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Necedah, Wis. – October 28, 2005 – When you think about flying, you naturally think about flying people or cargo. But sometimes flying can be for the birds – literally!
A group of twenty young whooping cranes are following four Ultralight aircraft to learn how to migrate. So far, they have flown more than 130 miles in their 1,228-mile journey through seven states to their winter habitat.
The Cranes are the fifth generation of birds taking part in a project sponsored by the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership. The Partnership’s goal is to reintroduce the Whooping Crane in eastern North America and establish a population of 125 birds and 25 breeding pairs by the year 2020.
In the first five years of the program, approximately 60 birds have been taught a migration route between Wisconsin and Florida — nearly four times the number that existed in the early 1940s.
The latest group left the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin on Oct. 14 and is en route to the Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge along Florida's Gulf Coast. According to a daily journal, things have been going smoothly, except for on Day 5, when a bird got tangled in the plane’s wires. The pilot landed in a field and untangled the bird, which was not injured.
Weather and winds permitting, the birds fly about 40 miles a day, following the pilots who are teaching them the migratory route the birds will make each year with the changing seasons.
The flight can only start after many months of training the chicks, hatched at a U.S. Geological Survey research center, to follow their Ultralight “parents” during training flights. To assure the cranes remain wild, biologists and pilots do not talk and wear costumes designed to mask their human form.
Staff from the International Crane Foundation and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service track and monitor the cranes’ north- and southbound travels. They also continue to monitor the birds, with assistance from biologists with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, while the whooping cranes are in their summer locations.
The project has a yearly budget of $1.8 million, of which about $250,000 is the cost of the annual migration.
Did you know?
- Whooping cranes are a 65 million year-old species and evolved shortly after the last dinosaur disappeared.
- They were on the verge of extinction in the 1940s due to hunting and habitat loss.
- Today, there are about 300 birds in the wild, including 42 migratory whooping cranes in the wild in eastern North America.
- The only other migrating population of whooping cranes nests at the Wood Buffalo National Park in the Northwest Territories of Canada and winters at the Aransas National Wildlife Refuse on the Texas Gulf Coast.
- A non-migrating flock of about 90 birds also lives year-round in the central Florida Kissimmee region.
- They get their name from the loud and penetrating unison calls. Hear a Whooping Crane.
- Whooping cranes live and breed in wetland area where they feed on crabs, clams, frogs and aquatic plants.
- They are 5-feet tall, have white bodies, black wing tips and red crowns on their heads.
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Whooping Cranes take flight in preparation for their migration from Wisconsin to Florida for winter. . ©Operation Migration
A pilot from the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership gets ready to take off with the Cranes. The Whooping Cranes follow the Ultralight like they would follow a parent crane. They will follow the Ultralight all the way to Florida so they can learn the route. In the future, these Cranes will be able to fly the route without human help. Note the pilot is wearing a special costume that keeps the birds from getting used to humans. . ©Operation Migration
Whooping Cranes following the leader as they begin their journey south for the winter. . ©Operation Migration
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Operation Migration
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Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
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