68 On the trail of vanishing birds 



birds on the ground rested quietly; others picked around in the 

 corn stubble looking for food. One large group was digging away 

 at a manure heap. Others were dancing, leaping into the air with 

 wings flapping. Their leap is light and buoyant, not as formalized 

 nor as stiff and springy as that of the whooping crane. And indi- 

 viduals that seemed to have no special relationship to other birds 

 in the flock performed as independent members of a group of 

 dancers, but not as partners in an already established pair. Accord- 

 ing to Larry Walkinshaw of Battle Creek, who is the leading au- 

 thority on the sandhill cranes, these birds may be observed leaping 

 about like this at almost any time of the year. They seemed to 

 me to be highly nervous, and as they leaped about they stabbed at 

 each other with their sharp little bills and squabbled in an angry 

 and irritated way. No whooping cranes were seen or heard among 

 all these flocks, although they sometimes travel in company. 



Later that same afternoon (April 4), we spotted a white bird 

 with black wingtips soaring with a flock of 21 sandhills. It was a 

 snow goose. Appropriately, it snowed that same night! 



By the ninth, the Dike Pair and the Middle Pair were on their 

 way. Today, we still don't know all the stopping places where the 

 birds rest and feed en route, but from subsequent data it appears 

 that they loaf along by easy stages and require from four days to 

 a week to cover the 920 miles, more or less, from Aransas to the 

 Platte River, a daily average of only 130 to 230 miles. Since they 

 are strong fliers and can make close to 40 miles per hour over the 

 ground in normal weather, it is logical that they should come to 

 earth for feeding and resting at suitable retreats along the way 

 rather than fly straight through. From our knowledge of their 

 needs and the record, it seemed probable that among such retreats 

 would be the Red River of the South, between Texas and Okla- 

 homa, the salt plains near Cherokee, and the Cheyenne Bottoms 

 in Kansas. I had driven through these and other places on the 

 route on my own northward migration and I knew that at two of 

 them the Cherokee plains and the Cheyenne Bottoms several 

 observers would be doing their best to see whooping cranes. Seth 

 Low reported a sight record of two whoopers on the salt plains on 

 April 1 of the previous year, but he saw none in 1947. But these 



