Freedom to Roam

Whooping Crane

The tallest bird in North America – five feet tall and white as snow, with black wingtips and a splash of red on the crown –whooping cranes once nested from Canada’s parkland to the prairies of the upper Midwest, and perhaps as far east as the Carolinas. In winter, the crane’s trumpeting call could be heard from the Chesapeake south to the Gulf Coast and Florida. But reckless gunning reduced the cranes to a few dozen by the twentieth century, and even with the dawn of wiser policies toward endangered species, the whooper teetered on the brink.

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