40 On the trail of vanishing birds 



eluded, wondered if others might not exist on other wintering 

 grounds, elsewhere on the Texas coast or in Mexico. This was one 

 of the important little items that must be dealt with as soon as 

 possible, preferably that same winter. 



The winter home of most of these cranes is on the mud flats 

 at the tip of the Blackjack Peninsula, so named for the blackjack 

 oaks that grow there, a jutting, heart-shaped tongue of land lying 

 between San Antonio and St. Charles Bays, some 25 miles to the 

 northeast of Corpus Christi Bay. A few may pass the winter on 

 Matagorda Island or on nearby St. Joseph Island. Since 1937 the 

 Blackjack Peninsula has been established as the Aransas National 

 Wildlife Refuge, operated by our partners in the study proj- 

 ect, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Even before setting 

 up a field camp, I had begun a series of counts on which to base 

 an up-to-date estimate of the current whooping-crane population. 

 At that time we had two very simple methods: We could cover 

 the area on the ground and hope that we didn't miss any of them, 

 or we could fly over in Bob Tanner's light plane and hope that 

 we didn't miss any. Some of those ground counts were pretty 

 rugged, as our initial equipment was nil and we had to improvise 

 by hitching a big farm wagon behind a slow and noisy tractor. 

 Eventually we used the airplane for all more or less "final" or 

 official counts. 



Although it was early November when we made our first count, 

 the damp air was already chilly. If they had any sense, I thought, 

 the transplanted Brahman cattle would begin dreaming unhappily 

 of the humid valley of the Brahmaputra, but, looking at them, I 

 decided they had been in Texas so long they didn't remember. As 

 the day progressed the leaden sky grew even more oppressive and 

 it was colder. We had worked over the east section, including a 

 rough side trip to Jones Lake and Mustang Lake, and were now 

 moving more or less steadily down the long stretch of East Shore 

 Road. Up ahead on the tractor, Bud had his wide Albuquerque 

 Special cocked over the bridge of his nose, probably in an effort 

 to keep some of the wind out of his eyes. His feet, on the clutch 

 and brake pedals, were thrust into high-heeled cowboy boots. The 



