A Day in the Life of a Whooping Crane Tracker

I have been working at the International Crane Foundation for five months now and a lot of people are still not really sure what that means. Some days, I don't either. I do a lot of different jobs in different departments. Once a week or so I get to track some of our previously released whooping cranes now living in the wild! It is usually my favorite day.

It is only the finest field vehicles for us, which is why I get to drive this beauty all over Wisconsin:

Ah, the Astro. Handles like a dream. If your dreams involve incredibly sticky gear shifts, loose steering wheels, and having to put on the brakes at least a block before you actually hope to stop. I'm not going to lie, I get some stares and double-takes in this baby. I know you're jealous. It's got high-tech gadgets, too!

Ignore the Official Wildlife Biologist Snacks. This is the receiver that connects to the antenna on the roof and picks up signals from the transmitter leg bands we put on all the cranes when they're released. We use the patented Wrench Handle system to move the antenna back and forth to pinpoint the bird's location.

So, basically I spend the day in an extended game of Hotter/Colder. When I get within a certain range of a bird with a transmitter the receiver starts beeping and the beeps get louder the closer you get. I drive around and around the back roads of Wisconsin, stopping every once in a while to spin the antenna all the way around to make sure I'm still going in the right direction and to pour over the map trying to figure out which road will be most likely to get me a visual. I did this same thing when I studied desert tortoises but it was a little easier (in most areas) to just go tramping through the desert towards where you heard the beeping than to try to navigate roads (except when there were mountains or huge rock formations in the way).

Once the beeping gets really loud I get to play another game which I like to call "Crane?!" It goes like this:

Ooh! There's a white thing in that field!

 Crane?! Quick, get the binoculars!

 Nope. Traffic sign.

Ooh but look! A group of cranes relaxing in the grass!

 Cranes?!

 Oh. Weird pipe things.

Aha! Something white peeking out of the emergent vegetation!

 Crane?!

AW COME ON.

Okay. That is definitely a crane. Absolutely, totally.

Crane?!

AAAAUUUUGH. EGRET WHAT ARE YOU DOING. At least it was a bird this time. I'm getting closer.

Okay, what is this one going to be, a garbage bag? A stump? A scarecrow?

IT'S A CRANE!

So I get out the scope, the compass, the GPS, and my data sheet and record where the crane is, what it/they are doing and anything else of interest. 

This crane is pretty friendly with a couple of sandhills and was chilling in a field pretty close to a farm house.

Once all the information is recorded I plug in the next transmitter number and start the next game of Hotter/Colder! It helps that cranes are usually fairly territorial and can often (but not always) be found in the same fields or parts of the marsh every week.