The whooping crane is so called from its voice. Its calls have been likened to 

 whoops or trumpet calls, far-carrying and audible at a distance of three miles. The 

 greatly elongated windpipe, which is coiled in the breast bone, probably serves as a 

 resonator. This crane formerly nested on raised mounds, such as old muskrat houses, 

 in our prairie sloughs. Then it was conspicuous, giving its nuptial dance, a stately 



thing of bowing, capering, flapping and trumpeting, the performance visible for a mile 

 or two. 



Though this species has been a victim of civilization, retreating before its spread, 

 Seton records an extraordinary occasion when a crane struck back. An Indian hunter 

 crippled one of these cranes and brought it to earth; but when he reached out to seize 

 the wounded bird it drove its bill into his eye, piercing his brain, and the body of the 

 hunter fell on that of his victim. 



The sandhill crane is less striking than the whooping crane, but it, too, is a tall and 

 stately bird. With a \vider range, from Florida and our own prairies northward to the 

 Arctic tundra, it still exists in numbers. The subspecies that formerly nested on the 

 prairies, even in the Chicago area, is much reduced in numbers, but in Alberta and 

 British Columbia the migrations of these beautiful birds to and from their nesting 

 groimds in the northwest, from Mackenzie to Alaska, is still one of the thrilling sights 

 of nature. In the air, cranes are readily distinguished by their extended necks — herons 

 fly with their necks retracted. With their clear, carrying calls, flock after flock an- 

 nounce their arrival as they pass in formation high overhead. The hostility they meet 

 on the prairies, where they walk about in the grainfields and pull up and eat roots, 

 reportedly to the detriment of the crops, is part of the reason why the nesting birds 

 of the prairies, both whooping and sandhill cranes, have had to retreat, along with 

 the buffalo and the Indian, before the plow. Now the Chicago bird student rarely 



sees a crane. 



[27] 



