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Joe Duff, inset, spends a lot of time in the air flying with whooping cranes. This picture was taken during an early morning flight. Continued from page 5 says Duff. The birds, in fact, never hear a human voice during those crucial first 45 days or so. “Everybody who goes near the birds uses a puppet,” explains Duff. “Tf you imprinted with a bird with anormally dressed person, they’d think that is where their food came from. And if it doesn’t think it’s a bird, when it’s time to breed, it will want to breed with a human.” The birds eventually make their way to the Necedah National Wild- life Refuge in Wisconsin, where their flight training intensifies and from. where their migratory journey will soon begin, guided by Duff himself and four other carefully trained pilots. “When our birds arrive they have never heard a human voice or What the young cranes need to get used to is the presence, sound and feel of an ultralight aircraft whirring very nearby. The chicks spend time in a training pen, learn- ing to follow the ultralight as it circles around. “Our role is to train the birds all summer to follow the aircraft,” says Duff. “It’s hard work, but it’s not rocket science. We had to figure this out one stage at a time. It’s not easy.” Things don’t get any easier when 6 FOCUS - JULY 2012 07. JULY FOCUS 64 pages.indd 6 the ultralights actually take off from Wisconsin, followed closely by that year’s cohort of whooping cranes. The journey to Florida, where the majestic birds will spend the winter, includes multiple landings at care- fully pre-selected resting stops. The birds, who can travel up to 750 km a day riding the wind with their smooth sailing and gentle wing movement style, don’t actually re- quire the rest, it’s the pilots and the ultralight that need to be refuelled. “We fly with the birds every day the weather allows us,” says Duff. “We begin training in June and carry on until October, when we start the migration. We have 25 stops between Wisconsin and Florida, we stop every 50 miles or so.” “The hard part, says Duff, is getting them down there. We know they'll come back. It’s a natural instinct. They all come back.” Duff and his team are essentially acting as stand-ins for an older generation of whooping cranes that would traditionally show their approved and protected by all the participating states and their air zones, provide the whooping cranes with a new map to a safe home. And they only need to be shown once. “We run into migrating birds that we trained,” says Duff. “The next year, the whooping cranes are on their own to follow the migratory route. And they make it”. The work of Operation Migration, tucked away in its small office on High St, is spotlighted often around the world, especially in the United States, where 95 per cent of the work happens, and the majority of the funds that make that work possible are raised. Joe Duff and his team routinely visit schools to explain the project and educate kids on the reali- ties of endangered birds. An Operation Migration ultralight plane sits in the Smithsonian in Washington. Another will soon hang from the rafters at Rafiki’s Planet Watch in Disney’s Animal Kingdom. And no wonder. “We're safeguard- ing this incredible bird that has been around for 60 million years, they come right after the dinosaurs,” says Duff. “They were forced to the edge of extinction. Birds taught us how to fly. Now they need our help. You can’t walk away from that.” For more information on Opera- tion Migration, visit www.operation- migration.org. By Karen Stiller Focus on Scugog 12-06-25 11:08 AM