A high-profile flock of whooping cranes may be winging its way back through the Midwest in the next few days or weeks. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:
To find out more about the migrating cranes you can go to: www.bringbackthecranes.org and www.operationmigration.org.
Transcript
A high-profile flock of whooping cranes may be winging its way back through the Midwest in the next few days or weeks. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:
The cranes would be the first migrating flock of whoopers in the eastern U.S. The birds have left their winter home in Florida, and wildlife biologists hope the cranes are on their way to a summer nesting site in Wisconsin. The whoopers are flying on their own this spring, after having followed ultra light aircraft on their southerly migration last fall. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokesperson Charles Underwood says one of the biggest dangers on the northbound journey is from predators.
“Both bobcats and coyotes and as they get further north the possibility of wolves taking one of the birds is always of concern to us.”
Underwood is also urging people not to get to try to get too close to the whooping cranes. He says wildlife officials are trying to keep the huge birds as wild as possible. Two web sites will track the cranes’ progress.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Chuck Quirmbach reporting.