Baby's first footprints
Parent and baby crane footprints - 10th July 2018
Lovely to see this - proof of hatching success for one of the Somerset pairs of cranes with the young crane's footprints alongside the parents. A number of Great Crane Project birds are busy chick rearing at the moment, with the first fledging imminent. Other pairs have only just hatched so we won't be able to give a full account of this year's breeding until much later in the summer / early autumn. We do know that we had over 20 pairs of birds this year, 19 of which have been confirmed as breeding, which is much better than last year, when the dry weather saw only 10 breeding attempts made. Hatching success has been be good this year too - so keeping everthing crossed for the young birds now as they grow over the first, really critical and dangerous first 10 weeks of their life without the power of flight!