My plans to photograph a whooping crane nest at Wood Buffalo National Park fell through due to high waters and dangerous conditions. I shifted my focus to the nest here instead.

When I returned to the County U Road pair, the wetland vegetation had grown just enough that I couldn’t see the nest—only fleeting glimpses when the wind gusted. So I photographed the pair eating eggs, being mauled by blackbirds, patrolling the valley, preening, and displaying. The expected hatch date came and went. Eventually, I went home.

Biologists later went to the nest to pull the egg, thinking the parents were no longer attending to it. But when they got there, they saw the egg was pipping—so they left it. A day later (35 days after it was laid; whoopers typically hatch at 30 days), there was a chick!

I drove back and watched for a few days from a hillside at a great distance. I shot video of the chick with their parents. Unfortunately, several days later, the chick disappeared. Their sibling, from the egg pulled earlier and sent to New Orleans to be raised, had also died in captivity.