Wally had landed with a thud at the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in Texas. Whooping Cranes are the tallest birds at 5 feet tall in North America so it was sometimes hard to land delicately.

He had traveled over 2,500 miles from Wood Buffalo National Park in Canada with his two family members and was still recovering from the long flight.

It was a good thing that they put aside land for wild bison in Canada, because that happened to be the whooping crane habitat and no one knew it until 1954.

It had taken almost 3 weeks to get here at about 35 miles per hour. He thought that he looked beautiful spiraling and gliding up and down through the thermal winds arriving here with his 7 foot wing span.

It had been almost two months since they had arrived and he adored his cinnamon colored offspring.

He knew that he was part of a special wild flock. Humans had to help a different flock get established on the east coast with an airplane.

He guessed his habitat hadn’t recovered from the hurricane.

“Don’t fret,” his sister told him as they looked for wolfberries.

“Life can never be as difficult as it was for flocks before us,” she added.

“What was so unusual?” Wally tried to say between mouthfuls of blue crab.

“A long time ago, there were only 16 of us left. The humans hunted us down,” she stated sadly. “They wore our feathers in their hats.”

She explained further, “Then there were so few of us they decided to hunt down the rest of us to put in their museums. They thought that we were going to disappear anyways so they decided to finish us off.”

Wally thought that they had their own troubles now. It was hard enough that there were windmills and electrical wires. Many of his friends had collided with them.

There was talk of giant oil spills.

A hurricane had messed up the water.

A drought had affected all of Texas.

There was so much more construction from growth and barges moving along the Intracoastal Waterway and it was polluting the area.

Enough thoughts about his world. His mate for life who had shared sitting on their brood was mourning the loss of their other chick. They could not find enough food to feed the smaller one.

He had never worried about predators because they built their nests in grassy and brackish marshes that were difficult to reach. However, because of the drought, the water level had decreased, providing less safety for their home.

His parents had survived together for 24 years and he hoped that he and his mate would have a long life together too.

Wally had a beautiful whooping call and his acrobatic leaps into the air helped catch his life-long partner.

Content with a filled belly of blue crab, he set off for his mate and offspring content that there were lots of humans on his side.