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Guide to North American Birds

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Whooping Crane. Photo: eileenmak/Flickr CC (BY 2.0)

Priority Bird

Whooping Crane

Grus americana

One of the rarest North American birds, and also one of the largest and most magnificent. Once fairly widespread on the northern prairies, it was brought to the brink of extinction in the 1940s, but strict protection has brought the wild population back to well over one hundred. The flock that winters on the central Texas coast flies 2400 miles north to nest in Wood Buffalo National Park in central Canada; this remote breeding area was not discovered until 1954.

Conservation status	Endangered. Whoopers once nested on the northern prairies south to present-day Iowa and Illinois, but they disappeared as settlers moved in. As recently as 1912, about 90 birds wintered at various points in coastal Texas and Louisiana, and there was a nonmigratory population in southwestern Louisiana as well. By 1941 the Texas wintering flock was down to only 15 birds (another six were still resident in Louisiana, but that flock soon dwindled away). After 1941, numbers very gradually rose again, helped by protection on the wintering grounds and public education against shooting; by the mid-1990s, the Texas wintering flock approached 150. Attempts to start a new flock farther west (by putting Whooper eggs under Sandhill Cranes in Idaho) failed, but in the 1990s a new project aimed to start a nonmigratory flock in Florida, using birds raised in captivity. Most recently, an ambitious project has established a new flock that summers in Wisconsin, with young birds raised and then trained to follow an ultralight aircraft to Florida for their first southward migration.
Family	Cranes
Habitat	Muskeg (summer); prairie pools, marshes. Current breeding habitat is in remote northern forest, in areas of muskeg (swampy coniferous woods with numerous lakes and ponds). Formerly also nested in prairie marshes. Winters in coastal marsh, where adult pairs and families defend territories, returning to same territory each winter.

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Feeding Behavior

See family introduction.

Eggs

2, sometimes 1 or 3. Olive-buff, spotted with dark brown. Incubation is by both sexes, 29-31 days; female usually incubates at night. Young: Downy young leave nest within a few hours after hatching. Both parents feed young. Two eggs typically hatch, but very rarely or never does more than one young bird survive. Young is able to fly at about 3 months after hatching.

Young

Downy young leave nest within a few hours after hatching. Both parents feed young. Two eggs typically hatch, but very rarely or never does more than one young bird survive. Young is able to fly at about 3 months after hatching.

Diet

Omnivorous. In winter, eats insects, shrimp, crabs, clams, snails, frogs, snakes, small fish, seeds, acorns, roots, berries. Summer diet not well known, probably a similarly wide variety of animal and plant matter.

Nesting

In courtship, pairs "dance," leaping into air repeatedly with flapping wings, bills pointed upward, giving bugling calls; dance has a dignified look. Other displays include bowing, tossing tufts of grass in the air, and loud trumpeting or "whooping" calls. Nest site is on ground, typically on marshy island in lake or pond. Nest (built by both sexes) is a large mound of grass, weeds, mud, with depression at center.

Illustration © David Allen Sibley.
Learn more about these drawings.

Text © Kenn Kaufman, adapted from
Lives of North American Birds

Migration

Migrates by day, in family groups or small flocks. Travels along rather narrow corridors and makes traditional stopovers. Although they may travel in flocks, in winter they mostly separate out into family groups, each pair of adults defending a feeding territory against intruding cranes.

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Migration

All Seasons - Common
All Seasons - Uncommon
Breeding - Common
Breeding - Uncommon
Winter - Common
Winter - Uncommon
Migration - Common
Migration - Uncommon

Songs and Calls

A trumpet-like call that can be heard for several miles.

bugles

Audio © Lang Elliott, Bob McGuire, Kevin Colver, Martyn Stewart and others.
Learn more about this sound collection.

How Climate Change Will Reshape the Range of the Whooping Crane

Audubon’s scientists have used 140 million bird observations and sophisticated climate models to project how climate change will affect this bird’s range in the future.

Zoom in to see how this species’s current range will shift, expand, and contract under increased global temperatures.

Climate threats facing the Whooping Crane

Choose a temperature scenario below to see which threats will affect this species as warming increases. The same climate change-driven threats that put birds at risk will affect other wildlife and people, too.