Everybody is familiar with the common saying “a watched pot never boils.”  Apparently a watched crane never migrates.  Such was the case with the majority of the 2009 Direct Autumn Release (DAR) chicks.  Since they were released on the night of October 24th, we have been keeping a close eye on their activities and associations with other Whooping Cranes.  For the last three weeks or so we have also been awaiting migration.  On days when the weather was favorable for flying, there would always be at least one person out in a tracking vehicle, listening for signal strengths to increase and head in the southerly direction. 

Almost all of the Whooping Cranes were gone from the refuge on December 7th....all but eleven.  Four adults (pair #'s 7-03/26-07, and two single males 6-05 and 13-07) and seven of the nine DAR chicks (#'s 32, 34, 35, 36, 37, 40 and 41-09).  These eleven cranes did not leave on the morning of the 8th either.  A winter storm warning was in effect for the entire next day with a foot of snow or more and strong winds, prompting the refuge to essentially cancel work.  For us this meant no refuge staff plowing any of the roads.  Since intern Jess Thompson was already on the road (in Tennessee) with her four-wheel drive vehicle with high clearance, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service DAR intern (converted temporarily to tracker) Julie Longnecker and I were the ones responsible for watching the remaining birds in our Astro vans.  Not wanting to take a chance of getting stuck or hitting bad roads and possibly well...getting stuck in the ditch, I decided not to go out and track that day.  Besides, it was snowing in the morning.  The birds weren't going to do anything, right?  Wrong.

Late that afternoon my field supervisor Dr. Richard Urbanek, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, decided to test out the roads and check on the birds.  The roads proved to not be a problem for his vehicle, however, there was no sign of any of the eleven cranes that had seemed perfectly content roosting on ice and standing in the brisk winter wind for the last week.  Since four of the seven chicks have PTT (satellite) transmitters, all we needed to do was kill some time and wait for the first reading to come in.  We received readings on two of the four that night.  They had flown south to Winnebago County, Illinois.  Of course they had left on the one day we weren't tracking.  Like I said, a watched crane never migrates. 

I headed out in the morning to Winnebago County, hoping that the birds would still be in the area so I could confirm that the seven chicks and four adults were still all in one group.  I got to the location and drove around listening for about an hour, but with no luck.  They had moved on.  Since I didn't want to be too far behind them when the PTT readings came in again, I drove south a couple of hours in very strong west winds.  I had to keep the steering wheel turned slightly to the right just to stay straight on the road.  When we finally got a reading, we were all surprised to see that they had flown east of Indianapolis, Indiana, 240 miles southeast of their last location and right on track with the main migration route for Sandhill Cranes.  I started out as soon as I had a point to aim for since it was still another 2.5 hours from where I was.  I arrived at the location and heard all eleven signals coming from the same area, but since it was dark outside, I could not see them.  The next morning they made a couple of local movements before traveling only 50 miles to the Muscatatuck National Wildlife Refuge.  In the three days these birds have been on migration, the first ever migration for the seven chicks, they have accumulated a total of 430 miles.

Locations of the other two DAR cranes: DAR #38-09 remains with six adult Whooping Cranes in Knox County, Indiana.  DAR #42-09 migrated from the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge on December 4th with adult male #9-05 and Sandhill Cranes.  They landed in Columbia County, Wisconsin that day but were not detected there on the 6th.  Their current location is unknown.

Update and photos by Eva Szyszkoski, ICF Tracking Field Manager