A rare whooping crane visit

A trio of whooping cranes were spotted at the Cedarburg Bog in the Town of Saukville last month — the species’ second confirmed visit to the nature preserve since their reintroduction east of the Mississippi River in 2001.

Resident Jeff Kurz who happened to be “in the right place at the right time,” spotted the white-bodied and red-crowned cranes while out for a walk, John O’Donnell, organizer and former board member for the Bog, said Monday.

“Jeff called me and said, ‘There are some cranes here that aren’t sand hills.’ I told him, ‘I’ll be right over,’” he said.

By the time O’Donnell and a cohort of birders showed up, the elusive cranes, of which there are only 80 in Wisconsin, had left, he said.

The International Crane Foundation, the organization that has led the effort to reintroduce the whooping cranes, told O’Donnell that the trio had been spotted on their migration north from Florida with other whoopers at Goose Pond Fish and Wildlife Refuge in Indiana, before staying overnight in the Lake County area of northern Illinois.

During the evening of the next day, on March 9, they arrived at Mud Lake in the Bog. The group were made up of a pair that nest in Portage County and a single female that stays in Horicon Marsh who lost her mate somewhere on the journey north.

O’Donnell said the birds were likely blown off course by a west wind, although it didn’t delay them much on their journey.

“The amazing thing is they know how to navigate, they have a built in GPS system,” he said.

It’s the second time whooping cranes have been seen at the Bog. In April of 2019, two were seen flying from Mud Lake.

O’Donnell said he hopes the Bog will eventually become the summer home for a pair of whooping cranes. The Bog is on the edges of the cranes’ breeding territory and is evidently suitable, given the two stops.

Whooping cranes are native to North America and are the tallest birds on the continent, at almost 5 feet tall with a wing span of 7 to 8 feet. Its name comes from its unique, loud “whooping” call.

A whooping crane can live 20 to 30 years and lays only one to three eggs a season.

The species was driven to extinction in Wisconsin almost 200 years ago due to a combination of over hunting and habitat destruction. The last nest in the state was dated to 1841, O’Donnell said.

By the 1940s, there was only 21 cranes in total, he said, before serious conservation efforts started during the next decade.

Today, the western whooping crane flock, which migrates from Texas’s Gulf Coast to the Northwest Territory of Canada each year, numbers more than 600 birds, O’Donnell said.

The reintroduction of an eastern flock took place in 2001, he said. Terry Kohler aided the transport of whooping crane eggs in his private airplane from Wood Buffalo National Park in Canada to facilities in the east where they were raised entirely by people.

The effort that involved several government and nonprofit organizations took several years and many millions of dollars to see signs of success, O’Donnell said.

“They are slow learners so its been a chore to get them reestablished,” he said, noting whooping cranes are extremely unadaptable.

O’Donnell said he remembers driving up to Necedah to see the fall training on migration for the young birds. A pilot would dress up in a crane costume and get the birds to follow him, before getting into an ultralight plane and fly them around in formation, before landing and giving them treats.

The flights were used to teach the birds how to migrate to upper Florida for the winter, O’Donnell said, and only stopped about 10 years ago when all the birds had gotten the hang of it.

The recent outbreak of avian flu that has ravaged commercial and wild bird populations is a concern for the whooping cranes, although there has not been any confirmed cases, he said.

“Its a little scary,” he said, noting whooping cranes sometimes congregate with Sandhill cranes, which have had confirmed outbreaks.

O’Donnell said whooping cranes are the rarest of the 15 crane species, 10 of which are classified as endangered.