From the March issue of Georgetown View Magazine
By Christine Switzer
Photos by Paula Englehardt
Citizen scientists help track endangered birds
After a long afternoon armed with only a pair of binoculars and a notebook, a citizen scientist on the trail of whooping cranes will call the day a success if she sights one bird or perhaps a small family of three. The largest birds in North America, these rare cranes—which number fewer than 500 in the world and fewer than 400 in the wild—have been listed as an endangered species for more than fifty years. But their populations are growing, and over the past few years, Central Texas sightings of the five-foot-tall waders, replete with red crowns and black “moustaches,” have increased.
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