CONSERVING WILDLIFE — JACKSON 



261 



flock of pure-strain wild birds. Elsewhere there are birds that show 

 characteristics of the original native stock, but a large portion of the 

 population shows crossing with domestic turkeys. 



The whooping crane, a white bird nearly man high, formerly oc- 

 curred during migration from the Atlantic coast south to Georgia and 

 west to the foot of the Rocky Mountains, was known to nest from 

 Iowa and Nebraska north and northwest to Hudson Bay and Mac- 

 kenzie, and wintered in huge flocks in the Gulf States. Being big and 



■ (<|MAi*»> W '>^^ 



ATTWATER'S PRAIRIE CHICKEN 

 SS3 FORMER RANCC 

 6SS PRESENT RANGE 



Figube 3. — Former range and present range of Attwater's prairie chicken in Texas. 



conspicuous, and an inhabitant of the open places, it afforded "some- 

 thing to shoot at" for the unprincipled gunner who was out only to 

 kill. It was reduced to a low population of possibly not more than 25 

 individuals by about 1925, and even today there are almost certainly 

 less than 100 living. They no longer nest in the United States, and 

 the wintering flocks sojourn chiefly in Texas. Each winter a few visit 

 the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in southern Texas, 26 individ- 

 uals having been observed there during the winter of 1940-41. The 

 Florida sandhill crane, a grayish bird smaller than the whooping 

 crane, confined to only a few nesting localities in Florida and one in 



