WHOOPING CRANE. 
43 
zation from all tlie rest of the heron tribe, particularly in the 
conformation of the windpipe, which enters the breast-bone in 
a cavity fitted to receive it, and after several turns goes out 
again at the same place, and thence descends to the lungs. 
Unlike the herons, they have not the inner side of the middle 
claw pectinated, and, in this species at least, the hind toe is 
short, scarcely reaching the ground. 
The vast marshy flats of Siberia are inhabited by a crane 
very much resembling the present, with the exception of the 
bill and legs being red ; like those of the present, the year old 
birds are said also to be tawny. 
It is highly probable that the species described by naturalists 
as the brown crane [Ardea Canadensis)^ is nothing more than 
the young of the whooping crane, their descriptions exactly 
corresponding with the latter. In a flock of six or eight, three 
or four are usually of that tawny or reddish brown tint on the 
back, scapulars, and wing-coverts ; but are evidently yearlings 
of the whooping crane, and differ in nothing but in that and 
size from the others. They are generally five or six inches 
shorter, and the primaries are of a brownish cast. 
The whooping crane is four feet six inches in length, from 
the point of the bill to the end of the tail, and, when standing 
erect, measures nearly five feet ; the bill is six inches long, 
and an inch and a half in thickness, straight, extremely sharp, 
and of a yellowish brown colour ; the irides are yellow ; the 
forehead, whole crown, and cheeks, are covered with a warty 
skin, thinly interspersed with black hairs ; these become more 
thickly set towards the base of the bill ; the hind head is of an 
ash colour ; the rest of the plumage, pure white, the primaries 
excepted, which are black ; from the root of each wing rise 
numerous large flowing feathers, projecting over the tail and 
tips of the wings ; the uppermost of these are broad, drooping, 
and pointed at the extremities ; some of them are also loosely 
webbed, their silky fibres curling inwards, like those of the 
ostrich. They seem to occupy the place of the tertials. The 
legs and naked part of the thighs are black, very thick and 
