1. Flying With Whooping Cranes

    Posted in: Videos on Friday, January 20th, 2012

    operation migration & whooping cranes

    According to the song, “Birds gotta fly,” but sometimes people have to teach them where to fly.  If you’re a whooping crane chick hatched in capitivity in an incubator in Maryland and raised by humans at a wildlife refuge in Wisconsin then you have no idea how to get to your home in Florida your first winter.  Somebody has to show you “The way to go home,” according to another song.

    That’s where Operation Migration steps in as surrogate parents to several whooping crane chicks each year.  They help raise the young birds and get them to imprint with an ultralight in the role of parent or really big bird.  First the chicks learn to follow the delta wing or flying trike as it drives around on the ground.  Next the young cranes take daily flights around the wildlife refuge following in a V formation behind the ultralight.  By October each year the new whooping cranes are ready to begin their trip south to Florida and their winter home.  After that first trip they manage to find their way back and forth each year on their own.

    I was lucky to be the first journalist to fly with Operation Migration and the whooping cranes.  It’s a special treat to watch these huge birds in formation off your wingtip.  This week on my radio show National Geographic Weekend I talk with the co-founder of Operation Migration, Joe Duffy, about the effort to help save the whooping cranes.  At one point we were down to only 15 whooping cranes left in the wild.  We’re now up to a few hundred, but we’re still a long way from ensuring their survival.

    This video shows how they train the birds to follow the ultralights and then we take you for a ride, flying with whooping cranes.

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