If you see a big white bird with a patch of red skin from the base of the bill to the forehead and it has long black legs that look like stilts, it may be a whooping crane. The whooping crane can stand as tall as 5 feet with a wingspan of 7 feet. The male weighs 16 pounds and the female weighs 14 pounds.

Now the whooping crane takes a long trip from the cold Arctic coast of Canada down to Texas. It stops over in the San Luis Valley on the way down and on the way back.

The enemy of the whooping crane is human beings. In 1954 there were only 30 cranes left but now there are 150.

The whooping crane eats a lot in the summer. They eat snails, clams, leeches, frogs, small fish, mice and dragonflies. In the winter they eat blue crabs, clams, mud shrimp, insects and shell fish. They catch all of these foods with their beaks. The whooping crane eats 17 kinds of plants and 28 kinds of animals each year.

Whooping cranes nest for about 4 months. During this time the female will lay 2 eggs two days apart. The eggs come out purple with dark brown spots. They are about 4 inches long and 2.5 inches wide and weigh 6.2 ounces. The parents incubate them for 29-30 days. Incubate means the parents keep the eggs warm in the nest. The whooping crane is a dangerous bird that trumpets. It sounds like a big drum. It can be heard from 2 miles away.

I got my information from WHOOPING CRANES by Karen Dudley and WILDLIFE IN DANGER published by the Colorado Division of Wildlife.