Hatch alert! Augur Buzzard pipping

As you can see from the video below, new augur buzzards are on the way! The augur buzzard chick has started to pip, or break, out of the egg. As Arusha switches with Tyler, you can see one of the eggs has a hole in it. She was chirping to the egg and it was chirping back.

"What is the hatch process?" you may ask. First, the chick breaks through the membrane that surrounds it into the air cell at the larger end of the egg. When that happens, you can hear the baby cheeping and the egg starts rocking and rolling. As the CO2 builds up, the chick's neck muscles start to contract and it breaks the egg shell (see hole in egg below). Breaking into the air cell is called an internal pip, while breaking through the shell is called an external pip.

The hatching takes anywhere from 24 to 72 hours. We don't generally intervene because it takes time for all of the blood vessels in the membrane to shut down. If you tear the membrane before they shut down, the resulting blood can kill the chick.

This baby will be raised by the parents in order to avoid imprinting.