WHOOPING CRANE
EASTERN PARTNERSHIP

Non-profit organizations, individuals and government agencies joining forces to bring a migratory population of whooping cranes back to eastern North America

here

About WCEP | Hatching & Rearing Cranes | About the Ultralight-led Migration | Direct Autumn Release |

Tracking Wild Whooping Cranes | Wisconsin Whooping Cranes |

Captive Rearing: Egg Production and Incubation

Whooping crane eggs in incubator. Photo by PWRC

These whooping crane eggs are ready to go into the mechanical incubator.
Photo by Patuxent Wildlife Research Center.

Have you ever wondered where the whooping cranes that follow the ultralights come from? All birds for the reintroduction come from captive flocks. Because there are only 247 whooping cranes in the single natural wild flock we don’t want to remove any birds from that flock. The three primary captive breeding centers with whooping crane pairs that produce eggs for the reintroduction project are at Patuxent Wildlife Research Center (Maryland), the International Crane Foundation (Wisconsin), and the Calgary Zoo (Canada). Additional breeding pairs are also present at the San Antonio Zoo and the Audubon Center for Research of Endangered Species at the Audubon Species Survival Center in New Orleans, Louisiana. Whooping crane eggs used for ultralight project are incubated and hatched at Patuxent.

Spotlight on Winter Monitoring and Tracking

The Whooping Crane Class of 2008 at Chassahowitzka and St. Marks National Wildlife Refuges

Juvenile whooping crane on winter site at Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge in Florida. Photo by Sara Zimorski; International Crane Foundation.

Juvenile whooping crane in the Florida winter pen.

Photo by Sara Zimorski; International Crane Foundation

Management and protection of the whooping cranes on their Florida wintering grounds takes a dedicated team of WCEP members from the International Crane Foundation, Operation Migration and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Once the birds arrive at their wintering locations, they are placed into top-netted pens until health checks are completed. For the remainder of the winter, they are free to fly in and out of a larger pen. During the day, the birds oftentimes explore outside of the enclosure, foraging for food and exploring their surroundings, but for safety, return to roost on the man-made oyster bar inside the pen at night.

In the evening, the winter management team uses a loud Whooping crane voice recording to call the birds back into the pen. “Some evenings it can take more than three hours to round up the birds and get them to the safety of the pen,” said Eva Szyszkoski, International Crane Foundation, a member of the WCEP winter management team at Chassahowitzka NWR. Usually the roost check takes around two hours.