I step out of my truck into the cold pre-dawn darkness. I can see nothing but I can hear a great diversity of birds. Immediately I hear a pair of Great Horned Owls hooting back and forth no more than a hundred yards away. In the distance is the honking of a flock of Canada Goose. I can also hear dozens of Sandhill Cranes sounding off with their ancient bone rattling call. But it is none of these birds that I am in central Wisconsin to see and photograph. No, I am here for a very special and rare bird, the Whooping Crane.

This week’s column comes to you from the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge. It is Wisconsin’s largest federally owned refuge consisting of over 44,000 acres but when you count the adjacent federally managed land it totals a whopping 114,000 acres. Needless to say it’s a wildlife haven.

Refuge manager Larry Wargowsky tells me “this place is really an endangered species refuge” because it is home to 3 high profile endangered species— the Karner Blue Butterfly, Eastern Gray Wolf and the Whooping Crane. Larry tells me that this large continuous block of habitat allows uncommon species such as the Fisher and Porcupine along with wolves and bears to live further south in Wisconsin than they would normally occur. I can bear witness to that because I saw and photographed one of the wolves early this morning.

With over 5,000 acres of wetlands and impoundments (large shallow lakes) this refuge was selected to be the place where an experimental free flying flock of endangered Whooping Cranes would be established. After years of planning the project released its first cranes in 2001. Young Whooping Cranes were raised by staff members of Operation Migration who dress in costumes that mimic adult cranes. Each year an average of 8-21 young cranes are trained at this facility and are taught to fly behind an ultra-light aircraft to learn how to migrate. I am sure this is not the first time you have heard about this amazing story. By all means of measurement this project to establish a migrating flock of Whooping Cranes has been a success. But last spring disaster struck when nearly all of the young cranes raised and flown to Florida were killed in a freak accident—a tornado.

Set backs are part of any success story but they are usually never the end of the story. And the Whooping Crane project is no exception. Beverly Paulan from Operation Migration tells me that this past spring 35 Whooping Crane eggs were hatched in preparation for the class of 07. Seventeen of these new crane chicks are now at this facility learning how to eat, drink and most importantly fly and migrate by following the ultra-light.

I had a chance to spend a couple days with the staff of Operation Migration to see first hand how this process is working. Weeks before my arrival the staff of OM had spent hundreds of hours feeding and training the young cranes. This involves dressing in an all white costume and hand holding a life-like head of an adult Whooping Crane to feed the young birds. Now standing almost as tall as their parents the young cranes of 07 are learning to fly and follow the ultra-light aircraft.

Each morning just as the sun is peaking over the horizon pilots from OM take off from their hanger and land at the holding pens of the young cranes. The young birds are released from their protective enclosure and immediately start to stretch their wings and dance about. It doesn’t take too much encouragement to get the young birds to follow the air craft. Within a minute they are off and flying. They make several circles and land again. All total they are airborne about 25 minutes. The young birds are returned to the holding area. Another successful flight.

This goes on day after day (weather providing) until Oct when its time to migrate south. All the months of preparation pay off when the pilots and support staff take off and head south with the ultimate destination being Florida where they will spend the winter.

Interesting the Whooping Cranes only need to be shown the way down to Florida once. After that the birds will return to central Wisconsin on their own where they will spend the summer and hopefully reproduce, thus establishing a free flying, migratory flock of the endangered Whooping Crane. Until next time