Whooping Crane

The whooping crane is the tallest bird native to North America, standing up to about 1.5 metres, and one of the rarest, having been reduced to fewer than two dozen individuals in the wild by the 1940s before an intensive, decades-long conservation effort brought the species back from the brink of extinction. It is almost entirely white with black wingtips visible in flight and a red crown on the head, and its loud, bugling call, from which its name derives, can carry for several kilometres across the open wetlands and prairies it favors. Whooping cranes feed on a varied diet including crustaceans, fish, insects, frogs and plant material, and the historic wild population migrates between breeding grounds in northern Canada and wintering grounds on the Texas coast, a journey of thousands of kilometres. Thanks to captive breeding, reintroduction and habitat protection programs, the total population has grown to several hundred birds, but the species remains endangered and depends on continued conservation management.