Above: The Crane family just after the chick had flown across the wetland, all big and grown up and the wetland looking beautiful and green.

Have you ever wondered what happens to a tiny, approximately three-week-old Wattled Crane chick in the event of a fire destroying the very wetland that it lives in?

This is a question that the EWT / International Crane Foundation team have been pondering for some time.

Wattled cranes are winter breeders, breeding from April to October, which also happens to coincide with fire season.

On 7 July, a runaway fire destroyed huge portions of timber plantations and wetlands on Mount Gilboa in the Karkloof, KZN Midlands. According to farmers who were fighting the fires, the fire swept through the wetlands at an alarming speed due to them being drier than usual. The devastation was huge – lives were lost, grazing was lost, animals were burnt and had to be euthanised and hundreds of hectares of forest completely destroyed. Every single wetland on Mount Gilboa was completely burnt, except for a small area of reeds about a metre wide around each pond in the wetland where Wattled Cranes were nesting.

I went up to check on the cranes a week after the fire and was totally shocked at what I saw.

At the first nest site I checked, the adults had been sitting on eggs due to hatch on about 26 June, but with the wetland being burnt, I honestly did not think a chick could have survived the fire. I found the adults foraging in the burnt wetland close to their nest site. I just sat a watched hoping to see a chick, but sadly nothing. Ever the optimist, I sat and started videoing the pair, hoping to see something on the video that I couldn’t see through my binoculars and to my utter joy, I saw this tiny little grey blob running from the one adult to the other. I’ve never watched a video so many times to get confirmation that it really was a little chick, dirty from the soot and blending in with the burnt grasses.

There have been a few theories tossed around as to how it survived the fire. One is that the adults walked it out the fire, but according to the farmers, the fire went through the wetlands too fast and they would never have got it out in time. It was definitely too small to fly out. Another theory is that the parents took it into the water, left it there hidden near the edge of the pond, maybe under some grass, while they flew to safety and returned once the fire had gone. I am going with the last theory as it is the only one that makes sense to me. We have nicknamed the crane chick Snorkel!

On the 21 September, a huge cold front hit the KZN region and we experienced heavy rain and the worst snow storms in many years. It also snowed up on Mount Gilboa – the snow was up to half a metre deep in places and freezing. Not being able to get up there myself, I was absolutely delighted to get a beautiful photo of our special crane family walking in a snow-covered pasture from a farmer friend that lives on Mount Gilboa.

This little chick had survived a devastating fire and now one of the worst snow storms in years. Can you imagine my delight when I saw it a few weeks ago, almost the same size as its parents, clumsily flapping its wings and then taking flight across the wetlands.

The knowledge that this Wattled Crane chick had survived a fire and a snow storm and had now fledged is absolutely amasing and truly heartwarming!