Weather Slows Progress

Necedah, Wis. – November 3, 2006 – Strong winds don’t just impact airplanes. It’s not good for whooping cranes, either, as they migrate 1,200 miles from Wisconsin to Florida. Nearly a month after leaving central Wisconsin’s Necedah National Wildlife Refuge, the whooping cranes were grounded on Nov. 2 in Benton County, Indiana due to high winds, along with the ultralight “pilots” who are teaching the 18 birds the migratory route to their winter home. They hope to arrive by Christmas. The goal of Operation Migration is to reintroduce the whooping crane back to the wild. It isn’t easy. The migration starts only after months of conditioning the chicks to follow the ultralights during training flights. To assure the cranes remain wild, biologists and pilots do not talk and wear costumes designed to mask their human form. According to the Operation Migration field journal, a crane known as 610 has occasionally made the trip interesting. “He would fly over the wing and cause the tip to stall and I would have to pull hard on the left to keep it level. Then he would fly ahead of the tip and I could feel the pulse of his wing beats - like driving on a flat tire.” Bad weather has also plagued this year’s migration, with winds, rain and snow keeping the group hostage on the ground for days on end. Frost has also been a reoccurring problem, delaying take off until the sun comes up and heats the upper surface of the ultralights’ wings enough to melt it away. On some days, the birds need to be coaxed into flying and following their “parent” trikes. At other times, some of the birds decide it’s time for a rest — often getting “lost” in a cornfield as ground crews scramble to find those missing cranes. This is the sixth group of birds to take part in the reintroduction project, which hopes to establish a population of 125 birds and 25 breeding pairs by the year 2020. About 16 of the 80 whooping cranes released since 2001 have died; the migratory population now consists of about 63 birds. In the news You can watch Operation Migration on National Geographic’s Wild Chronicles video. Click here for the video.

A flock of whooping cranes follows an Ultralight “parent” on their annual migration from Wisconsin to Florida. Whooping crane chicks in the Necedah Wildlife Refuge earlier this year. For More Information Operation Migration

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