Bye bye birdie
Crane flies south

By LEE HINNANT

The highly endangered whooping crane that unexpectedly showed up in Columbus County this winter has taken off, but has yet to return to his colony’s warm season home in Wisconsin, bird watchers report.

“The wrong-way whooper has flown the coop,” quipped Harry Warren, director of the N.C. Museum of Forestry. Warren and his staff helped keep tabs on the giant crane after it was first spotted in a field in the southern part of the county in December.

Karen Elizabeth Eyerly, the museum’s education coordinator and a bird expert, said the juvenile male crane called “1803” was last spotted in Columbus County on Feb. 18. A few days later, someone at a private nature preserve in Georgetown County, S.C., saw the bird. A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service scientist who had been tracking another whooping crane in the ACE Basin region of South Carolina confirmed on Feb. 24 that the Georgetown County bird was 1803, Eyerly said.

Eyerly said she believed the whooper was under some stress here, either from his relative proximity to people or perhaps because his food sources were dwindling. “I’m glad to see he left when he did,” she said. “He’s in a very safe place now.”

The crane is part of an experimental colony established in Wisconsin’s Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in 2001 – an effort that has garnered worldwide media attention. Because the birds were raised in captivity, they did not naturally know how and where to migrate. Scientists and volunteers from across the country teach the youngest birds to fly to Florida each fall using ultralight aircraft.

Whooping cranes once numbered in the thousands across North American wetlands, but plumage hunters blasted them to near extinction. Only 15 were left in 1941 and the majestic birds remain among the most critically endangered species. There are fewer than 350 wild whooping cranes on the planet; that is why scientists are so concerned about a single bird.

Whooping cranes are creamy white with a distinctive crimson path on their heads and black wingtips. They are more than five feet tall and have a wingspan of nearly eight feet, making them a striking sight.

Until last winter, when 1803 and some fellow members of his colony turned up in Jones County, N.C., whooping cranes had not been seen in the Carolinas for more than a century. Crane 1803 eventually made his way back to Wisconsin but his apparent affinity for the Carolinas remained, since he turned up in Columbus County this winter. The crane can be identified from a distance because he is fitted with a radio-tracking device.

Trackers know that four whoopers also wintered in Tennessee this season.

Eyerly said 1803 is in a perfect spot – a privately owned, 20,000-acre nature preserve. In two years, he will be old enough to breed. Crane experts expect he will start migrating north by the end of March.

“Hopefully, he’ll end up back in Wisconsin,” Eyerly said.