32 On the trail of vanishing birds 



breast, belly, and back, and especially in the wings. There is con- 

 siderable individual variation. In March, at close to ten months 

 of age, most of the browns and buffs have disappeared entirely 

 except for some feathers on the head, upper neck, and in parts 

 of the wings. The head is feathered until about this same age. 



With the broad extent of its original distribution the whooping 

 crane has had quite an array of local names. Because of its great 

 size it was once called the "flying sheep" in Manitoba. In Texas 

 its voice earned it the resounding names of "bugle crane" and 

 "trumpet crane," and the young were spoken of as "pink cranes." 

 In Mexico and along the borders of Texas, various Spanish names 

 were applied: mal o/'o for the "fierce eye," grulla bianco, or "white 

 crane," and the poetic viejo del agua or "old man of the water." 

 Far to the north, in Canada, the Cree Indians called it wapow 

 oocheechawk and the Eskimos along the west shore of Hudson 

 Bay, tutteeghuk, both of which probably mean the same thing. 



Laymen frequently confuse the cranes with the herons and 

 egrets. Except that both have long bills, long necks, and long 

 legs, they belong to entirely different families. In the accepted 

 order by which birds are classified, with the lowest orders at the 

 bottom, the herons follow such families as the pelicans, gannets, 

 cormorants, and man-o'-war birds, while the cranes are consider- 

 ably higher on the scale, on beyond the ibises, flamingos, swans, 

 geese, ducks, all of the hawks, as well as the grouse, quails, and 

 turkeys. Cranes properly belong in the Order Gruiformes, which 

 includes all cranes, rails, coots, gallinules, sun grebes and sun bit- 

 terns. In the evolutionary scale they follow immediately after 

 the grouse, turkeys, and their kin, and are followed in turn by 

 the ploverlike birds plovers, snipes, sandpipers, and so on 

 through the terns, gulls and auks, and their relatives. This may 

 not tell you much more about the cranes, but it seems appropriate 

 to give them their full due. The cranes are a magnificent group 

 of birds. There are twenty-three species and subspecies extant 

 in the world, some of which are fully as handsome and even larger 

 in size than the whooper. Only Grus americana, however, is cur- 

 rently threatened with extinction. Asia is the great home of the 

 cranes, with eight distinct species and two subspecies, but they 



