BirdNote; Operation Migration Update

BirdNote®

Operation Migration – An Update

Whooping Crane Migration from Wisconsin to Florida

This story aired on January 30, 2011.

Written by Ellen Blackstone

This is BirdNote!

[Sounds of Whooping Cranes]

The Whooping Crane is one of the most endangered birds in North America. The only flock of Whooping Cranes breeding in the wild migrates between Canada and Texas. To ensure the future of the species, biologists want to establish another wild population that will winter in Florida and breed in Wisconsin.

Unlike many other birds that have an inherent sense of direction and destination, Whooping Cranes have to learn their migration route. But there are not yet enough adults raising young and showing them the way. Enter Operation Migration and ultralight aircraft.

[Sounds of an ultralight]

Young cranes, hatched in captivity, hear the sounds of an ultralight’s engine mixed with the brood calls of adult Whooping Cranes.

[Sounds of cranes and ultralight]

Pilots, shrouded in white, carry crane puppets and fly the ultralights that will lead the birds on migration. The trainers basically become the birds’ parents. They exercise the young cranes and lead them on short flights. This training is crucial to the cranes’ success, when they take to the air to follow the ultralight on their first migration. [Sounds of Whooping Cranes in flight]

“Seven states and 1285 miles lie between their fledging ground at Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin and their wintering grounds in Florida.”*

[Sounds of cranes]

Find more about Operation Migration – and the cranes’ journey this season – on our website, birdnote.org. I’m Michael Stein.

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First featured call of the Whooping Crane provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Recorded by G. Archibald.

Ultralight aircraft, broadcasted brood call and final Whooping Crane call audio provided by Operation Migration: www.operationmigration.org. Recorded by Jeffrey Huxmann.

Producer: John Kessler

Executive Producer: Chris Peterson

© 2011 Tune In to Nature.org January 2011 Narrator: Michael Stein

ID# 010307WHCRKPLU orig. SotB-WHCR-01-2011-01-30

* from website http://www.operationmigration.org

Operation Migration website is now defunct.

According to Wikipedia: On January 22, 2016, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service announced that after the 2016 season it would end its support of the use of ultralight aircraft to lead whooping cranes from Wisconsin to the Florida Gulf Coast each autumn. A conclusion by experts in whooping crane biology that human intervention such as ultralight flights and costumed humans helping to care for chicks has impaired the ability of the cranes to learn the parenting skills necessary to raise chicks in the wild prompted the Fish and Wildlife Service's announcement: Despite the release of 250 whooping cranes in Wisconsin in 2001 – of which 93 survived in January 2016 – only 10 chicks have fledged and survived to adulthood and, since 2005, only five breeding pairs have produced chicks that were born in the wild and fledged. Agreeing with the need to minimize human interaction with chicks, the International Crane Foundation supported the Fish and Wildlife Service's decision, although Operation Migration opposed it, claiming that the ultralight flights nonetheless help whooping cranes to survive.