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Portrait of Whooping crane

Nature · Birds

Whooping crane

Endangered · c. 540 in the Aransas–Wood Buffalo flock (winter 2025–26)

Grus americana — Gruidae

North America's tallest bird, standing about 1.5 m, white with black wingtips and a bare red crown. It came within a whisker of extinction: only 21 birds were left in 1941, of which 15 or 16 wintered at Aransas on the Texas coast. The surviving wild flock migrates 4,000 km between Wood Buffalo National Park in Canada and Aransas, and in the winter of 2025–26 the Fish and Wildlife Service estimated about 540 birds there.

How to spot them

  • ▸Very tall, pure white crane with a bare red crown and cheek patch and a dark moustachial stripe
  • ▸Black primaries show only in flight; the neck is held straight out and the legs trail behind
  • ▸A loud, far-carrying bugling 'whoop', audible for several kilometres, from a windpipe over 1.5 m long
  • ▸Elaborate unison calling and leaping dances between pair members
  • ▸Juveniles are cinnamon-and-white; adults keep company in family parties of two adults and one or two young

How to know it

North America's tallest bird, standing about 1.5 m, white with black primaries and a bare red crown

Whooping crane.

In 1941 only 21 individuals survived anywhere in the world

Whooping crane — the historic low point.

Its only self-sustaining wild flock migrates 4,000 km between Wood Buffalo National Park and Aransas in Texas

Whooping crane — the Aransas–Wood Buffalo population.

Chicks reared for release were taught a migration route by following an ultralight aircraft flown by a costumed pilot

Whooping crane — Operation Migration, 2001–2015.

A windpipe over 1.5 m long, coiled in the breastbone, gives a bugle audible for kilometres

Whooping crane's call, source of its name.

Pairs lay two eggs but almost always fledge only one chick, so managers once removed the second for captive rearing

Whooping crane.

Its Texan wintering grounds depend on blue crabs and wolfberry in the salt marsh, and thus on freshwater inflows

Whooping crane at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge.

Quick-fire facts

  • •Height about 1.5 m; wingspan 2.0–2.3 m; weight 4.5–7 kg; the tallest bird in North America
  • •IUCN Red List: Endangered
  • •The 1941 low was 21 birds in total, with 15–16 in the Aransas flock; the US Fish and Wildlife Service estimated about 540 wintering near Aransas in 2025–26, after a record 557 in 2024–25
  • •The Aransas–Wood Buffalo population has stayed above 500 for nine consecutive years and has grown at a long-term average of about 4 per cent a year
  • •Wood Buffalo National Park nesting grounds were only discovered in 1954, by a helicopter crew spotting a family from the air
  • •Reintroduced flocks exist in Wisconsin (the Eastern Migratory Population) and Louisiana; Florida's non-migratory flock was discontinued
  • •Operation Migration led young cranes behind ultralight aircraft from Wisconsin to Florida from 2001 until the practice was ended in 2015
  • •It is the tallest of the 15 crane species and one of only two native to North America, with the far commoner sandhill crane
  • •The similar-looking sandhill crane is grey, not white, and was used as a foster parent in early captive-rearing attempts

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