The whooping crane stands five feet tall — the tallest bird in North America — white as paper, with a red crown and black wingtips that show only in flight.Source 1Source 2
Courting pairs dance: leaping again and again, wings flapping, bills pointed at the sky, bugling.Source 3
Pairs mate for life and sing a unison call together, holding their bond and their territory in one voice.Source 4Source 5
In the mid-1800s perhaps 1,500 lived in North America. By 1941, fifteen wintered in Texas.Source 4Source 3
The species survived on one long thread: a 2,500-mile migration between wetlands in northern Canada and the Texas coast.Source 6Source 7
Its nesting grounds were so remote they were not even discovered until 1954.Source 7Source 3
Recovery was slow, strange, and human: captive breeding, and a Wisconsin flock that learned to migrate by following an ultralight aircraft.Source 8
The wild flock has climbed past five hundred, its highest count since near-extinction.Source 7
The dangers now are power lines, illegal shooting, and upstream water use that starves the coast of the blue crabs the cranes winter on.Source 9Source 6
To witness the whooping crane is to hear a bugle that nearly went silent — and keeps getting louder.Source 2Source 7
