The Hemisphere: Vanishing Aristocrat

The whooping crane (Grus americana) is the tallest bird in North America. Depending on how proudly it holds its long neck, it can stand from four to six feet. It is also probably the noisiest bird; its elongated windpipe so amplifies its hysterical cry that it can be heard two miles away. Pure white, except for some black wing and head feathers and reddish-brown head spots, it is one of the most beautiful of birds. In flight, its wingspread is seven feet; on the ground, it walks haughtily through marshes in search of frogs and snakes, or performs its pre-mating dance with rapid grace. It is an aloof, snobbish aristocrat which sticks with its own family, fights off other cranes who come to poach on its hunting grounds.

But the crane is a vanishing aristocrat. Like human monarchs, it has had trouble adjusting to modern times and keeping its royal line going. Most of the whooping cranes disappeared with the American and Canadian frontier. Today the crane is the rarest bird on the continent; only 25 are known to exist.

In 1937, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service set up the Aransas Refuge on the Gulf Coast to provide a protected wintering place for the cranes. Each April, the birds head north over the Midwestern states, then disappear into their unknown nesting grounds in Canada. Each September the surviving birds return with an average total of four baby cranes. For years, bird experts have searched Canada by helicopter, on horseback, in jeeps and on foot, hoping to find the crane’s nesting grounds and protect it from predators.

Two months ago, two U.S. Wildlife Service field men caused a flurry of excitement by reporting that they had spotted two cranes in the Northwest Territories. But there was no sure evidence of nesting. Last month Professor William Rowan, the University of Alberta’s expert zoologist, got word that in the muskeg wilderness of northern Alberta an old Indian guide had seen two big, white birds. Rowan interviewed the guide and from his precise description identified the birds as whooping cranes.

Rowan and two assistants eagerly searched the spot. They found the cranes’ tracks—two sets of big, three-toed tracks, and to the right of each set another set of baby crane prints. Last week, after studying photographs and measurements of the tracks, Professor Rowan announced that the baby crane tracks gave proof that the area is a nesting ground for the whooping crane—the first found in Canada since 1922. Under the 1916 Migratory Birds treaty with the U.S., Canada’s Wildlife Service is now bound to protect the area and do all it can to prevent the rare bird from becoming extinct.