The Whooping Crane is one of the most critically endangered species in North America. It was once more widespread, nesting over much of the north central United States and central Canada, in the bog prairies south of the boreal forest. In the 1940s, the only surviving population of this species was nesting in Wood Buffalo National Park in western Canada and wintering along the Gulf coast of Texas at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge before drastic steps were taken. This is the tallest American bird, standing at 50 inches in height with a long neck on long legs, extended fully when flying. The plumage is mostly white but with black wingtips. The bird is distinctly red on the forehead and cheeks. The juveniles are light brown and hatch from two blotchy, brownish eggs on a heap of marsh grass (1).
The bird hunts on wet, marshy land, subsisting on various small animals and on crops planted by humans. The draining of marshland for farming was the main cause for its endangerment. The Whooping Crane characteristically has stopped off along river courses in the Great Plains to rest and feed. One of these places is not far from me. Quivira National Wildlife Refuge along the Arkansas River in Kansas is a popular place for birders for this very reason.
The smaller Sandhill Crane still persists in Wisconsin and surrounding states. It has gray plumage and red behind the beak. Aldo Leopold, noted forester and naturalist, described cranes as ancient birds following a migration pattern established after the great Pleistocene glaciers many thousands of years ago that melted, leaving behind a succession of bogs, low-lying forests, and grassy marshes, the preferred summer feeding and nesting grounds for cranes (2). Human impact gradually changed and reduced these once extensive regions. Hunting and trapping gave way to agriculture around the margins, starting as a fairly gentle utilization of the marshes. But drainage and accidental burning of the accumulated peat, a residue of the moss-covered glacial lakes, largely destroyed the habitat in the U.S., and the cranes moved elsewhere following the shrinking habitat.
Wisconsin has also been a potential area for bringing the Whooping Crane back. Besides the strong, instinctive drive to migrate, cranes, like many ground-nesting birds, imprint on older, parental birds, to follow them for protection and nurture. Cranes artificially hatched in Wisconsin were imprinted on tiny aircraft which they learned to follow. In this case, they were led to Florida as a second potential wintering area. They flew back to Wisconsin in the spring, and there was hope that they would learn a new migration pattern that would persist for generations. Some birds have lingered in midwestern states, even spending the winter farther north than the Gulf Coast. The Wisconsin birds are not breeding well, however, so that effort is on hold, while captive breeding continues. Overall, there may be as many as 600 birds currently, including both the natural and newly established populations, a great increase from less than two dozen in the 1940s. The birds were never as abundant as the Sandhill Crane (3).
Cranes have long fascinated humans, particularly in the Far East in China, Japan, and India. One reason is their amazing romantic life. They remain loyal to one mate “until death do us part,” and have a mating dance that involves bowing with head back and wings outstretched, along with a loud bugling sound. The cranes have benefitted by being intentionally or unintentionally fed by humans although there may have been a price to pay, as they served as quarry for falconers. Kublai Khan used Gyrfalcons and hawks to hunt them, entertainment for a magnificent monarch. Much more benignly, origami, artistic paper-folding, to make cranes has long been popular among the Japanese. (As a child my grandmother taught me how to make “ducks,” but I never graduated to cranes.) A great general source for bird habits and habitat is: The World Atlas of Birds (Sir Peter Scott, ed., Mitchell Beazley Publishers, Ltd., London, 1974).
- National Audubon Society: Field Guide to North American Birds, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, 1998, by John Bull and John Farrand, Jr.
- A Sand County Almanac, Oxford University Press, Inc., New York, 1949
- https://madisonaudubon.org/fff2020/1/10/whooping-crane
