What is Black and White and Red and Dances?
There are 15 species of cranes in the world and two of them, the whooping crane and the sandhill crane are found in North America. Sandhill cranes, smaller than whoopers, are gray and brown in color and relatively numerous. Whooping cranes have probably never been numerous.
Once close to extinction, the Whooping Crane (Grus americana) is making a comeback, thanks to conservation efforts over the last few decades. In 1937, only two small breeding populations of the whooping crane remained; a nonmigratory population in southwestern Louisiana, and a migratory population which nested in Canada and wintered on the Texas Coast. In 1941, records show only 16 birds had migrated to wintering grounds at the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge on the Gulf Coast of Texas. With the settlement of the West, much of the crane’s nesting grounds were converted to pasture and agricultural lands. Unregulated hunting and egg collecting further eroded their numbers. Whooping cranes disappeared from the Great Plains, finding safe refuge far north in Canada at the Wood Buffalo National Park. This was not known until 1954, when a pilot spotted a pair of whooping cranes at the park. Most recently, survey results conducted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from the winter of 2022-23 estimated a population of 536 whooping cranes in the Aransas-Wood Buffalo migratory flock. The total number of birds in the surviving migratory population, combined with three reintroduced flocks and whoopers in captivity, exceeds 800 as of 2023.
The tallest bird in North America, the whooping crane stands five feet tall with a long, sinuous neck, and long legs. Its snowy white body feathers are accented by jet-black wingtips and a red and black head with a long, pointed beak. The wings measure about seven to eight feet across. The whooping crane’s call, from which it derives its name, has been described as a shrill, bugle-like trumpeting. Whooping cranes nest on the ground, in marshy areas among bullrushes, cattails and sedges that provide food as well as protection from predators. They eat insects, minnows, crabs, clams, crayfish, frogs, rodents, small birds, acorns and berries.
Whooping cranes do not reach breeding maturity until they are four years old, and they establish life-long mates. Their courtship dance, which begins in late winter, consists of loud vocalizations, wing flapping, head bowing, strutting and tremendous leaps into the air by one or both birds. Whooping cranes usually nest once each year, laying a clutch of two eggs in late April, hatching one month later. Each whooper’s nest is nearly a mile from the closest neighbor’s nest and younger birds stay away from the nesting pairs as whooper couples want privacy. The parents share incubation and rearing duties, but females take the primary role in caring for the young. Usually, only one chick reaches flight age.
Diseases, such as avian tuberculosis and avian cholera, are possible mortality causes for whooping cranes. A cause of mortality of some captive chicks has been intestinal coccidia parasites. Due to their long migration route which extends from Texas through Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Montana and Saskatchewan, whooping cranes are also vulnerable to natural disasters such as hail storms or drought. In addition, they get caught in power lines and barbed wire fences. Their delayed breeding maturity and small clutch size make the population as a whole less capable of rebounding from these threats. It is estimated that whooping cranes live up to 22-30 years in the wild and 35-40 years in captivity.
The whooping crane has been the subject of an ambitious, broad-based conservation effort since the mid-20th Century, involving the United States and Canadian Wildlife Services. Cross-fostering using greater sandhill cranes at Gray’s Lake National Wildlife Refuge in southeastern Idaho, began in 1975. Second eggs from the wild population of whooping cranes were placed in greater sandhill crane nests. The sandhills incubated, hatched and reared whooping crane chicks. Over the years, the 289 transplanted eggs resulted in 85 chicks that learned to migrate. However, the whooping cranes failed to mate with other whooping cranes due to imprinting on their sandhill foster parents. This project was discontinued in 1989.
A second effort involved the establishment of a non-migratory population near Kissimmee, Florida, a cooperative attempt led by the U.S. and Canadian Whooping Crane Recovery Team. A total of 289 captive-bred birds provided by the International Crane Foundation were released in the wild between 1993 and 2004. A decision was made in 2005 to release no further birds into the wild until problems with high mortality and poor reproductive success were resolved. This effort was discontinued in 2012.
Another attempt at establishing a migratory population was begun in 2001, with birds being taught a migration route from Wisconsin to Florida behind ultra-light aircraft. The ultra-light flights were managed by a non-profit organization, Operation Migration, working with the larger Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership (WCEP). With the growth of this reintroduced population, WCEP also began releasing captive-reared subadult cranes directly into the flock to learn migratory behavior from their peers.
While the whooping crane remains listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Preservation Act of 1966, their recovery from the brink of extinction is significant, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has designated their population as stable for 2022-23. Ongoing captive breeding programs include White Oak Conservation Center in Florida, Dallas Zoo and San Antonio Zoo, Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Virginia, the Freeport-McMoRan Audubon Species Survival Center in Louisiana, the Calgary Zoo, Calgary Canada, and the International Crane Foundation. Chicks raised in captivity may be reared by adult whooping cranes or by staff members who wear full-length crane costumes to hide the human form. Establishing these captive flocks prevents the possibility of total extinction. Thanks to all these efforts, the whooping crane population has survived and continues to increase.
Additional Learning:
Whooping Crane Mating Dance after Successful Migration
How to Make Paper Crane Origami
Resources:
Whooping Crane (Grus americana) | U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (fws.gov)
Whooping Crane | Audubon Field Guide
Whooping Crane - International Crane Foundation (savingcranes.org)
Whooping Crane Conservation Association
