2015.3 First lessons in Arrow's education - Fitness and Foraging

2015.3 - First lessons in colt education - Fitness and Foraging

As a newly-hatched crane colt, Arrow hops, trundles, bumbles, and stumbles after Millie and Roy who hike all day, round and round the nest pond, setting off for excursions into the woods, and even swimming across small channels of the pond. All of this activity helps build the physical fitness that will be needed for foraging, running, dancing, and flying.

The video below shows Arrow followinfg close after MIllie and Roy and being introduced to tasty morsels of seeds, berries, roots, insect larvae and flying insects, and even strips of vole flesh after Roy has skillfully butchered a vole that he hunted.

Hard foods must be macerated, and this takes grinding in the gizzard. To fill Arrow's gizzard with gravel, Millie and Roy bring her to a parking lot where they all feast on gravel while the wary parents keep watch.
from Christy Yuncker Happ on Vimeo.