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National Geographic : 1979 May
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Whooper chicks that survived trailed their foster parents everywhere, foraging and roosting with them. Often the older birds presented the chicks with tidbits-in sects. More than once I saw a sandhill stand over a youngster to shelter it in a rainstorm. When mature, the sandhills' exotic charges would be North America's tallest birds, and by August some of the chicks al ready stood four feet tall. That was large enough, I decided, to accommodate an iden tifying leg band. First Tagging Effort a Success Wild whooping cranes had never been banded before 1975, and I asked Elwood Bi zeau and Desmond Call, a refuge employee, to pioneer the operation with me. Our first target fled as we approached and eluded us for nearly an hour until Desmond spotted it in the dense cover beside a pond. As I moved in, the chick spread its wings and charged, hissing and pecking. I netted the counter attacking crane just before it reached me. The whooper soon calmed down, but lost no chance to peck us while we fastened a band to one leg, then slipped a color-coded plastic marker around the other. Weighed, measured, and released, the chick quickly disappeared again in the man-high rushes. About 2,000 cranes migrate annually from Grays Lake, and when the first flock spiraled skyward in late September, five whoopers had been banded. One morning in early October, I watched a bugling flock at tract a whooper chick and its foster parents. Seemingly tethered to the attentive pair of sandhills, the young whooping crane traced their every turn as they circled upward in the bright autumn sky. The chick's white body and black-tipped wings contrasted with the mouse-gray sandhills. The flock established formation and swung southeast toward Wyoming. Flocks head first for Monte Vista Nation al Wildlife Refuge in Colorado's San Luis Valley. There they may rest for a day or a month or more before following the Rio Grande south to their winter home in and around Bosque del Apache National Wild life Refuge in New Mexico. I alerted the manager of the Monte Vista Refuge, Charles R. "Pete" Bryant, that the first whooper was on its way. Pete called back the following afternoon. "We have a whooping crane on the south end of the refuge. He's wearing your plastic leg marker." Incredibly, the bird and its fos ter parents had covered the 500 miles from Grays Lake to Monte Vista in only 30 hours; along the way they topped the Continental Divide, flying above 14,000 feet. The trio rested at Monte Vista for two weeks, then resumed their odyssey on Octo ber 24. The next day they were foraging in a cornfield at Bosque del Apache, where ref uge employees soon nicknamed the grain loving whooper "Corny." Three more juvenile whoopers arrived to winter in New Mexico. Encounters between the young whoopers and sandhills other than their foster parents became more fre quent-and more hostile-particularly as the two species competed for food. Contentious cranes often sought to bluff each other, spreading their wings in threat displays. Sometimes one bird pursued an other, nipping and pecking; occasionally a face-to-face pecking duel developed. Radios Warn Goose Hunters Thanks to the precautions taken, the 16 day snow goose hunting season at Bosque del Apache didn't worry us much more than these bloodless battles. Hunters, selected in a drawing, must pass a bird-identification course. Also, they are issued portable radios tuned to a refuge station, which warns of approaching whoopers. Between 1975 and 1978, whoopers entered the hunting area many times without mishap. In the past four years, several whoopers have wintered in New Mexico, then started northward again in early spring. Six summered at or near Already taller than its foster parents, a 7-month-old whooper, at right-having delighted scientists by joining the sandhills' fall migration from Idaho-forages at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico. After shedding brownish juvenile plumage for adult white with black trim, the full-grown whooper, tallest bird in North America, will stand nearly five feet tall-half a foot above its greater sandhill kin. RODERICKC.DREWIEN NationalGeographic,May 1979 688
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