Whooping Crane

(Grus americana)

There is something almost mystical about cranes. They are an ancient genus, and their voices, loud and wild, seem like echoes of the past. They are also elegant birds, with long legs, long necks, and long sharp beaks, all suiting them for the grasslands and wetlands where they forage. There are many species of cranes in the world today: Almost all of them are endangered.

This chapter describes the Herculean efforts, by countless dedicated men and women, to save the whooping crane from extinction. They are the only cranes native to North America. Standing between four and five feet high, they are magnificent, with snowy white plumage except for a brilliant red cap on the top of their head, black facial markings, and black primaries clearly visible in flight. With their long spear-like beaks and fierce golden eyes, they can be formidable when protecting their young.

When Europeans first arrived in North America, it’s estimated that whooping cranes numbered at least ten thousand. They wintered in the highlands of central Mexico and on the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana, as well as the southeast Atlantic seaboard, including Delaware and the Chesapeake Bay. Their breeding grounds were many—throughout the central prairies of the United States and well into central Alberta, Canada. But by the end of the nineteenth century, migratory whooping cranes were no longer breeding anywhere in the US. And by 1930, they were no longer breeding on the Alberta prairies. In fact, no one knew where the last migrating birds were breeding, except that it was somewhere in Canada.

One nonmigratory flock of whooping cranes in Louisiana continued nesting there through the 1930s, but in 1940, when only thirteen birds remained, a hurricane scattered this remnant group, and though six survived, they were doomed. And by this time, fewer than thirty of the migrating whooping cranes were arriving in the fall in Texas (in the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge) from their unknown breeding grounds in the Canadian North. The days of the whooping crane seemed numbered, and most people felt that nothing could be done to save them.

George Archibald dancing with Gee Whiz, the only offspring of Tex, a famous female whooping crane that George patiently “courted” and bonded with in order to bring her into reproductive condition. (David Thompson / ICF)

But some were determined to try. Three organizations—the US Fish and Wildlife Service; its Canadian equivalent, the Canadian Wildlife Service; and the Audubon Society—collaborated in a desperate attempt to prevent the species from becoming extinct. First they needed to find out more about them. Most of what they learned was depressing: Cranes were being shot by hunters, or farmers who resented them as potentially destructive to their crops—one publicly vowed to “shoot the pesky things on sight.” In 1953, only twenty-one cranes arrived in Texas.

As a last resort, the wildlife organizations launched an awareness campaign. The Whooping Crane Conservation Association got involved and helped spread the word. They informed people along the migration route—so far as it was known—about the cranes, their history, and the current dire situation. And appealed for their help. It worked, and the shooting stopped. Meanwhile private citizens in the organization were lobbying to get governments to take action and provide the cranes with better legal protection.

In 1954, there was a breakthrough: Canadian Forestry Superintendent G. M. Wilson and his helicopter pilot, Don Landells, spotted two white birds with a cinnamon-colored chick in the boreal marshes and ponds of the remote Wood Buffalo National Park in northern Canada. They had discovered the last breeding grounds of the whooping cranes! The birds were migrating a staggering twenty-four hundred miles twice each year from northern Canada to Texas and back again.

Gradually, as a result of protective measures and the awareness campaign along the migration route, the tiny flock increased. In 1964, forty-two birds arrived in Texas, and the following year the number was even higher. But the situation was fragile. And so, in 1966, the Canadian Wildlife Service (CWS) and USFWS finally agreed to collaborate to establish a captive breeding program. Not everyone thought this was a good idea, but the two national wildlife agencies moved forward with their plan.

Meet Ernie Kuyt, Egg Thief!

Ernie Kuyt, whom I phoned on the recommendation of my friend Tom Mangelsen, was one of the first people brought in to work on the breeding scheme. During a long conversation, Ernie said that he had become involved with the whooping cranes by accident. CWS had needed a field biologist to help find the nests and safely transport surplus eggs for a captive breeding colony, and Ernie was the only one available.

A plan was formulated: Cranes normally lay two eggs, but typically rear only one chick—and often only one egg is actually viable. So whenever they found a nest with more than one egg, Ernie would test them. “It was crane biologist Rod Drewien,” said Ernie, “who taught me how to test the viability of eggs at the nest by simply floating them briefly in lukewarm water.” (I am familiar with that process—I tested every hen’s egg before buying it in the early days in Tanzania!) If both eggs were good, Ernie took one of them. If a nest had only bad eggs, he would remove them and replace them with one of the good eggs he had collected from another nest. All the excess eggs he collected were sent to hatch at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Maryland to start the captive breeding population.

Ernie Kuyt collecting one of the two eggs from a wild crane nest in Wood Buffalo National Park, Canada. He carried every precious egg—for captive breeding—in one of his thick wool socks. (Ernie Kuyt)

Ernie told me about the time he left the base on June 2, 1967, to collect the very first egg. “The Americans had designed a special Styrofoam case to carry each precious egg from nest to base,” he said. “It was only as the helicopter was preparing to land that I realized I had forgotten the box!” They could not return because that would upset the time schedule—and the budget. Yet he remembered only too well the ominous memo from HQ that had warned: “You will agree that no slip-up is possible!” Much was at stake, and all eyes were on Ernie and his team.

Fortunately, knowing he would get his feet wet slogging through the marshes, Ernie had brought heavy wool socks along. Carefully, he lowered one of the two good eggs into a sock until it nestled gently in the toe. Carrying the sock by the cuff, Ernie transported the egg safely back to the waiting helicopter. “It worked so well that the fancy egg-case was never used,” Ernie told me. “During my twenty-five years of crane work, I safely transported over four hundred eggs without damaging a single one—using thick wool socks!”

Stories from the Field

Ernie told me a story about one pair of cranes, known as the Hippo Lake pair, which had built their nest near a lake shaped in the form of a hippopotamus. On one of his aerial surveys, Ernie noticed that their nest was empty. Several days later, he saw a single egg. But two days later, “the egg was gone, though one of the birds was still attending the nest.” Eleven days later, on the day of an egg pickup, Ernie flew past the Hippo Lake nest one more time. The crane was incubating on the nest—but when she stood up, Ernie saw that the nest was still empty.

“The adult birds had been on the empty nest for almost two weeks! Were they telling us something?” When the biologists landed the chopper, Ernie put an egg in the nest that they had just collected from another nest. The Hippo Lake pair hatched that foster egg, and Ernie had the happy task of banding the chick before it fledged.

Whenever Ernie was on the ground, an aircraft circled overhead, monitoring the scene so they could warn him of nearby bears or moose. Once, as he approached a nest, the Cessna made a shallow dive overhead—their code for danger—and he saw a black bear moving toward him. Luckily, it was not fully grown—probably two or three years old. “I picked up a dry tamarack stick and began beating it against a tree, at the same time yelling at the top of my voice,” said Ernie. The bear, about thirty yards away, looked at him, then turned and ran off. The eggs in the nearby nest were so close to hatching that the distinctive peeping sounds of a chick were clearly audible. If Ernie had not driven it away, the bear would almost certainly have found and raided the nest.

Tracking the Migration

Ernie not only collected eggs, but also followed the cranes in a Cessna 206 when they migrated, radio-tracking them and collecting valuable new information. One fall he invited Tom Mangelsen to join him, to document the journey with film and stills, and to keep track of the cranes visually while Ernie was busy plotting the route, and the pilot was concentrating on flying the plane.

Migrating cranes use the thermals to spiral up and then glide seemingly effortlessly on their great wings. “On days of bad weather with headwinds, they would fly little or not at all,” Tom told me, “but on good days they could cover four hundred miles or more.” Fortunately the whooping cranes, with their white plumage and huge wingspan, were relatively easy to see. “We were able to keep visual contact with them nearly 50 percent of the time,” said Tom, “and we could pick up the radio signals transmitted by the birds within a radius of twenty-five to a hundred miles.

“Watching the cranes flying with such grace against a limitless sky and endless landscape,” Tom told me, “was the most inspiring event of my life.”

Ernie felt the same. He told me, “The ability and opportunity to migrate with the cranes … has been the highlight of my twenty-five-year study.”

One Flock Is Too Fragile

While Ernie and others were protecting the Wood Buffalo/Aransas flock, crane biologists and conservationists on the US and Canadian Whooping Crane Recovery Teams were planning other initiatives. The single remaining wild flock was just too fragile: If disease or disaster struck, it could be annihilated just as the Louisiana flock had been.

The first plan involved placing whooper eggs in the nests of sandhill cranes nesting in Idaho. This initiative failed because, while the fostered chicks did indeed follow the sandhills to New Mexico, as hoped, they never courted and mated with their own species. A young crane, like many bird species, becomes imprinted on its parents soon after hatching, and if at this critical time a bird of the same species is not available, the chick will become imprinted on almost any moving object. Unfortunately, these whoopers were imprinted on the sandhills and courted the sandhills when they reached maturity.

Meanwhile a number of experts, including George Archibald, co-founder of the International Crane Foundation, believed they should try to establish a nonmigratory flock in Florida, in the vast area of Kissimmee. In 1993, the first group of captive-bred crane chicks arrived there for release into the wild. And after that, every year until 2005, further chicks were sent to boost numbers. These birds formed pair bonds, established territories, and built nests just like wild birds. But there were many problems—especially predation by bobcats. In 2005, despite all the hard work and the great hopes, it was decided to discontinue the release of captive-born chicks, and the outlook for the future of the few surviving Florida cranes is bleak.

Cranes, Men, and Their Flying Machines

Although things were going well with the one migratory flock, two costly attempts to establish new flocks had failed. There was still a need to establish a new migratory flock—and an innovative idea was being suggested. What if it were possible to teach young cranes to follow an ultralight aircraft? At a conference in California, I heard a talk about this by Bill Lishman, an inspired and passionate naturalist. Eventually he had partnered with Joe Duff, an ex-businessman, and working with non-endangered Canada geese, the two men gradually perfected the technique—which was introduced to the public in the popular movie Fly Away Home.

During the late 1990s, after working with sandhill cranes, Bill and Joe presented their results at the annual Canadian/US Whooping Crane Recovery Team meetings, hoping to convince the team to use this method for whooping cranes—but it took five years before the plan was approved (many felt that Bill and Joe were only interested in making another movie!). Operation Migration was born in 1999 with the goal of teaching young captive-born whooping cranes to fly from Wisconsin to Florida.

Wearing my crane suit before flying in an ultralight with Joe. Operation Migration trains captive-bred cranes to migrate from Wisconsin to Florida by following an ultralight “parent.” (© www.operationmigration.org)

Operation Migration

In 2006, I received an invitation from Joe—would I like to experience, firsthand, the training of the whooping cranes? Fly in an ultralight? My schedule was packed, but this was something I could not refuse and I freed up two days during my US/Canada fall tour. Two days I shall never forget.

Joe Duff and operations manager Liz Condie met me at the Madison airport in Wisconsin. It rained, quietly, throughout the one-hour drive to the trailer camp at the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge. And every time I woke during the night, I heard rain pattering on the trailer’s metal roof. It seemed unlikely the weather conditions would allow us to fly in the morning.

Indeed, the morning weather was unsuitable, so instead I met more of the team and learned about the program. Earlier in the year, eighteen cranes, about forty-five days old, had arrived from Patuxent Wildlife Research Center. In order to prevent these whooper chicks from imprinting on their human foster parents, those who rear and train them for release wear white gown-like costumes, black rubber boots, and helmets with visors that hide their eyes. They carry tape recorders that play the brood calls of parent cranes and the sound of the ultralight that the chicks will learn to follow. In one hand, the handler holds a puppet looking like an adult crane’s head and neck, complete with gold eyes, long dark bill, and distinctive red crown. The sleeve of the costume, which covers the hand and arm, blends into the long white neck of the puppet (a metal tube covered by white cloth). There is grain in the “neck” that can be released through a hole as the puppet pecks the ground.

In Necedah, during the summer months preceding the fall migration, the Operation Migration crew of pilots, biologist, veterinarian, and interns continues the education of the young birds that was started in earliest chick-hood at Patuxent.

That same morning, I also visited the adolescent cranes in their closed-in pen, half of which is in shallow water. They were beautiful golden-and-white feathered youngsters. I put on one of the crane suits, borrowed a crane puppet head, and followed Joe and two other pilots, Brooke and Chris, to the pen, stepping through a pan of disinfectant on the way. I could not believe I was actually taking part in this extraordinary and inspirational project, and felt tears stinging my eyes. Once we were within earshot of the cranes, there was no more talking.

The young cranes, who had learned to live together as flock members, were as tall as adults but still wore the white-and-golden plumage of adolescence. Their long, black-tipped wings had been strengthened by their daily training flights, and they were almost ready to set out on their twelve-hundred-mile journey to Florida. They were very curious and investigated everything that caught their fancy, gently probing with their beaks. From time to time, one of my fellow human cranes approached me with a grape; I opened the beak of my puppet with a lever, took hold of the fruit, and offered it to one of the cranes. They love grapes.

There was a sense of mystery, the feeling that I was in the presence of ancient bird wisdom, and connected with an other-than-self life force. My humanity was diminished. And then one of the birds pulled at the tip of my “wing,” while a second prodded my boots and a third had a go at the felt of the puppet head so that I had to move it away and engage him—or her—beak-to-beak. I had no sense of the passing of time, and much too soon we had to leave them.

Flying with Cranes

When I looked outside at six the next morning, the sky was clear, and there was almost no wind. A perfect day for flying! At the hangar, I donned my white crane costume; then came earphones, and finally the helmet. The pilots wheeled the ultralights out of their hangar, and I climbed into the tiny passenger seat in the space behind Joe. After we belted up, he attached my headphones to the system so I could hear him, pulled the cord to start the engine, taxied to the runway—and we took off.

The golden and pale blue morning air was all around, rushing past us, exhilarating. For the first time ever I felt that I was truly flying, part of the air, and the clouds, and the sky. Spread out over the waking landscape, the other three ultralights flew toward the landing strip adjoining the cranes’ pen. There we all touched down and the cranes were let out to join their strangely assorted parent figures—disguised humans and unlikely flying machines! One of the four pilots, Chris, taxied carefully through the eighteen cranes and about seven of them followed, running after the plane; when he took off, so did they. Up they flew, parent ultralight and its little following. The remaining youngsters on the ground milled around pilot Brooke, making it very hard for him to take off, but he made it with all but one of them flying up after him. He flew in a big circle and swooped back past the remaining crane, which then decided to follow.

Soon we were all in the air. Because of my extra weight, Joe could not reduce his speed sufficiently to have the cranes actually follow us—but we were often very close to them. The pilots communicate with one another, so they can turn to pick up a crane that has flown off on its own, or know when two or three more join their little flock. One of the cranes absolutely got the hang of gliding in the slipstream of the ultralight he was following, and scarcely had to flap his wings.

It is hard for me to describe the emotions that went through me as I sat there behind Joe. I felt so much part of the whole scene, flying in that frail little machine above the wildlife refuge, the other ultralights like huge birds, each with its cranes strung out behind, the glory of the morning with its after-rain freshness and rising sun and golden clouds. The reflection of plane and cranes shone in the calm surface of the water below. I developed a new feeling for the cranes themselves on an almost spiritual level of connectedness.

I wanted to go on flying forever, suspended between heaven and earth with those exquisite young whooping cranes. If only the engine had been silent, the experience would have been unearthly and I could have believed myself a bird.

I called Joe regularly during the long weeks of the migration—it was shocking how many flying days were lost because of bad weather. At last came the news I had been waiting for: All the birds had made it to Florida. After a journey of twelve hundred miles, all were safely in their spacious new winter home at the Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge. The human team could return to homes and families. And for the cranes, life would finally settle down. Experienced handlers would pen them at night, releasing them each morning to explore their new habitat. The pen, built in a large pond, had two purposes: to keep the chicks safe from nighttime predators, and to continue to teach them to roost in water at night.

And then, a few months later, Joe called me again, this time with devastating news. All but one of those glorious crane beings were dead, killed in their pen by lightning during a freak storm that also killed twenty people. Yet setbacks like this must be endured, time and again, in the fight to rescue animals pushed, by us, to the brink of extinction. Joe and the rest of the Operation Migration crew would carry on.

There was good news for that same year: In the summer of 2006, at least six pairs of cranes nested and laid eggs in Necedah—and although only one chick fledged, it followed its human-trained parents to Florida. The following spring (2007) the two adults—known as the First Family—once again nested and laid an egg in Necedah.

Meeting the Eggs—and Other Birds—at Patuxent Wildlife Center

On a glorious spring day, five months after my flight in the ultralight with Joe, I visited the whooping crane breeding program at Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Maryland, where two-thirds of all whoopers so far released into the wild were raised. The director of the crane program, John French, along with several members of his team, was there to greet me and explain what was going on. Currently Patuxent is in charge of rearing and training all the chicks destined for Operation Migration. This training is carried out by a team of scientists, veterinarians, support staff, and the crane handlers who directly care for the birds. Many of those working at Patuxent have been there ten to twenty years, giving the crane project consistency and stability.

The eggs come from Patuxent’s own breeding birds, and are also sent from ICF and other facilities. At the time I visited, there were forty-five eggs in various stages of incubation and “chick season,” as the Patuxent crew calls it, was in full swing. One egg was actually hatching while I was there, and I went to visit it. Chicks must not hear human voices even in their eggs; as mentioned, they hear recordings of crane brood calls and the sound of the ultralight plane from the earliest age. These recordings, they told me, are played at least four times a day during the entire hatching process.

As we approached the hatching egg, we could hear the desperate-sounding peeping of the chick as he struggled to break through the shell, and every so often a small beak appeared through the little square hole he had already chiseled. I longed to help, but the initial fight to emerge is, said John, critical to the chick’s survival. Chicks that cannot hatch on their own are often weak; in the wild they probably would not make it. Those that break free on their own are usually robust, as if the difficult two-day process also encourages qualities of persistence and determination—very important for a bird destined for a demanding existence in the wild. (We named that struggling chick Addison after a friend of mine who has made generous donations to Operation Migration.)

Next, I again donned a crane suit and accompanied a two-week-old chick on his daily walk to the wetlands area, along with crane handlers Kathleen (Kathy) O’Malley and Dan Sprague. This regular exercise is necessary to strengthen their rapidly growing legs. It also acclimatizes the chick to a wetlands environment where it learns to hunt, following the example of the human-wielded puppet head as it probes, crane-like, the ground and water.

On the way back, the chick, along with his “parent,” followed a noisy ultralight around a small circular track. As he grows older, he will learn to follow the plane when it is driven around the track by his handler. At this time, the regular puppet head is exchanged for one with an extremely long neck (known as a robo-crane) so that the handler can continue to interact with his chick even when sitting in the plane. A robo-crane, like the puppet I used at Necedah, can dispense mealworm “treats” to the always hungry chick each time the handler pulls a trigger—it is important to reward them frequently for following the plane. Chicks start this daily training as early as five days of age. By the time they’re sent to Joe and the Operation Migration team in Wisconsin, they have been following the plane for weeks on the ground and are ready to start flying lessons.

Disease, Heartbreak, and Continued Determination

Four months after my visit to Patuxent, I learned that out of the forty-five eggs that were there at that time, only seventeen chicks would be available for shipping by private jet to Operation Migration in Wisconsin. Kathy explained that a variety of diseases and genetic problems—such as scoliosis, heart issues, and weak legs—were responsible for the loss of chicks. She has been involved with the whooping crane breeding program since 1984 and has raised more than three hundred whooper chicks, a world record! She definitely has a flair for this work—during her first year in charge, the survival rate went from less than 50 percent to 97 percent.

She told me that she has spent many nights struggling to save whoopers, and has had to work around the clock with veterinarians for weeks at a time. Once a toxic mold grew in the feed and 90 percent of the birds (sandhills and whoopers) became sick. “We had to tube-feed almost all the birds to save them,” Kathy recalled. “We worked for six weeks without a single day off … That was a terrible time. But we got through it.”

It was Joe who told me that his dream of leading a much bigger flock that autumn was not to be. “But at least we have seventeen birds to train—and there were not many more in the whole world when the first efforts to save whooping cranes were made.” Addison, he assured me, was doing really well—“strong and feisty.”

A Visit to the Original Flock in Texas

Meanwhile the wild Aransas/Wood Buffalo flock, which provided those first eggs for the first captive-bred chicks at Patuxent, has steadily increased. In the fall of 2006, 237 birds returned from Canada to Aransas in Texas, with 45 fledged chicks including a new record—seven “twins” (meaning both eggs hatched from seven two-egg clutches). And the following year, 266 wild whooping cranes wintered in the refuge.

The Aransas National Wildlife Refuge was founded by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1937 to protect the migratory and other birds that find a rich food source—blue crabs and other aquatic creatures—in the brackish pools of the marshland habitat. We would not have a story to tell if this land had not been protected back then. Unfortunately the wetlands along the coast of Texas have become increasingly degraded due to human population pressures, heavy commercial shipping, and the introduction of exotic species. And fifteen hundred acres of the refuge was lost when a channel was dredged for the Intracoastal Waterway that cut right through the six thousand acres of marshland.

By the start of the new millennium, it was estimated that some 20 percent of the original refuge had been lost. Finally, it was decided that something must be done. A major effort to protect and restore the marshlands is now under way: The banks along the waterway have been lined with heavy matting that completely stops the erosion of the salt marsh. New levees have been built, and material dredged from the channel has been piled up on the inside of the barrier and seeded with marshland plants. It is hoped that the cranes will eventually move into this man-made habitat.

I was in Aransas in 2002 to help celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the entire National Wildlife Refuge System. My visit had been arranged by ConocoPhillips—for many years, Conoco had contributed funds to the preservation of the marshland. At the dinner Tom Stehn, whooping crane coordinator with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Aransas, presented me with a treasured feather from the wing of a whooping crane (with all its government permissions for ownership!). But before that, there had been time to go out in the research boat. As we moved slowly along the waterways, a roseate spoonbill flew past, the pink of its wings illuminated by the setting sun. And then, filling the air with magic, came the call of the whooping crane. There they were, a pair standing tall and straight, then bowing their heads to search for the blue crabs and frogs of the wetlands. We saw two more pairs before the dusk closed in and we had to head back. We did not try to get close—it was enough to know that they were there, still returning to their old ancestral winter feeding grounds. And one last time, we heard the wild call of a whooping crane sounding over the darkening wetlands.

This picture is vivid in my mind as I sit, thinking back over the past few years. Despite everything, against all odds, these ancient birds have survived, and it is thanks to the imagination, dedication, and sheer determination of the people I have met during this journey of discovery, and all those I have not. People who have devoted their lives to ensuring that the whooping crane shall not vanish from the marshlands and prairies, rivers and skies, of North America.