crane City this morning. I will most likely see a lot more . . . they fly over fairly often, but a lot of them walk down the roads at crane city, since they hear and see all of our cranes.
The other interns that live at the guest house invited me over tonight for game night, and I think we are seeing a movie tomorrow night. Everyone gets along real well so far.

your friday is my wednesday

Last night at some time one of the pairs of Hooded Cranes (Niles and Tempest) got into a bad fight. . . Niles apparently was pecking at Tempest's head, and caused some injuries. This morning I got to see her and watched the vets clear the area of feathers and clean up the wounds. It was pretty sad, she is a fairly friendly bird. She was really good while they were cleaning the wounds, considering.
Another aspect of the day that was different was a cleanout of one of the indoor pens at the pod. The birds were locked out and we completely cleaned out the inside area. I think they do this about once a year. It was a lot of work, shoveling out all the wood chips - I'm pretty beat today. If only it were my Friday . . . I'm not off until Monday.

brr

Well, today was day 3 of work. It was about 20 today but the sun was out. Yesterday was really bad - it was about 15-22 with extremely high winds. I'm still in training, but I'm starting to get the hang of things. The nice thing here is that the interns are considered staff members, so we are included in just about everything. I attended a staff meeting today, which lasted about 3 hours (I don't think that is typical). I am getting better at knowing my crane species - I still need to practice a couple of them though. The hard part will be learning all of their names and where they are located. That will mostly just take time, getting to know each one. Yesterday I observed the socialization of two black-necked cranes. I watched them for almost 2 hours, recording down behaviors to see how the two will do as a pair. Today I watched some videos of crane behavior which I thought was really helpful. I also had the honor of collecting a few fecal samples today.
The roads around here are becoming more familiar to me, and I actually know where I'm going most of the time. I have yet to get really lost (knock on wood).
I'm getting to know my roommates better also. One of them (Maureen) is an intern in the field ecology department and the other (Cynthia) is a little older and is a temporary hire in the education department. I expected I would get to know Maureen better than Cynthia since we are about the same age, but Maureen tends to keep to herself a lot. I have been talking to Cynthia a good amount when we are both home. She lives in Madison, so she will be going home on the weekends. Maureen is actually from Toledo.
I thought being away from home would be hard, but so far it hasn't really seemed different than being at college. I'm sure after a couple months I'll be wishing I were only an hour away. I guess a few days isn't long enough for the reality to sink in.

1st Day of Work

Work was good, it was pretty laid back. I worked at "Crane City" in the morning, cleaning/feeding the birds. After lunch I did some reading on cranes and helped with various tasks, and ended the day by going to "the pod." This is where the public can visit to view the birds. Today was a check day, not a service day for the pod, so we just made sure their water and food was okay and checked the birds, instead of doing an all out cleaning. Everyone seems really nice. It was weird having down time in the middle of the work day, but it was nice not having to rush around to get things done all day. The only real bad part is the weather. It was really cold and gross out today - lots of fog and the ground is all snowy and muddy. It looks like tomorrow is going to be even worse - its supposed to get really cold and possible high winds.

Welcome to Wisconsin

I left at about 7am Ohio time Sunday and arrived at about 3pm Wisconsin time. Considering the weather, 9 hours was pretty good time. The drive went well aside from the rain/ice/snow I hit for the last 1/3 of the drive.
I was supposed to go to my apartment when I got in town, but no one had a key for me and my other roommates were not home. I ended up staying at the guest house last night and moved into the apartment this morning. The apartment is really nice, and the other interns I have met were very nice and helpful.
Wisconsin is definitely different - from the roads to the stores, it will be an adjustment. I realized on my drive that I won't be able to eat Skyline here . . . the stores don't even have Skyline products :(
I guess that's all for now - I start working tomorrow.