White-naped cranes live to be about 60, and they mate for life, so he knows he can’t retire while Walnut is alive.
(This would not work with real eggs because he can’t sit on them properly, but Walnut seems to feel that he is on the job if he just stands over them.) However, the Institute provides her with artificial eggs to sit on, and Chris takes his turn looking after them.
Chris and Walnut have had five children, who were raised by other crane couples at the facility–sometimes the biological dad and his mate–both because it’s unclear whether Walnut would accept the chicks as her own, and because Chris is not equipped to be a Crane Dad.(The process normally involves restraining the bird.) Chris realized that if he reciprocated the mating dance, it might be possible to artificially inseminate Walnut with her participation and consent.Walnut initiated their courtship, performing the opening moves of a mating dance.Walnut immediately began paying special attention to Chris–and ignoring the eligible male crane in a nearby enclosure.They both arrived at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in 2004.The actual name of the keeper is Chris Crowe.Because this species is highly endangered, and the gene pool of the captive population is small, it’s pretty important for the survival of her species that Walnut A) mate, and B) not kill a bunch of other cranes.It has not been proven that Walnut killed her previous suitors however, there is a persistent rumor in the white-naped-crane-conservation community that she did.As a result, her keepers believe, Walnut does not recognize other cranes as members of her own species.The program had crane chicks hand-raised by human volunteers, and at that time they did not fully understand the measures necessary make sure that the chicks do not imprint on humans and retain their identity as cranes. Walnut was born in a species-recovery breeding program in the 1980′s.(WalWaPo makes you jump through like three separate hoops before you can read the article, so I will share some of the highlights: This is the diametric opposite of all those awful swan wife stories and i love it. You have to act like you’re excited about it. Sorry, he WHAT? Imagine being this man’s boss and having to sit him down like. Good news, he was not next! In fact, she accepted him as her mate, he learned the crane mating dance and now every year, he artificially inseminates her with crane semen to expand the very endangered crane population. That is the face of a man worried he will be next To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini Undeath – but her health is failing, her sword makes her nauseous, andĮven her mind is threatening to betray her. Side-by-side with aĭetested rival, Harrow must perfect her skills and become an angel of Harrowhark Nonagesimus, last necromancer of the Ninth House, has beenĭrafted by her Emperor to fight an unwinnable war. Reading: Harrow The Ninth (#2) by Tamsyn Muir Films: Hard Love - The Harder They Fall.