66 On the trail of vanishing birds 



trend and I made the Hotel Pawnee my headquarters. With the 

 help of my new-found friends I then went about making as many 

 useful contacts as possible. In the North Platte Telegraph-Bulletin 

 for March 24, a long article by Jimmy Kirkman, the sports editor, 

 appeared under the headline ALLEN HERE, AWAITS FLIGHT OF CRANE. 

 After calling attention to the various birds that might be mistaken 

 for a whooping crane and giving a description of the whooper 

 itself, Kirkman said: 



So, if you see a bird that answers to the above description 

 hurry to the nearest telephone, wherever you are, and call Rob- 

 ert Allen, ornithologist of the National Audubon Society, who 

 is headquartering at the Hotel Pawnee in North Platte, await- 

 ing just such an alarm. Allen doesn't care whether you are cer- 

 tain or not. He wants to investigate all possibilities. As quickly 

 as he can, he will follow up the report by airplane and you will 

 have helped out in an important work, for, you see, there are 

 only 29 whooping cranes left in this world. 



This was sticking my neck out, but it seemed the only way to 

 be sure of receiving all reports, even if most of them would, on 

 investigation, prove to be false alarms. Beginning with the very 

 next day, March 25, and running through to April 21, a total of 

 144 birds were reported to me as whooping cranes (although I 

 knew that the greatest possible number to make flight would be 

 25 and, as it later turned out, was actually only 23). These reports 

 were phoned in or relayed to me in person, by telegram and by 

 messenger, from a truck driver, an airplane pilot, a garage me- 

 chanic, a schoolboy, two businessmen, three farmers, one school- 

 teacher, and so on. All were investigated. They proved to be 

 everything from white pelicans, snow geese, and little brown 

 cranes to ring-billed gulls (two reports!). 



I was out on the river roads each day, driving west as far as 

 Ogallala or east to the vicinity of Grand Island and Hastings. It 

 can be bitter cold in Nebraska in March and early April, and 

 that year was no exception. It snowed on April 4, and again heav- 

 ily on the seventh. Driving east toward Lexington, with no heater 

 in my government-owned car, I had to run blind off the road every 



