#524
is Found!
By Sara Zimorski, ICF
 |
Photo
Dan Kaiser
|
Sometimes looking for a Whooping Crane is like looking for a needle in a haystack: the eastern US is enormous, Wisconsin is huge, and when you lose a bird's signal as it lands for the night even a small area where you know the bird has to be, can seem large. The ICF/USFWS tracking team is small and obviously can't be everywhere there's a Whooping Crane. This is especially true during spring and fall migration when birds are spread from Wisconsin to Florida. We always work with local, state, and federal employees as well as local landowners to help us with observations when birds are in their area — and we're not. We are grateful to everyone who reports sightings of Whooping Cranes, to everyone who monitors the birds and sends updates to us, and to everyone who gives us access to their property so we can check on the birds. This is a story about three of those important people and a missing crane.
 |
Who
was the Mystery Whooper that joined the five Dar birds in Indiana?
Photo Dan Kaiser |
Three
Indiana Helpers
This spring we have been lucky to have 3 especially wonderful people
in IN who have been helping us keep track of birds. Dan lives in an
area in southern IN where, during the past few years, a number of
the whoopers pass through during spring and fall migration. Dan is
a
wonderful photographer (with a long lens) who photographed the whoopers
he found and sent us the pictures so we could identify the birds. This
year he has gone above and beyond by helping track or check
on a number of different birds at locations throughout Indiana. This
was a huge help, since our team was often at other locations with different
groups of birds.
Paul and Betty (and their neighbors) are private citizens who own a farm where the group of six DAR birds landed March 21 on their first journey north. Shortly after the birds arrived, Paul and Betty discovered that #43-07 had died after hitting a power line. The remaining five DAR birds in the group remained on Paul and Betty's farm until April 17. Dan met Paul and Betty when he went to their farm to check on the birds for us. I have never met Dan, Paul or Betty but I feel like I know them from our almost daily emails regarding the birds. Their help in monitoring the birds has been invaluable, allowing our tracking interns to follow other birds that were continuing to migrate north while these 5 stayed put.
Surprise!
A New Crane Joins the Five DAR Birds
On April
14 I got an email from Paul and Betty saying the 5 DAR birds were still
there and doing well, but in the evening they had been
joined by a 6th crane. Now, of course we trust that Paul and Betty
know what a Whooping Crane looks like but it just seemed too crazy
for a separate bird to find these five. Dan and I both sent emails
asking if they were
sure the new bird was a Whooping Crane. The next morning they responded
that they were sure and that the new bird had bands just
like the others. Who could it be?
There weren't
many options, so Dan
planned
to go
up to the farm after work and figure out who the new bird was.
Late on April 15 I received an email from Dan with the exciting
news
that the
new bird was #524, a 3-year-old male whose transmitter is
dead and who hadn't been seen since November 2007.
It's very exciting that #524 ended up at the exact same farm as
the 5 DARs since he hadn't been seen in so long, but it's also totally
bizarre. It will be interesting to see what happens next! We
hope
#524 will
lead the 5 DARs back to Wisconsin. Sometimes it's a much smaller
world than we realize.
Journal Question
- What happened next for #524 and the other DAR birds? Find out on their Bio pages: 524, DAR 37-07, 39-07, 42-07, 44-07, and 46-07. (Scroll down to the end of their pages for the latest news.)
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