Passport to Texas

This is Passport to Texas

A flock of 308 endangered whooping cranes lives in Texas from October through April.

06- We fully expect to see the first of our migrating whoopers come into Texas in mid-to-late October.

The birds migrate from their summer breeding ground in Wood Buffalo National Park in Canada to their winter home at the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in Texas.
Texas Whooper Watch coordinator, Mark Klym, says the species has rebounded from a low of just 15 cranes in the 1940s to about 600 today worldwide.

21-There are also two other flocks in the US. One that migrates from Wisconsin to Florida, and a reintroduced flock in Louisiana. We really need at least one more flock before we can consider it relatively safe to start considering down-listing them. Or, we need a thousand birds in the Aransas to Wood Buffalo
National Park flock.

While the majority of Texas cranes spend the winter at the refuge, some end up in other parts of the state.

13-In recent years we’ve seen them moving up and down the coast, as well as inland–as far as Wichita Falls for the winter. So, it is possible to see whooping cranes during the winter almost anywhere in the eastern half of the state.

Be on the lookout for whoopers, and if you see them, add your observations to Texas Whooper Watch. Find details in the Texas Nature Tracker section of the Texas Parks and Wildlife website.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.