After a slow start, sandhill crane raised in captivity released into the wild to join other birds

Anyone expecting sweeping, dramatic music as a rescued sandhill crane left its crate Wednesday at the Jasper-Pulaski Fish and Wildlife Area and soared into the crystal clear sky to join its tribe was sorely disappointed.

The crane, rehabbed for the past six months since it was a two-week-old colt at Humane Indiana’s Wildlife Center outside of Valparaiso, never got that version of the script.

The crane, identified by the center’s staff as male, wandered several yards before plopping down in the grass, its almost newfound friends about 150 yards away at the wildlife area in Medaryville. There was a wing stretch, perhaps a flex to show off its feathers, but it settled back down in the grass.

“In my head, I had this beautiful (scene) with the music playing with the release,” said Nicole Harmon, the wildlife center’s executive director. “You never know how it will go.”

The crane’s rescue and recovery, and that of another now destined for the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington, D.C., because a damaged wing means it can’t fly, are no less dramatic, even if its release was anything but that.

The crane’s release at the Jasper-Pulaski Fish and Wildlife Area, where the cranes swarm this time of year, particularly at dawn and dusk, as they migrate for the winter, is, as far as Harmon knows, the first time a sandhill crane raised in captivity has been released into the wild in the state of Indiana.

As of Tuesday, 32,938 sandhill cranes have made their way to the fish and wildlife area, according to figures updated each week by the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, which tracks the number from early October through the third week in December.

Sandhill cranes, said Brad Bumgardner, executive director of Indiana Audubon and the former head naturalist at Indiana Dunes State Park, make a short-distance migration this time of year and northern Indiana serves as a funnel of sorts as the birds fly south.

They come from wetlands in North Dakota, Ontario, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin through this area. Sometimes, they winter from here south to Kentucky, if the weather is mild enough. In colder years, the cranes move things south, staying in southern Indiana, Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi.

“The wintering really is dependent on weather,” Bumgardner said, adding the cranes head back north once wetlands begin to thaw and southern winds pick up, usually in March or April, or February if the winter is mild.

“They’re riding on those thermals right as those wetlands are thawing,” he added.

He supported Harmon’s contention that the crane’s release was a first for the state, given that the wildlife center takes in 2,000 animals of all sorts each year, and that the breeding ground for the birds is only in the northern part of the state.

“She’s probably right,” he said.

The colt arrived at the wildlife center on May 15. It was out in a field in North Judson with its parents near a residential area when a dog rushed up to the birds.

“The mom and dad spooked and flew away, and the dog grabbed the colt and took it back to its owners,” Harmon said. “Thankfully, this family reached out to one of our volunteers who is in LaPorte County.”

The dog didn’t injure the colt but its parents were gone, leaving it an orphan, so the wildlife center took it in.

Sandhill cranes, even at a young age, feed themselves, so the colt had to forage for food in a special mat and drink from a pan of water in an attempt to replicate its natural environment as much as possible.

“We do not want our wildlife to associate people with food. I cannot become Mom,” Harmon said.

Still, the colt cried incessantly because it was lonely. Bumgardner happened to be at the center one day and told Harmon the state park had a taxidermied sandhill crane in storage that the center could borrow.

“As soon as we put the taxidermied mom in there, he stopped crying,” Harmon said, adding the faux mom arrived in the colt’s cage two weeks after it arrived and stayed with the young bird for four months. “When he was old enough to go outside, Mom moved with him.”

The Friends of the Indiana Dunes paid to have the crane taxidermied, Bumgardner said, one of three stuffed sandhill cranes around. Another is at Jasper-Pulaski and the third is at Pokagon State Park, which also sees migrating cranes.

The taxidermied cranes, Bumgardner said, are used for educational programs, research and even as models for art workshops, and are not intended to serve as surrogate parents for orphaned sandhill cranes.

“It’s kind of awesome that it was able to be used for that purpose, too,” he said, adding the taxidermied cranes allow the animals “to live on and to be looked at in ways they couldn’t otherwise.”

After six months in captivity, the colt is still in its immature stage until it can breed, likely next year.

“It’s a young immature bird going through his first winter and hopefully will be an adult next year,” Bumgardner said.

Soon enough, the crane was ready to spread its wings, literally and figuratively. It shied away from humans, Harmon said, had all its feathers come in and had proven it could fly in the center’s flight cage.

The crane also was boring into rocks for insects.

“He’s now foraging beyond what we’re providing as far as food goes,” Harmon said a couple of days before the crane’s scheduled release.

The anticipation, at least then, was that as soon as the crane saw and heard other sandhill cranes, it would join them.

“We hope to never see him again,” Harmon said.

The colt had some contact with other sandhill cranes before its slow but eventual release into the wild. The birds often fly over the center, Harmon said, and the colt would call back to them. And in addition to its taxidermied mom, the colt had another sandhill crane to hang out with for about six weeks before its release.

That crane is destined for the National Zoo. Also believed to be male, it arrived at the wildlife center in late October from Utopia Wildlife Rehabilitators outside of Bloomington. The crane was there five years, Harmon said, and the folks at the rehab center sent it to the wildlife center to see how it would do in the center’s flight cage because they heard there was another sandhill crane there.

The crane, Harmon said, can’t fly because of a malformation in one of the long bones in one of its wings.

“When you cannot fly, we cannot release you,” she said, adding a veterinarian confirmed the crane will never fly because one wing is 10% shorter than the other, likely the result of being hit by a car.

A former zookeeper, Harmon reached out to zoos in Detroit and Maryland, as well as the National Zoo, to find a placement for the injured sandhill crane. The National Zoo reached back out immediately; once the crane is there, it will be housed with two other sandhill cranes in a building and exhibit area that were renovated in March.

Its transit to Washington is pending. The sandhill crane must undergo a complete physical evaluation and volunteers are constructing a wooden pen so the bird can travel upright. The bird’s transfer paperwork has been approved by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the crane will have to spend some time in quarantine when it arrives at the National Zoo.

Once everything falls into place, probably in the next couple of weeks, two representatives from the wildlife center will make the 10-hour drive to Washington to deliver the crane to its new home.

“I don’t know that I could have asked for a better outcome for it,” Harmon said.

The wildlife center has rehabbed and released at least six sandhill cranes, Harmon said, but the others have been adult birds that have migrated before and, when they arrived at the Jasper-Pulaski Fish and Wildlife Area, knew what they were supposed to do.

It just took the center’s most recent release some time to figure things out, likely because the whole experience was so new.

The sandhill crane’s gray and beige transit crate, similar to one for a large dog, was lined with blankets so the bird wouldn’t get injured in transit and its feathers would remain intact.

“You open the crate and sometimes you wait half an hour and then they take off,” Harmon said of the usual routine, which the crane was doing its best to disrupt.

Even after the sandhill crane got comfy in the grass, Harmon was confident it would eventually join the crowd, though she and wildlife center staff said the bird also was likely a bit disoriented after its car ride, and perhaps overwhelmed by the whole scenario.

“He’s within the general vicinity so I think he’s just fine,” she said.

Still, two wildlife center employees drove to a nearby county road to make sure the crane didn’t stray the wrong way and into traffic, as light as it was. Eventually, they were able to get the crane back in the direction of the group and it took off to join the thousand or so other cranes nearby.

Cue the music.

alavalley@chicagotribune.com