223



on Wintering Cranes in New England.



now I should have placed him immediately in water or on damp

moss. The continual standing on hard frozen ground and ice

seems to be a bad thing for Cranes, though their feet do not

feeeze even at temperatures as low as i4°F.


One of the Asiatic Whites developed a bad foot, but the

advent of a couple of warmish days with wet ground immediately

cured it. The past winter has been the most extreme in a

decade. The mean January temperature for Boston was about

on a par with the lowest January mean ever recorded by the

weather bureau. The temperature recorded here from o Q to 14 0

on many consecutive nights. One day the thermometer was o°

at noon. As an instance of the hardihood of Cranes, one of my

Europeans jumped the fence the day after he arrived in January,

and not being oriented as to his new home, we could do nothing

with him. He escaped early on January 26th and travelled over

a large tract of country, but owing to heavy wind and drifting

snow we could not locate him. O11 the afternoon of the 29th he

came back, decoyed apparently by the calls of the Manchurians.

He was captured with some trouble and found to be none the

worse for his experience. He had weathered the blizzards of

snow, and during two of the three nights the thermometer was

well below zero. He got absolutely nothing to eat.


In Eastern Connecticut Mr. Tilley has wintered Sand-

Hills, Japanese White Necks, Sarus, Manchurian, Asiatic Whites,

Europeans, Demoiselles, and even a pair of the rare Hooded

Cranes (Grus vionachus') without other shelter than a windbreak

of evergreens, but as before observed the climate is milder than

here. The Stanley and Crowned Cranes of Africa required, he

found, a good deal of shelter, though they were out in a yard

through the day.


Those interested in the Crane family will mourn the loss of

our splendid Whooping Crane, gone probably for ever. The last

published observation of this species that I know about was made

by Ferry (Azik, Vol. 27, p. 195) who noted an individual at Quill

Lake, Saskatchewan, July 14th, 1909. E. H. Seton, in his


book the “ Arctic Priaries,” on p. 287. noted five Whoopers flying

overhead on the Atliabaska River, October 16th, 1907. These are

perhaps the last that will ever be seen in the wild.



