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Well-known member
Oldest known wild Whooping Crane ....
... dies during migration over Saskatchewan
News report from Wednesday
jim
EDMONTON (CP) — When Brian Johns spotted the whooping crane in a field in
central Saskatchewan, he could tell the bird was ill.
“I suspected it was not feeling good and wasn’t able to keep up with its mate
and young,” said Johns, a wildlife biologist with the Canadian Wildlife Service.
A couple of weeks ago, he went back to look for the sickly crane. In a dense
clump of buffalo berry shrubs near Muskiki Lake, he found the carcass of a bird
that turned out to be the oldest known wild whooping crane and the first ever
banded in Wood Buffalo National Park.
Ernie Kuyt, a retired biologist living in Edmonton, banded the crane as a chick
in 1977 along the Nyarling River in the northern reaches of the park, just
north of the Alberta-Northwest Territories boundary.
He gave the bird unique metal bands, a green one on the left leg and a red one
on the right. Biologists always referred to her as Green-Red.
Over the years, the crane contributed 11 offspring to the ranks of the
endangered species.
Twice a year, she made the annual migration from Wood Buffalo to Aransas
National Wildlife Refuge in Texas on the Gulf of Mexico. That means the whooper
covered an estimated 225,000 kilometres in its 28-year lifetime.
“It was a sad day when I found that particular bird,” said Johns, who has been
keeping tabs on it.
He has been studying whooping cranes since 1981. When Kuyt retired in 1991,
Johns took over responsibility for watching the Wood Buffalo cranes.
He knows the soft-bottom marsh land along the Klewi River where Green-Red used
to nest each year — just 20 kilometres south of where she was hatched.
The other eight cranes banded in the same year died long ago; the second-oldest
from that group survived nine years.
In a 1979 issue of North American Bird Bander, Kuyt described how the young
whooping cranes were captured and banded in late July when they were about two
months old and weighed about four kilograms.
Intensive conservation efforts have helped the whooping crane population grow
from a low in 1941 of less than two dozen birds to a more hopeful number
worldwide of about 450.
Whooping crane counts are done each year at the end of December. There are 120
cranes in captivity.
The whooping crane is a big snowy-white bird that stands almost 1.5 metres tall
and can weigh up to 7.5 kilograms. It has a wingspan of up to 2.5 metres. In
spite of its size, it flies an average speed of about 45 kilometres an hour.
The population in North America was never large. In the late 1800s, there were
about 1,500 birds in the aspen parklands and prairies of Western Canada and the
United States. But as human settlement expanded westward, the population
dropped.
An international tussle over the carcass of another legendary whooping crane
erupted in 2003 when Canada and the United States disagreed who should be
allowed to keep a stuffed bird named Canus. He died at the ripe old age of 39
after produced 186 descendants, including Lucky, the first chick to hatch in the
wild in the U.S. in 60 years.
Canus had been taken south in the late summer of 1964 when there were no more
than 42 whooping cranes like him left in the world.
But an agreement signed in 1993 eventually saw Canus returned to a tiny museum
in the Northwest Territories not far from where he was born.
... dies during migration over Saskatchewan
News report from Wednesday
jim
EDMONTON (CP) — When Brian Johns spotted the whooping crane in a field in
central Saskatchewan, he could tell the bird was ill.
“I suspected it was not feeling good and wasn’t able to keep up with its mate
and young,” said Johns, a wildlife biologist with the Canadian Wildlife Service.
A couple of weeks ago, he went back to look for the sickly crane. In a dense
clump of buffalo berry shrubs near Muskiki Lake, he found the carcass of a bird
that turned out to be the oldest known wild whooping crane and the first ever
banded in Wood Buffalo National Park.
Ernie Kuyt, a retired biologist living in Edmonton, banded the crane as a chick
in 1977 along the Nyarling River in the northern reaches of the park, just
north of the Alberta-Northwest Territories boundary.
He gave the bird unique metal bands, a green one on the left leg and a red one
on the right. Biologists always referred to her as Green-Red.
Over the years, the crane contributed 11 offspring to the ranks of the
endangered species.
Twice a year, she made the annual migration from Wood Buffalo to Aransas
National Wildlife Refuge in Texas on the Gulf of Mexico. That means the whooper
covered an estimated 225,000 kilometres in its 28-year lifetime.
“It was a sad day when I found that particular bird,” said Johns, who has been
keeping tabs on it.
He has been studying whooping cranes since 1981. When Kuyt retired in 1991,
Johns took over responsibility for watching the Wood Buffalo cranes.
He knows the soft-bottom marsh land along the Klewi River where Green-Red used
to nest each year — just 20 kilometres south of where she was hatched.
The other eight cranes banded in the same year died long ago; the second-oldest
from that group survived nine years.
In a 1979 issue of North American Bird Bander, Kuyt described how the young
whooping cranes were captured and banded in late July when they were about two
months old and weighed about four kilograms.
Intensive conservation efforts have helped the whooping crane population grow
from a low in 1941 of less than two dozen birds to a more hopeful number
worldwide of about 450.
Whooping crane counts are done each year at the end of December. There are 120
cranes in captivity.
The whooping crane is a big snowy-white bird that stands almost 1.5 metres tall
and can weigh up to 7.5 kilograms. It has a wingspan of up to 2.5 metres. In
spite of its size, it flies an average speed of about 45 kilometres an hour.
The population in North America was never large. In the late 1800s, there were
about 1,500 birds in the aspen parklands and prairies of Western Canada and the
United States. But as human settlement expanded westward, the population
dropped.
An international tussle over the carcass of another legendary whooping crane
erupted in 2003 when Canada and the United States disagreed who should be
allowed to keep a stuffed bird named Canus. He died at the ripe old age of 39
after produced 186 descendants, including Lucky, the first chick to hatch in the
wild in the U.S. in 60 years.
Canus had been taken south in the late summer of 1964 when there were no more
than 42 whooping cranes like him left in the world.
But an agreement signed in 1993 eventually saw Canus returned to a tiny museum
in the Northwest Territories not far from where he was born.
