On Wednesday I had the opportunity to catch a glimpse of another endangered species. The whooping crane was near extinction in the 1940s with fewer than 30 birds alive. Today there are still only about 800 of these beautiful birds remaining in North America. There have been substantial efforts to increase their population over the years, but those efforts have not been a rousing success. A group of non-migratory cranes were introduced to central Florida in the early 1990s. Those releases ended in 2004. We believe the pair of cranes that we photographed may be from the original group. A project to teach cranes to migrate from Wisconsin to Florida using ultralight aircraft began in 2001 but due to numerous failures, the program ended in 2016.
While we were observing the cranes, we witnessed an interesting event. A lone sandhill crane landed next to the pair of whooping cranes. The sandhill was definitely not welcome. The whooping cranes got very agitated and began calling loudly. But the sandhill, which we assumed to be a juvenile, continued to graze. The whooping cranes suddenly chased the sandhill with the male whooping crane grabbing a mouthful of tail feathers from the sandhill. The male cornered the sandhill at the back of the property and then walked away. The sandhill didn’t move for several minutes.
The sandhill crane and whooping crane are the only 2 species of cranes in North America so to see both species in the same location was amazing. Seeing them together also revealed how much larger the whooping cranes are than the sandhill cranes.
A few more pictures from this journey are featured below. For a larger selection of photos, go to the galleries listed.
