This is very exciting. The crane pair that I wrote about a month ago have a hatchling! Every day I have seen one of the cranes lie down and incubate, but this morning I saw the crane stand up instead. So I was fairly sure that the baby had hatched, and even more sure in the evening on the way home when both of the parents were standing in the same place. I haven’t seen the two of them at the same time since the breeding season started in April.

So when I got home, I took the camera and drove back. Try as I might, I couldn’t see the baby but that’s where the photographs come handy – I was able to see some interesting detail in the full res picture. It’s a baby, for sure!

And please note that I stayed in the car, on the shoulder of the road, while taking pictures. As nice as it would be to get closer to the young one (or at least get an unobstructed view), I would never try to approach it and I sure hope nobody else will, considering how easy it is to spot the birds now that they are standing up and mobile. They actually lay down while I was looking and they disappeared in the grass so effectively that I wouldn’t have seen them if I didn’t know exactly where to look.

So congratulations and good luck to the proud new parents!