A team of dedicated bird-lovers at Operation Migration is helping the endangered whooping cranes (Grus americana), hand-raised in Wisconsin, migrate to Florida. (There are only about 440 birds in the wild, supplemented by about 165 in captivity.) The inexperienced birds are guided by ultralight aircraft. Can one be more dedicated than that to saving a species? The guided flight will last several weeks, I’m told. For the past two days the birds have been grounded by high winds, but it looks as if today they’ll continue on their journey.
Apparently the cranes spend the night in enclosures, and the big excitement is at takeoff. As the weather is propitious, that will apparently happen soon, so click here or on the screenshot below.
The cam is operating 24/7 and will continue to do so until the cranes depart on their first migration with the aircraft in mid-October. From that time, we will switch to the TrikeCam and broadcast LIVE directly from inside the aircraft. On days when weather prevents the team and the cranes from advancing we will set it up as a static camera from the travel enclosure.
There are two videos documenting the flight: click on the first photo below to see the action at takeoff, and then on the screenshot below that to see the view from the ultralight aircraft. (Note: the takeoff cam operates sporadically, so check back if you don’t see anything.) Also note that the plane pilots wear crane suits!
Flight cam (click on photo to see plane’s-eye view:
Well, they seemed to have some technical difficulties with the cams today! The commentary & preparations were just getting exciting when my feed cut off. 🙁
I encourage everyone to poke around the website and other links it contains to learn more about this project. I’d known of the ultralight flights for a few years now, of course, but never really delved into the actual logistics before. What an enormous undertaking.
A few days ago the transmission was more successful and it’s really fun to see the colts take to the air and get the plane’s-eye view of them!
Whoop
Youtube video,”The Flight of the Bald Ibis” on “The Secrets of Nature” channel has a similar story. In 1997 a Konrad Lorenz research centre at Grunau, Alm Valley, upper Austrian alps was trying to train the Bald Ibises to fly their traditional migration route to Tuscany / the Adriatic. Up until now the Ibises did have an urge to migrate but usually ended up towards Holland.
This webpage says that in 2013 they had success with an Ibis finding its own way.
http://nautil.us/issue/3/in-transit/the-new-flight-of-the-ibis
“The New Flight of the Ibis
How a determined scientist taught an ancient species to migrate again.
BY CHELSEA WALD
PHOTO BY JOHANNES FRITZ
JULY 11, 2013”
Very cool story, thank you, zytigon! A most uplifting (heh) project indeed!
These programs are controversial in some parts of the scientific community–species like these Ibis, the California Condor, and the Whooping Crane having fallen way below any reasonable population size. IIRC, the Whoopers were once down to 15 individuals and both the Ibis & Condors were declared extinct, despite the last ditch effort of trapping the very few remaining individuals for captive raising.
But it’s also the sort of science that can captivate people from all walks of life, maybe get them thinking a bit more about the welfare of all wildlife and wild areas…
This afternoon I got notice when the crane’s temporary enclosure went live again, and saw the colts striding around looking for their dinner.
There’s a fun if nerve-wracking write-up of today’s leg of the trip here:
http://operationmigration.org/InTheField/2015/10/25/day-26-lead-pilot-report/
They traveled a whopping 34 miles and are now in Illinois. Florida could take a while.
The nerve-wracking part involves a crane with a mind of her own:
“You can almost see the thought balloons above her head. Hey! Look at that. Hmmm, I wonder what’s over there? So – what are you guys doin? She has the attention span of a cocker spaniel in a backyard full of squirrels. She reminds me of a puppy running across the backseat from one open window to the next, ears flapping in the wind.”
Toward the end she exhausted herself and met with a bit of an accident, but all’s well as I write.
PS: There are a couple of nice photos at that site as well.
The cofounder of Operation Migration is Bill Lishman. His autobiography, Father Goose, is the basis of the movie Fly Away Home.