72 On the trail of vanishing birds 



North Portal, close to the Canadian line, by Joe Hill. Then the 

 tiny legion dropped from sight in the vast region of northwest 

 Canada. Where they were bound for remained at that time, and 

 for some time to come, a mystery as baffling as any that has faced 

 the ornithological world in modern times. 



These whooping cranes that nest in northwest Canada and 

 winter on what is now the Aransas Refuge in Texas have been 

 our chief concern in recent years, but there were other popula- 

 tion groups in times past, and they had their separate migration 

 routes. Not a great deal is known about them, but from what we 

 have learned of the original breeding sites and wintering locations 

 it is not too difficult to trace the paths that lay between. For ex- 

 ample, back in 1722 Mark Catesby obtained the skin of a whoop- 

 ing crane from an Indian in South Carolina, and in that period the 

 species was said to occur on that coast and probably on the Geor- 

 gia and Florida coasts as well. They were also reported later from 

 the southernmost shores of New Jersey. If these were wintering 

 birds it seems likely that they migrated across the Appalachians 

 from somewhere around Illinois, the nearest known breeding place, 

 and there are records for logical areas in between, including the 

 report of Audubon and Wilson from the vicinity of Louisville, 

 Kentucky, on March 20, 1810. 



Other whooping cranes must have come south to the Gulf Coast 

 of Louisiana from nesting grounds in Manitoba, Minnesota, Iowa, 

 and Illinois, while those breeding farther to the north and west, in 

 North Dakota, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and the Northwest Terri- 

 tories, journeyed by their separate routes to wintering locations 

 along the Texas coast, from the region of Galveston all the way to 

 Brownsville and to the vicinity of Matamoras on the Mexican 

 side. There were also still other whooping cranes that joined the 

 great flights of sandhills into the high plateau country of Old 

 Mexico. There are records from the region southeast of Guadala- 

 jara and close to Lago de Chapala, where the elevation exceeds 

 3,000 feet. But it is clear that the largest wintering flocks preferred 

 sea level along the Gulf Coast from the Rio Grande Delta Plain 

 to southwest Louisiana, including the highly favored tall-grass 

 prairies of the latter region. 



