Whooping crane numbers increase

[Ken Kinman]

Dear All,
     The juvenile whooping cranes are doing extremely well this year.  Of the 31 surviving wild-bred chicks from Canada, 29 have already reached the Aransas refuge in Texas.  But even with the excellent crop of chicks in 2005, this has been partially offset by continued losses of adults (mainly to predators) in the non-migratory flock in Florida (and no new chicks were sent there this year).  Therefore, I think whoopers will still be a little shy of that 500 mark this year (I predict about 495 for the world population at year's end).  We shall see.

     As for the juveniles in the Wisconsin-Florida migratory flock, the one recent death still leaves 23 chicks on their way to Florida.  Not sure exactly where the 4 DAR (Direct Autumn Release) juveniles are right now, but the 19 ultralight-led juveniles are presently in southeastern Tennessee, so they will be crossing over into northwest Georgia very soon.  They just crossed the Cumberland Ridge (their biggest obstacle on the trip) on Friday.  GO CRANES!!!  Anyway, here's a link to the map showing their progress (and the daily "ultralight" journal can be seen by clicking on "In the field" in their left menu):

http://www.operationmigration.org/migration_map05.htm

  ----Cheers,
         Ken Kinman