A 23-Year-Old Endangered Whooping Crane Found Dead

By RICHARD HINTON

A 23-year-old endangered whooping crane found dead Wednesday in a farmer’s field near Almont "was a very productive male," guiding seven chicks south for the winter over its more than two decades of breeding, wildlife biologists said Thursday.

No foul play is suspected in the whooper’s death, wildlife officials said.

A preliminary inspection revealed the whooper may have suffered a broken neck. A power line lies about a mile from where the bird was found, but the consensus is a power line that far away was not a factor in its death, said Ken Torkelson, a spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Bismarck office.

The carcass will be sent to the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wis., Monday for analysis. Researchers will look for pellet or raptor wounds and examine it for disease. A report from the lab was expected late next week. The whooper appeared to have been in good health.

The crane was designated as r-Y and was identified by its red leg band, showing it was hatched and banded in 1983. The whooper was one of 25 whoopers in the flock still fitted with a band, carryovers from the USFWS’s 1977-88 banding project.

Although no evidence of human involvement was apparent, federal agents continued to check the area where it was found on Thursday.

"Anytime you lose a bird like that, it’s a big deal," said Torkelson.

Only 236 whooping cranes comprise the flock that winters on the Texas Gulf Coast and breeds at Canada’s Wood Buffalo National Park on the Alberta-Northwest Territories border. It’s the largest wild flock in North America. Whoopers are making the 2,500-mile migration to Canada for another breeding season, and most are passing through North Dakota.

The dead whooper "first nested in 1986 and brought its first chick to Aransas in 1987," Tom Stehn, the USFWS’s national whooping crane coordinator at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in Texas, said in a statement. "In 21 years of nesting, it successfully brought seven chicks to Aransas. It was still a very productive male, having brought six chicks to Aransas out of the last 10 years."

In the wild, whooping cranes typically live to their mid-20s. The oldest bird in the Wood Buffalo-Aransas flock is 29, and 22 birds in the flock are over 20, said Martha Tacha, the coordinator for the USFWS’s whooping crane monitoring project in Grand Island, Neb.

The flock reached a record high of 237 whoopers this winter, a rebound from less than two dozen birds in the 1940s. Whooping cranes were listed as endangered in 1970.

A southeast wind has stepped up the migration, pushing sandhill cranes, whooping cranes, American white pelicans, snow geese and other migratory species into North Dakota and increasing whooper sightings.

"There have been a lot of sightings coming though the eastern portion of the state. It’s probably a function of more water to hang out on," said Mike Szymanski, a migratory bird biologist for the North Dakota Game and Fish Department who helps monitor the state’s whooper sightings.

Counting the dead whooper, there have been 29 confirmed sightings in North Dakota so far this spring.

NDGFD biologist Christ Grondahl sighted two flocks of whoopers Sunday. Five whooping cranes were flying among an estimated 100 sandhill cranes, and another flock of sandhills had 15 whoopers in it, said Tacha. Whooping cranes are stark white with black wingtips, and sandhill cranes are smaller and darker.

Paul Van Ningen, Long Lake National Wildlife Refuge manager and the USFWS’s state whooping crane coordinator, confirmed the sighting of a single whooping crane on the ground Sunday evening near Menoken east of Bismarck.

The seven whoopers reported as "probable" when seen near Mandator earlier this month were spotted again and confirmed by a wildlife biologist Sunday near Crookston, Minn., said Tacha.

Most of the whooping cranes already have pulled out of the Aransas area, and some whoopers have settled in at Wood Buffalo, Stehn said.

Anyone seeing a whooping crane is asked to contact the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at 701-387-4397 or the North Dakota Game and Fish Department at 701-328-6300.

The dead bird and its mate were equipped with radio collars in the early 1980s, said Stehn, who has been involved with the protected birds for more than 20 years.

"We called them the ‘radio pair.’ Not only did they produce seven offspring, but they provided us with a lot of valuable information about whooping crane movements."