CRANES: WHOOPING CRANE 
237 
the region who use them in their ceremonial dances and as prayer stick 
offerings (1923b, p. 455). 
Additional Literature.—Grinnell, G. B., American Game Bird Shooting, 
282-301, 1910.— McAtee, W. L., U. S. Dept. Agr. Farmers’ Bull. 1521, 45-46, 1927 
(propagation of game birds). 
CRANES, RAILS, etc.: Order Megalornithiformes 
CRANES: Family Megalornithidae 
The Cranes resemble the Herons in long necks and legs, but the head 
is partly naked, rough, and thinly haired, and the plumage is compact 
and without powder-down patches. The food is swallowed whole and the 
indigestablc portion regurgitated in the form of a bolus. In flight the 
neck is outstretched, instead of being drawn into the shoulders as in the 
Herons. 
WHOOPING CRANE: Grus americ&na (Linnaeus) 
Description. — Length: 50-54 inches, wing 22-25, bill 5.3-5.8, tarsus 11-12. 
Adults: Bare red skm extending from bill to crown and cheeks , spotted with black 
bristles; patch on back of heady slaty; plumage mainly white , with black wing quills 
and their coverts; iris yellow, bill wax-yellow often tipped with black or greenish; 
legs and feet blackish. Young: Head feathered, body mainly white, but marked 
or mottled with rusty brown; wings like those of adults. 
Remarks. —The windpipe of the Whooping Crane, in one case 58 inches long, 
had 28 inches “coiled away in the breast bone” (Coues). This, like the windpipe 
of the Trumpeter Swan, is the trumpet through which the bird produces the loud 
sonorous notes for which it is named and which are said to be audible at a distance 
of three miles (Bent, 1926, p. 227). 
Range. —Formerly the Central Canadian Provinces, the United States, and 
Mexico, east rarely to the Atlantic coast. Now almost exterminated, probably 
breeding only locally in south-central Canada. 
State Records. —Since the white man came on this continent, several species 
of birds have become extinct through his agency; and the Whooping Crane bids 
fair to be added to this number in the near future. Its large size and conspicuousness 
tend to-make it the target of every man with a rifle, and as a result it has ceased to 
breed anywhere in the United States, where formerly it was most common in the 
summer, and has become very rare in migration. Sixty years ago near Fort Thorn, 
Henry says, the Cranes were “quite common during March and October, on 
their northward and southward flight—principally the young. The adults in full 
plumage were only occasionally seen, and never in large flocks” (1855, p. 315). 
It is probable that the majority of these birds, which Henry calls the young, were 
the Sandhill Cranes, and that the few adults in full plumage were the only Whooping 
Cranes he observed. There is no later record of the Whooping Crane in New 
Mexico.—W. W. Cooke. 
Former Abundance. —Like the accounts of the hordes of the 
Passenger Pigeon, now extinct, the accounts of the days of the abund¬ 
ance of the Whooping Crane are among the most interesting historic 
records of ornithology. Nuttall, in December, 1811, while going down 
