Tri-State Outdoor News

“Take a good look at that bird,” were the words of Mrs. William Hart, “there are only 23 of them left in the wild today.”

Mrs. Hart was the head of the Maffitt Bird Course, a program sponsored by the Linton Civic Garden Club many years ago. The participants in the course were provided with pictures of birds to color and then were marched across the road to view several other more common species of wild birds. On this particular day, they were coloring a large, beautiful white bird with a scarlet head and black-tipped wings. Mrs. Hart went on to explain to the class: “It won’t be long before that species will be extinct!”

That was over 45 years ago, but Barbara Simpson, now of Indianapolis and one of the kids participating in the class on that day, never forgot those words. And on the day I met her, she was back in Greene County looking at a bird she thought she would never see as an adult.

This story actually began a few weeks back while I was browsing the bird watching forum on tristateoutdoornews.com. On that day, two words jumped off the computer screen and caught my attention: whooping cranes! A fellow birder from Knox County had been on a day outing to the Goose
Pond Fish and Wildlife Area near Linton and happened across these endangered birds. I couldn’t clear my day and get on the road fast enough.

This was not my first “wild goose” chase for this magnificent bird. Over the last couple of years I had received other reports of this bird in our area. The Patoka River National Wildlife Refuge was home to one such sighting in 2007; the other was at the Cane Ridge Wildlife Management Unit in western Gibson County where I managed to see a lone whooper as it flew over at dusk. But still, that sighting was only a brief glimpse and not under good light.

When the report from the Goose Pond came in I was certain this would be my day to observe and photograph one of the most endangered of North American birds – the whooping crane; but who could have known the opportunity that lay ahead.

The forum report mentioned two rather unusual species of birds. In addition to the whooping cranes, white pelicans were also seen. These birds, mostly associated with our coastal areas, have also been sighted in southern Indiana in past years, again in the Patoka Refuge area.

I made a quick call to a fellow birder and could tell by the excitement in her voice that she would be ready to go in a heartbeat. Whatever she had on her plate for the day would quickly be put aside for the trip to Greene County, and knowing which sections of Goose Pond they were in would make locating the birds much easier, we hoped.

As we pulled into the parking area at GP8, the seven white pelicans were easy to distinguish from the many other species of waterfowl. Seven of them were huddled together, snoozing in the afternoon sun. A few days later they were joined by four more. The whooping cranes, however, were a different story. Also expecting them to be obvious, there were none to be found but we still had several thousand acres to scour in order to find the whoopers.

Just a week prior we had seen sandhill cranes numbering in the thousands at the Beehunter Marsh area (one count totaled around 5000), so I had a pretty good hunch the whoopers may be hanging out with the sandhills.

I wanted to get some pictures of the pelicans despite the distance between us, a good 500 yards at least. The day was very windy and even though the temperature was in the high 40’s, the wind was creating a chill, so I parked the truck in such a way to provide us a wind block. As I was setting up the tripod and camera, my cohort whispered, “Mark, look over there, quickly!” There, in the cornfield, not 60 yards away, stood two whooping cranes and three sandhills, just kind of checking us out. The parking of the truck as a wind block had also blocked our view of a field behind us.

Had they been there the whole time? We didn’t know, and we didn’t care, either. We were getting our first real look at whooping cranes. Soon their necks were outstretched and whoosh! Up they went and back down into the marsh and landing near the pelicans. They were soon joined by the three sandhill cranes who didn’t seem to want to let them get too far away, like they were traveling buddies, maybe.

Although the web report only indicated two whoopers, a call to the property had revealed the presence of five others. (That number would climb to nine by the weekend.) After some quality viewing time and many photos later, off we went to Beehunter for another surprise.

Again, we thought we would be searching hundreds of acres of wetlands for the rest of the birds, but the whoopers had other plans for us. As we made our way down a gravel road, suddenly, not more than 50 yards from the truck, standing in a harvested cornfield, stood two more cranes, poking around in the corn stubble. They didn’t seem to be alarmed at our presence and were unusually tolerant. What an opportunity! They were right there in our faces, as if to say, “Well, here we are. How do you like us now?”

A little further back in the same field were two more. We now had seen six of the seven. Not only did we have extended viewing of the whooping cranes, but we also had a very up-close viewing. Could it possibly get any better than this? Well, actually yes! Number 7 would present itself before our search would end that day. Later correspondence with the people at Operation Migration would alert us to the fact that we all needed to keep a distance of at least 500-600 yards. Here at Beehunter that was hard to do in that the birds were quite comfortable with the slow moving vehicles, the occupants of which were getting views from 50 yards – and occasionally the vocalization these birds are known for.

Various whooping crane reintroduction organizations have put the actual number of whooping cranes on the North American Continent at around 380. Only about 86 of these are east of the Mississippi River and belong to the Eastern Partnership. Nine of these birds all in one place during the northern migration is almost as rare as the bird itself.

Many readers will probably remember some past stories in this magazine about the whooping cranes that have made their way through Indiana in recent years. If you have followed the plight of these birds, then you undoubtedly have seen the major news reports of Operation Migration, wherein young whooping cranes are lead south on a migration route behind an ultra-light airplane, with several strategically chosen areas along the route for overnight lodging. The birds at Goose Pond were some of those birds and seeing them in Indiana really shouldn’t be a total surprise; the Hoosier state has been on this migration route since they began in 2003. A new route, started last year, is now bringing first year birds south by way of Illinois.

Operation Migration has been instrumental in taking the whooping crane, whose numbers had dwindled to a mere 15 in the 1940’s, to their current numbers. These folks, along with the Bring Back the Cranes Foundation and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, have slowly been rebuilding the wild population. There are now several breeding pairs making their own migrations between northern Wisconsin’s Necedah Wildlife Refuge and their wintering grounds in Florida.

Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of these whoopers is their identifying leg bands… a combination of red, green and white. I had received a master list of the birds and their bands, which made identifying the birds quite the challenge. While reading field reports on operationmigration.org, one entry indicated that a particular bird, #519, was thought to have met it’s demise sometime between leaving Florida and the locating of its mate in Tennessee. I contacted Operation Migration with the good news that #519 was alive and well in Indiana. Their response was to please forward any photos I might have of any of the birds. Fortunately, I had at least one photo of each bird and Operation Migration confirmed that #519 was alive.

The following weekend found me back at the Goose Pond with my 10-year-old daughter, Evelyn. I wanted her to have a chance to see these lily-white birds with the scarlet faces. On that day, we parked on the road, along with several other vehicles, and watched seven of them feeding in that same cornfield. It was there that we met Barbara Simpson and heard the story of the vanishing cranes. What a shame it would have been had these magnificent birds vanished into extinction. The whooping crane has come a long way since Barbara colored her first picture of this magnificent bird in the days of Mrs. Hart and the Maffitt Bird Course.

As I stood with my daughter and watched the whooping cranes feeding so placidly in those restored wetlands, I thought to myself, “Someday, Evelyn may live to see this bird come off the endangered species list, just like the bald eagle has.” We topped off the day by visiting a bald eagle’s nest and seeing one of the pair incubating the new eggs.

As the afternoon wore on, many of the sandhills began lifting off the marsh except this time they weren’t heading out to feed in the nearby fields. As we stood there it became clear they were “thermaling” on the rising heat and taking advantage of the south wind. Soon, a lone whooper joined the party and did the same. It wasn’t long before he, and the sandhills , disappeared out of sight. The birds obviously had decided it was time to head north.

Reports from Operation Migration in late March indicate one more whooping crane had made a stopover in Greene County bringing the total number to 10 birds. Another eight whoopers have also been seen in Indiana as well. The good news is that six of the nine of the whoopers written about here have all returned safely to the Necedah NWR in Wisconsin with the remaining three still in Greene County. We bid Godspeed to the whoopers.

There are many sites you can visit to read more about the whooping cranes and their comeback, here are a few of the links: operationmigration.org and bringbackthecranes.org