70 On the trail of vanishing birds 



Aransas Refuge and the Platte River. Four of them had been en 

 route since the sixth or seventh, or for as long as five days. Was it 

 too soon to look for them? Not knowing the answer to that one, 

 we looked anyway, flying carefully chosen routes and doing as 

 much ground work as time permitted. No whoopers were seen 

 and no authentic reports received. Then, on April 14, late in 

 the day, Eddie Brown and his wife were flying downriver between 

 Lexington and Kearney. Near Overton they saw three large white 

 birds moving off toward the northwest. They were whooping 

 cranes! That evening I received the good news by wire and later, 

 in rare confirmation of a rare event, Eddie sent me some cuttings 

 from a 16-mm moving-picture film that Mrs. Brown had taken of 

 the birds. They were unquestionably whooping cranes. 



As the only trio to leave the refuge prior to that date was the 

 Middle Family, it was apparent that this particularly vigorous 

 group had been "on the road" no more than four days. 



On that same day, Olaf s communiques indicated that the en- 

 tire migrant flock of 23 birds was now on the way. Once again I 

 alerted all cooperators, by personal conversation, telephone, radio 

 broadcast, and telegrams. For five agonizing days nothing hap- 

 pened, although several false leads were run down. Then, at ten 

 minutes of eight on the morning of April 19, I had a telephone 

 call from Lee Jensen, the state conservation officer at North Platte. 

 He was excited. "Get out to Earl Mather's farm near the diversion 

 dam," he told me. "Earl just called in to report 5 whooping cranes 

 on his place. Looks like the real thing!" I was in my car in less 

 than a minute and racing east along Route 30. Finding Mather's 

 farm, I skidded into the driveway. A quiet-looking woman came 

 out on the porch of the small farmhouse, drying her hands on her 

 apron. She knew what I was looking for without my telling her. 

 "Earl's out behind the barn on the edge of the stubble field," she 

 said. "Those birds just flew south toward the river and he's look- 

 ing for them." I thanked her and hurried for the barn. "We heard 

 about them over the radio," she shouted after me. I nodded, break- 

 ing into a trot and yanking my binoculars out of their case. In 

 another minute I met Earl Mathers, walking back from the stub- 

 ble field and looking unhappy. He described the five birds ac- 

 curately and said he had never seen any like them before. "Heard 



