Whooping Cranes - Aransas NWR, Texas

I had the privilege of seeing the Whooping Cranes at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge a few days ago. Beautiful birds.

These shots were taken from a boat.

#1

Really nice set, what a thrill it must have been to shoot these beauties! Well done.

Nice shots. I got to see the Whoopers at Aransas in 1993 but only had a wide angle on a Canon TX with me then. I do have some nice landscapes with white specks in the distance.

bromm wrote in post #6983053
Really nice set, what a thrill it must have been to shoot these beauties! Well done.

Thanks. It was a thrill!

jmchooper wrote in post #6984009
Nice shots. I got to see the Whoopers at Aransas in 1993 but only had a wide angle on a Canon TX with me then. I do have some nice landscapes with white specks in the distance.

Thanks. These were taken with the 100-400 and the 40D from a boat.

I have been following this birds story all my life. They sure have had a hard time of it. I would have thought, after all this time, there would be more of them around by now.

canonloader wrote in post #6986973
I have been following this birds story all my life. They sure have had a hard time of it. I would have thought, after all this time, there would be more of them around by now.

It's really an amazing story. I believe the count on the refuge was around 170 while we were there. We saw probably 50 or so of them. These were the closest.

I remember when they were down to 28 in the world. They were taking the eggs and hand incubating them, and hand raising the chicks. But that was like 40-50 years ago and there should be more by now, if it weren't for the tornados killing a bunch of them and some getting lost in the migration each year.