215 We find terra incognita! 



in a straight line southeast of the nearest nesting site. On May 15, 

 Fuller and Ray Stewart were flown over the area by Sergeant 

 Heacock in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police plane. They saw 

 a single whooping crane near the upper Sass River. The next day 

 they flew again, this time with a chartered plane, and again saw 

 a lone whooping crane, apparently sitting on a nest! 



On May 18, two days before I reached Fort Smith, Ed Wellein 

 and Wes Newcomb of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, flying 

 a Grumman Goose, and with Fuller and Stewart aboard, made 

 the following remarkable observations: 



(a) Two whoopers at a nest close to Sass River 



(b) Two whoopers at a nest just north of Klewi River 



(c) One whooper in flight near nest containing an egg, at the 

 Klewi River but northwest of site "5" 



(d) Two whoopers farther east along Klewi River 



This is a total of four possible pairs, all within an area of approxi- 

 mately 500 square miles. 



I was finally able to make the necessary reservations and get 

 away from Florida on May 19, arriving in Fort Smith the next 

 day at noon. For a day and a half, with the help of Bill Fuller and 

 his assistant, Ray Stewart, as well as my old friend Ward Stevens, 

 now Superintendent of Game for the Territories, our gear and 

 supplies were assembled, Indian packers obtained, and all prepara- 

 tions made for the projected ground trip into the crane country. 

 I had been joined en route by Bob Stewart, biologist with the 

 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a last-minute but welcome addi- 

 tion to our party. Our departure by boat down the Slave River, 

 the first leg of the journey, was then set for the morning of May 

 23. Meanwhile, Bill wanted us to see something of our route 

 and of the nesting area from the air, so a flight was arranged for 

 the evening of the twenty-second. 



The Beaver was now on floats, and with Pat Carey at the con- 

 trols we took off from below the Rapids of the Drowned at just 

 after 7 P.M. In forty-five minutes we were over the nesting area. 

 There beneath us was the sight I had been hoping to see for al- 

 most ten years a wild whooping crane on its nest! The incubat- 



