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| Blue cranes in flight |
Recently I have had a lot of
queries and requests to ‘look after’ and rear Blue Cranes. Sadly the one
rescued youngster did not live long enough to reach me, while the other adult
imprinted bird was left with its original caretakers. This brought me back to a
Crowned crane that I had been given to rear two years ago.
Below is the sad story of this
magnificent bird, which I wrote after losing it. I find this is sometimes the
best way I can get over the heartache of not succeeding in giving a bird its
freedom again.
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| Voël |
“Today I lost Voël, the Crowned
Crane or Mahem, as some people know them. It broke my heart to see this bird
lying there on the ground with no life left in it.
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| the tiny chick |
It arrived at Rookwood early in
March, a mere 30cm high, a pathetic little ‘chicken winged’ downy chick calling
all the time. Apparently it had been found ‘abandoned’ and brought to the SPCA.
I can remember worrying about whether it was a Blue or Crowned Crane and my
hesitant expectations in managing to ‘rear’ this little chap without losing it,
because it would not eat or would get any sort of infection or any other little
problem that could arise. You see, I felt, it should really be with its normal
parents. A call to an expert, Vicky, gave me enough ammunition to start the
process of rearing this bird.
Initially, it was put into a
cage with my remaining fowls, so that it could grow up with the fowls. I was at
that stage in the process of disposing of my fowls, but had two hens with
chicks. Neither fowl nor bird took note of each other though, so I abandoned
that idea and passed the balance of my fowls on. I had to bring Voël in every
night as it had no natural feathers to keep it warm. It would climb under a
feather duster that I had suspended in the bird cage, and this was its night
time mom. During the day it went out into a bunny cage and soon was allowed to
wander around on the back lawn.
Food consisted of cat food
pouches with crushed egg shell for calcium as well as a mealie cob.
Outside it
used to ‘comb’ grass for seed as food. By now it was called ‘Groei’ (meaning grow) as this is what it had to
do. Once Groei got too big for the bunny cage we allowed it to wander around on
the lawn all the time. I converted the night time to a carton box turned
sideways to accommodate its length. One evening I was late in collecting Groei
and it had got dark, but Groei had put itself to bed by climbing back into its
makeshift cage.
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| Voël in the long grass |
Groei grew quickly and the
feathers emerged making it possible to put it into one of my larger rehab cages
for the nights. Then Groei discovered it had wings and converted sleeping
downstairs to upstairs on top of the cage. From the time it was little it had
developed the typical crown on the top of its head, like a Yamaka that slowly
changed into spikes. Groei now became Voël (meaning
bird) as it had got to the height it would. The only thing that needed to
happen now was for the full plumage to emerge, which would take up to a year.
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| Voël with it's Yamaka |
Voël became part of the scene in
the yard. It would fly from the top of the cage to the back lawn, check the
washing on the line, take a dip in the bathtub (put out there specifically for
Voël), lie flat on the grass while sunning itself and do inspection on anything
you were busy within the garden around the house. Towards the end it used to
fly quite a bit. It was also ‘dancing’ like Mahems do. |
| Voël stretching its wings |
It must have taken a mere second
for all life to leave Voël when it hit the power line! How was it to see those
lines and not anticipate that it could not have survived this impact? You see
Voël will not have been the only Crowned crane that will die on power lines
like this, but one of many who do not have the ‘comforts’ it had while growing
up at Rookwood. I learnt a lot from Voël, but will always feel that I wish I
could have done more to ‘warn’ it that this is one of the dangers in the free
flying world. I will never know whether it was a male or female as only a blood
test would have done that. This I would never had done,
nor pinioned its wings because you see – I wanted Voël to be a free flying bird
where it belongs!”
My heart goes out to all the
Blue crane chicks (not often the Crowned cranes) that get caught to be hand
reared as pets as well as to all the cranes that get poisoned or killed on
power lines.
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| In Memory of Voël |
