Th whooping crane people came to our school to talk to the kids today. I didn’t know about the whooping cranes. Of course they are endangered–they were almost hunted into extinction in the 1950’s. There were only 15 left then. There is still one totally wild flock that migrates from Canada to Texas, but they don’t fly over Kentucky. The whooping crane people were Joan ( we are an endangered species too–nobody names a baby Joan any more) and Chris. They are from Wisconsin, and they raise cranes in captivity to be released into the wild. There are cranes in zoos, but they have imprinted on humans so they won’t migrate. The ones that Joan and Chris raise have never seen a human. The humans in contact with them wear white suits with a crane puppet head on their right hands. They wear tape recorders that may crane brooding sounds. They also play engine sounds to the eggs so that the fledgling cranes are used to the sound and will follow the ultra-light that Chris flies Florida in the fall. They go about 50 miles a day, and are trying to re-establish the old route from Wisconsin to Florida (over Kentucky). They have made the trip for seven years. Once the cranes follow Chris to Florida, they come back to Wisconsin on their own in the spring and continue the migration after that.
Now we have about 350 cranes in the wild in the U.S. These birds are five feet tall and have an eight foot wingspan–imagine a bird almost as tall as you are with four foot arms! And they were in Springfield!! Thank you, Chris and Joan. I’m proud you share my name.

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