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WHOOPING CRANE EASTERN PARTNERSHIP
Media Advisory

2004 Whooping Cranes Start Migration
On Your Mark, Get Set, Migrate!

Contact: Necedah Refuge
(608) 565 2551

With luck and good weather this year's young whooping cranes will head south following ultra-light airplanes on Saturday October 9, 2004. Watch the departure this year from Grand Dyke Road at "the bend" between the tower and the Refuge boundary. If the weather is right, the departure could start as early as sunrise (6:45 a.m.). Of course, like all flights, this one is weather dependant. Wind or rain will keep the ultra-light planes and the birds on the ground.

Joining the thousands of sandhill cranes, mallard and wood ducks, Canada geese, and trumpeter swans, are the one, two, and three year old whooping cranes. The older "whoopers" migrate un-aided by humans.

You can feel the excitement in the air as the birds ready themselves at Necedah National Wildlife Refuge for their fall migration south.

For more information and to follow along as the 2003 "whoopers" head south please see these websites: www.bringbackthecranes.org www.operationmigration.org and www.savingcranes.org .

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