Whooping Crane

About the Whooping Crane

The Whooping Crane is the tallest bird in North America - five feet of snow white with black wingtips, a red crown, and a bugling call that carries two miles - and the continent's most famous conservation story. In the 1940s the entire wild population was down to about 15 birds; every Whooping Crane alive today descends from that remnant.

Nearly the whole self-sustaining wild flock breeds in Wood Buffalo National Park in Canada and winters in and around Aransas National Wildlife Refuge on the central Texas coast, a 2,500-mile family journey made each fall with the summer's single surviving chick in tow. On the wintering grounds each family defends a territory of salt marsh, feeding heavily on blue crabs and wolfberries - crab abundance in any given winter measurably affects crane survival.

Whooping Cranes mate for life and reinforce the bond with spectacular dancing - leaping, bowing, and tossing sticks skyward. They are slow breeders: cranes may not nest until age four or five and typically fledge a single chick, which is why recovery from 15 birds has taken eighty years to pass 500 rather than a decade.

Texas is the only place on Earth to reliably see wild, self-sustaining Whooping Cranes, and the boat trips and viewing platforms around Rockport-Fulton and Port Aransas from November through March have become a pilgrimage for birders worldwide. Seeing a family striding a Texas salt marsh - two white adults and a cinnamon-washed youngster - is witnessing a species pulled back from the very edge.