[Birdtalk] Whooping Cranes Journey Safely

[Brenda Kidman]

This is sooo neat!

Link at the end of the story...

Led by Aircraft, Cranes Reach Finish Line of Migration Cameron Walker
for National Geographic News <http://news.nationalgeographic.com/>
December 19, 2006

 This morning a group of endangered whooping
cranes<http://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/birds/whooping-crane.html>led
by ultralight planes completed their 1,234-mile (1,985-kilometer)
winged
migration from Wisconsin to central Florida (map of the
route<http://www.operationmigration.org/2006migrationmap.html>).


"They've arrived," said Liz Condie, spokesperson for Operation Migration, a
nonprofit group based in Port Perry, Ontario, Canada (Canada
map<http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/atlas/index.html?Parent=nameri&Rootmap=canada&Mode=d&SubMode=w>
).

 [image: Photo of winged migration of whooping cranes and ultralight
aircraft] <http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/bigphotos/30275437.html>

Enlarge Photo<http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/bigphotos/30275437.html>

 Email to a Friend<http://news.nationalgeographic.com/cgi-bin/email2friend.pl>
 RELATED

   - Video: Whooping Cranes, Journalist Get Flight
Training<http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/10/061023-crane-video.html>
   - Video: Cranes, Planes Take off on 2006 Winged
Migration<http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/10/061006-cranes-video.html>
   - Video: Bird Costumes, Ultralight Planes Enlisted to Save Whooping
   Cranes<http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/10/061004-crane-video.html>

  "It's all over but the crying."

Seventeen of the 18 birds in the migration flew over a crowd of hundreds at
Florida's Dunnellon/Marion County Airport before reaching their final
destination of Halpata Tastanaki Preserve.

On Monday's flight four chicks dropped out of the day's journey. Three were
found yesterday, but one crane is still missing.

This is the sixth year that captive-reared whooping cranes have learned
their migration route with the help of pilots and ground crew.

Operation Migration's work is part of the Whooping Crane Eastern
Partnership, a team of U.S. and Canadian government agencies and private
groups. Through captive breeding, guided migration, tracking, and other
research, the partnership is trying create a new migratory, eastern-U.S.
population of the species.

The whooping crane is listed as endangered on the U.S. government's
endangered species list.

*Long-Haul Flight*

This year's migration took the group 76 days, the longest in the
ultralight-led migration's six-year history.

The 18 cranes and four ultralights took off from Wisconsin's Necedah
National Wildlife Refuge on October
5<http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/10/061005-whooping-cranes.html>—the
earliest departure for this migration since the annual Operation Migration
trips began in 2001.
During the migration, bad weather often kept the cranes grounded. In late
November the group spent nine consecutive days earthbound in Tennessee,
waiting for the winds to allow the birds to cross the route's most
significant hurdle, a 2,800-foot-tall (850-meter-tall) section of the
Cumberland Plateau

Condie described the cranes' progress as "slow but sure."

The group made up for delays with several longer-distance flights of as much
as 107 miles (172 kilometers) in a day.

 [image: Photo of winged migration of whooping cranes and ultralight
aircraft] <http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/bigphotos/30275437.html>

  Yet on December 7, day 64 of the journey, Operation Migration co-founder
Joe Duff sounded disheartened.

That morning in Pike County, the second stopover in Georgia, the four pilots
had attempted to fly with the birds but were forced back by bumpy air.

While the pilots are generally comfortable flying in such conditions, it's
different when you have 18 endangered cranes depending on you, Duff said.

"What we're risking is all that we've put into it so far. It's a lot of
pressure," he said. "It's a great adventure, but it's not fun."

Pilots have to watch the weather to keep birds following the planes.

When cranes migrate on their own, they often coast on updrafts to travel
long distances with little effort. Behind the ultralights, however, birds
must flap their wings to stay aloft—expending more energy and limiting the
cranes to relatively short distances each day.

Pilots fly in the morning, when the air is usually calmer. This helps
prevent cranes from soaring away on thermals—rising bodies of warm air—and
getting lost.

After whooping cranes complete a migration with ultralights, the birds can
later replicate the journey using their much swifter natural technique.

Last month a crane that Operation Migration had trained in 2005 made the
journey from Wisconsin to Florida in five days.

*Milestone*

Now researchers, pilots, and crane enthusiasts have found that these crane
students can become teachers.

On December 9 a pair of cranes that had been taught the route by Operation
Migration's pilots in 2002 reached Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge
in Florida.

With the birds was a chick they had hatched in June—the first eastern
wild-hatched whooping crane to make this migration in more than a century.

In a press release Duff called this family's successful migration "the
ultimate validation of the work we do."

Richard Urbanek, a biologist with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is on the
road tracking this family and other cranes along the eastern migration
route.

Each crane that the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership has introduced into
the wild has a leg band and a radio-telemetry tag that can signal its
location. Some birds have satellite tags as well.

Urbanek and members of the International Crane Foundation, a Wisconsin-based
nonprofit, follow the cranes' movements during fall and spring migrations.

"We're learning where they go, where they stop, which birds are with who,
what time the pairings occur," Urbanek said—all information that can aid in
understanding the eastern crane population and improving its odds for
long-term survival.


http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/12/061219-birds.html
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