Milwaukee County Zoo's whooping crane pair act as foster parents to chick born at the zoo

Helicopter parents might not be the correct term since the Milwaukee County Zoo's whooping crane pair's flying days ended a long time ago.

Tiki and Torch are fostering a chick that arrived at the Milwaukee zoo on Mother's Day and hatched four days later. Since the majestic birds had never sired their own young, zookeepers didn't know how they would perform.

It turns out the Milwaukee zoo's whooping cranes are a great mom and dad.

Now the baby, whose gender is unknown, is rapidly growing and getting the hang of being a whooping crane.

It was the first time the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo has sought the help of the Milwaukee zoo whooping cranes and aviary staff to incubate an egg and foster a chick of the endangered species.

A curtain in front of the whooping crane enclosure at the zoo's Herb and Nada Mahler Family Aviary gives the couple and chick some privacy while the bird gets bigger and gets settled. Zoo officials plan to gradually allow the public to see the new aviary resident with a full view likely by mid-July. 

"They're outstanding parents, super protective," said Milwaukee zoo curator of birds Alex Waier. "The first time I saw one of the cranes pick up food and drop it right in front of the chick I couldn't contain myself. I was so happy to see these birds hit all the benchmarks."

For decades wildlife biologists, researchers and ornithologists have worked to restore whooping cranes to America's landscape, even wearing crane costumes so birds don't become desensitized to the wild and piloting ultralights to help them migrate thousands of miles between Wisconsin and Florida. 

In addition to the sandhill crane, whoopers are one of only two crane species native to North America. Hunted to extirpation for their beautiful white feathers, the whooping crane has bounced back through breeding programs by organizations such as the International Crane Foundation.

Both the International Crane Foundation and Milwaukee zoo are part of the Eastern Whooping Crane partnership.

The International Crane Foundation breeds whoopers at its facility and helps manage eggs plucked from nests of wild cranes in Wisconsin, particularly the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge where approximately 30 cranes are spending the summer. In total, around 80 whooping cranes are living in the wild in Wisconsin.

Because of a black fly infestation at the Necedah refuge, officials retrieve whooping crane eggs that would likely get eaten by predators or die because the parents abandon the nests to get away from the flies, said Kim Boardman, curator of birds at the International Crane Foundation.

Because of a wet, cold spring "we had an influx of (17 fertile) eggs come in from Necedah. We couldn't accommodate that number of eggs hatching in such a small window," said Boardman.

That's how the Milwaukee zoo got the call. Zookeepers were ecstatic because they have been wanting to foster a whooping crane egg and chick for years.

The International Crane Foundation delivered the egg in an incubator on May 12 and Milwaukee zookeepers swapped out an infertile egg laid by Tiki with the fertile egg from captive birds — a mother named Achilles and a father named Woody — at the Baraboo facility. 

Foster father Torch arrived at the International Crane Foundation as an egg from the Calgary Zoo in 2006 and transferred to the Milwaukee zoo that year. Foster mother Tiki came from an International Crane Foundation egg laid by a wild pair in Necedah and transferred to the Patuxent Research Refuge in Maryland for incubation and hatching in 2008. Tiki later came to Milwaukee as a companion for Torch.

"It's an honor to be part of the species recovery efforts," said Waier. "By raising this chick we'll hopefully encourage the (International Crane Foundation) to use this pair for more fostering."

The International Crane Foundation publishes an online Whooping Crane Egg Scorecard for anyone interested in keeping track of the eggs and chicks.

The whooping crane chick at the Milwaukee zoo is covered in light brown fuzz and has started to molt. Eventually it will grow as big as Tiki and Torch and turn bright white.

Tuesday morning a team of keepers arrived at the aviary for the delicate task of filling water and food bowls and cleaning the whooping crane enclosure. Because Tiki and Torch have a young one, they're aggressive. So three keepers, Mike Frayer, Patti Dibb and Bryan Kwiatkowski, gently wielded natural-fiber brooms to shoo the squawking birds away while other keepers hurriedly poured pails of water into bowls and left behind bowls of tiny smelt and silverside fish, bugs and food pellets.

Milwaukee zoo aviary keeper Caty Coutant worked at Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, which ran a whooping crane breeding program for 50 years until the program closed last year. 

The Trump administration moved in 2017 to eliminate the $1.5 million-a-year breeding program, run by the U.S. Geological Survey on a federal Fish and Wildlife Service refuge, according to the Washington Post. The International Crane Foundation, zoos and other private wildlife centers took over the breeding work.

Coutant watched Tiki and Torch make a small nest with available materials and take turns sitting on the egg. Then one day the chick busted out of its egg.

"He was a little damp, a little exhausted. He looked like a little ball of fluff," Coutant said. "They don't look that different from other birds when they're that little."

At some point a blood test will be performed to determine the chick's gender. It's likely the baby will stay at the Milwaukee zoo at least through the winter and possibly a year or two.