Wildlife Viewing - Species Spotlight - Whooping Crane and Sandhill Crane

Species Spotlight : Whooping Crane and Sandhill Crane

Sandhill crane

Cranes have long inspired the human imagination with their tall and elegant stature, longevity and complex mating and courtship behaviors. Their bugling or rattling calls are haunting and beautiful. Florida is fortunate to attract and support three members of the crane family. Florida sandhill cranes, numbering 4,000 to 5,000, are non-migratory Florida residents. They are joined every winter by 25,000 migratory greater sandhill cranes from the Great Lakes region. Sandhill cranes occur in pastures, prairies and freshwater wetlands in peninsular Florida from the Everglades to the Okefenokee Swamp. The two subspecies found in Florida are indistinguishable from each other; both have gray plumage and an unfeathered carmine red crown.

Whooping crane

The third member of the crane family found in Florida is the endangered whooping crane, which was first reintroduced to the Kissimmee Prairie region in 1993. Whoopers once wintered in Florida, but hunting and habitat loss eliminated the Florida population by the 1920s. The birds were on the verge of extinction in the 1940s and today only about 275 birds remain in the wild. More than 250 captive-reared whooping cranes have been released in Florida since 1993 and about 90 survive today. The whooping cranes in this reintroduced population are not migratory, and scientists expect that with successful reproduction, the population will eventually be self-sustaining.

Efforts to establish a migratory population of whooping cranes began during the summer of 2000, with a pilot project testing the successful rearing and human-lead migration of eleven sandhill crane chicks that wintered in the Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge north of Tampa and returned to Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in central Wisconsin in April of 2001.

Since then, a group of ten whooping cranes also followed the phenomenal path of being raised by humans in puppet costumes resembling a parent 'whooper' , and then were trained to follow an ultralight airplane from Wisconsin to Chassohowitzka National Wildlife Refuge for the fall migration. In early fall of 2002, the five survivors of the original ten will be joined by a new set of 17, now in training , to make the fall migration to Florida.

Standing over four feet tall, whooping cranes are the tallest birds in North America and are distinctly taller than the sandhill cranes with which they usually occur. Adults have a red patch on the face that extends from the forehead to the cheek and white plumage with black wing tips easily seen in flight.

Cranes can live to be over 30 years old. They form pair bonds that may endure for many years. Nests are usually built over standing water. Within 24 hours of hatching, the young are capable of following their parents away from the nest. Together, they forage for seeds and roots, crop plants such as corn and peanuts, insects, snakes, frogs and occasionally young birds or small mammals.

For more information check out these web sites:

Where you can find sandhill cranes

Where you can find whooping cranes

Wildlife Viewing : Species Spotlight : Whooping Crane and Sandhill Crane

Species Spotlight : Whooping Crane and Sandhill Crane