Whooping Cranes in Rockport

We have spent some time trying to see Whooping Cranes while here in Rockport and finally found 5 of them in the Goose Island area.  There is a large field with a pond on it that they come to during the day to feed and then return to the Aransas Wildlife Refuge in the evenings.  We bought a large telephoto lens that we could afford (LOL - the good ones are $5,000+) so the photos aren’t as crisp as we would like, but we were able to get some fun pictures of them.  These birds are endangered, and at one time many years ago numbered 15,000-20,000, but were down to 15 birds in 1941.  They are now up to over 600 and that’s not a lot.  They breed in far northern Canada and migrate to Rockport in the winter, a trip of about 2400 miles.  There is an extremely interesting article about them at this site - http://www.nwf.org/wildlife/wildlife-library/birds/whooping-crane.aspx- and I strongly encourage you to read it.  A second small group of whoopers has been developed in Florida and, in trying to teach them to migrate, are led by a plane to a breeding place in Wisconsin each year.  Like I said, read the article.  It’s very interesting.

These birds are majestic.  They are about 5’ tall with a wing span of over 7’ and they put on a show for us.  They mate for life and can have 1-2 babies, but typically only one makes it.  So when we see them in Rockport we can see a family – Dad, Mom, and child.