61 On the migration battlefront 



moving off toward the north. But the others were not influenced 

 by this and continued their gyrations, so that the rugged individ- 

 ualist had to turn and rejoin them. All were calling constantly 

 and moving, still in an endless round of circles, toward Mullet 

 Bay to the south. After a little, they spiraled downward and came 

 to earth on the edge of the bay. 



On that date (it was in 1948) twenty-four cranes had already 

 departed. The four birds I had watched disappeared that same 

 night or early the following morning. 



Toward the end of my first season at Aransas I decided to leave 

 ahead of the cranes and watch for them somewhere along the 

 Platte River in Nebraska, the first major stopping place en route 

 to Canada. Olaf would be on hand to record their departures from 

 Texas, and it looked like a good opportunity to check the migatory 

 movements in detail. A great deal had been written about their 

 migrations, but much of it was either out-of-date or of question- 

 able value. At that point I had not yet studied all the extensive 

 literature on Grus americana, a vital step in the job at hand, but 

 I had read enough to realize that our recorded knowledge regard- 

 ing the whooping crane and its true status was nothing if not con- 

 fused. 



There were many reasons for this confusion, most of them 

 rather interesting in their revelation of changing human values, of 

 opinions geared to the times and sometimes sheer unabashed 

 emotional enthusiasms. The early travelers, and even the early 

 ornithologists, may be excused on the grounds of a general lack 

 of information, but more recent writers repeated certain mistaken 

 accounts verbatim and without questioning their accuracy. In this 

 way a myth of whooping-crane abundance was built, and it was a 

 woefully flimsy and entirely false structure. The earliest narrative 

 was that of Richard Hakluyt, dated 1589, and the title alone is 

 intriguing enough to admit it to immediate consideration: The 

 Principal! Navigations Voiges Traffiques & Discoveries of the 

 English Nation, Made by Sea or Over-land to the Remote and 

 Farthest Distant Quarters of the Earth at any time -within the 

 compasse of these 1600 yeeres. It seems that in the course of these 

 "voiges" the inland waters off North Carolina were reached, and 



