Migration

Whooping cranes to benefit from USFWS water release

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Kearney Hub

Releases expected to continue until May 10

Posted: Tuesday, April 1, 2014 1:15 pm

KEARNEY — The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has started releasing into the Platte River water from its environmental account stored in Lake McConaughywhooping cranes
 primarily to benefit endangered whooping cranes during their migration stopover in central Nebraska.

The releases started Saturday and are expected to continue until May 10. They should increase Overton-to-Grand Island flows to about 1,700 cubic feet per second.

That is the minimum flow in a dry year that USFWS officials believe is necessary to provide and maintain adequate roosting and feeding habitat for whooping cranes on the Platte River. Such flows are not unusual at this time of year and are well-below flood levels.

All the environmental account water should be past Grand Island by around May 24.Whooping cranes use the Central Flyway to migrate to Canada for the summer. It’s the same route used by hundreds of thousands of other migrating birds, including around 500,000 sandhill cranes. They all stop in the Central Platte Valley in March and April to feed in area fields and roost overnight in the river.

The environmental account was established in 1999 and is managed by the USFWS to benefit four federally listed threatened or endangered species — whooping cranes, least terns, piping plovers and pallid sturgeon.

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Whooping cranes spotted near Aulne, Kansas

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Peabody Gazette-Bulletin

By OLIVIA HASELWOOD

Staff writer

Those traveling down Quail Creek Rd. near 140th Rd. may have noticed some large strange looking white birds. Those who noticed the birds for what they were could not get home to get their cameras fast enough.

There are only around 600 wild whooping cranes according to Cornell University Lab of Ornithology, nine of which stayed to rest in a disked milo field near Aulne. The landowner, Eugene Just, had sowed oats in the field.

“If they are eating the oats, I won’t have any oats left,” Just said.

Local bird enthusiast Lloyd Davies of Marion said the birds stopped to eat grain as they made their yearly migration from Texas to Canada.

“They basically make a jaunt from Texas to here, fatten up, and fly the last leg north,” he said. “Since there are only 240 in this flock and only 500 in existence, it’s pretty rare.”

He said most of the flock will travel to the sand hills outside Kearney, Neb., where they will stay for nearly six weeks before completing their trip to Canada.

The cranes were still near Aulne Tuesday, but Davies said they will only stay for a short period before continuing their trek north. Trackers on many of the birds help researchers inform local birdwatchers where the cranes are located.

Davies said this is the first time he has seen the birds in Marion County, but he witnessed three or four outside of Manhattan a couple of years ago.

He noticed that several of the birds were banded and thought they were juveniles, which he said is a good sign of population growth in the right direction.

Mike Carroll of Marion said he was on his way home from church when he saw the cranes in the field.

“My first guess was they were a swan or a crane; they were just too tall for snow geese,” he said. “I saw Lloyd’s post on Facebook and had to go back out there with the camera.”

Carroll returned to the field with his brother-in-law to take photos of the birds.

“I felt quite privileged to have seen them,” he said. “It’s like the first time you get to see one of the eagles at one of the lakes. It’s just really cool.”

Carroll said he is not an avid bird watcher but found the cranes to be too good of a photo opportunity to pass up.

“I just find it interesting to see different birds not generally seen here,” he said.

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Whooping Cranes on their Nesting Habitat, Wood Buffalo , Canada

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Whooping Cranes on their Nesting Habitat, Wood Buffalo , Canada

Have you visited Wood Buffalo National Park in northwest Canada to see whooping cranes? If so, you are among the very few. Because it is such a remote place for most people to visit, Friends of the Wild Whoopers  (FOTWW) wants to share some photographs with you that provides a sample of whoopers in their natural nesting area.

Wood Buffalo National Park, located in northeastern Alberta and southern Northwest Territories, is the largest national park in Canada at 17,300 sq. mi. (44,807 km2  ). It is also the second-largest national park in the world. Importantly, it is the nesting site for the only remaining wild self-sustaining flock of whooping cranes on the planet.

FOTWW was fortunate recently to link up with John David McKinnon who shared his whooping crane album with us. John said, “It’s time to show the world the whoopers at Wood Buffalo National Park.” So that’s our goal.  Be sure to check out his awesome photos and enjoy the beauty of both, the wild ones and Wood Buffalo Nation Park in John’s album:   Whooping Cranes .

Thank you John for sharing, so the world can see the precious whooping cranes and Wood Buffalo National Park.

 

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Whooping Cranes-Signs of Spring

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Posted on Fri, Mar. 21, 2014
By Beccy Tanner
The Wichita Eagle

Any day now, whooping cranes are expected to pass through the Quivira National Wildlife Refuge.

Last year, the first whooping crane arrived on March 6.

In 2012 and 2011, the whoopers arrived on March 16.

Travis Heying/ File photo Two rare whooping cranes come to rest at the Little Salt Marsh at Quivira National Wildlife Refuge in 2010.

“Statistically, their peak movement is the last week of March and the first two weeks of April,” said Barry Jones, visitor services specialist at the refuge, in Stafford County.

The arrival of the whoopers generally signals the spring migration. But there are signs that spring has arrived.

Already, flocks of sandhill cranes have been passing through the refuge on their way to the staging grounds on Nebraska’s Platte River. Other birds – four tundra swans were spotted in Quivira along with a handful of pelicans, 200 Baird’s sandpipers and thousands of ducks – are resting in the water-filled marshes.

Read more here: Signs of Spring

 

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