LEARNING TO FLY: It’s not just the name of a great Tom Petty song, it’s also what some endangered migratory whooping cranes are doing. Twenty of the cranes, the tallest birds in North America, landed in Franklin County Thursday, Dec. 17. They were guided there by ultralight aircraft piloted by a group known as Operation Migration. The birds and their human pilots stopped in Alabama on their journey from a wildlife refuge in Wisconsin to refuges in Florida. The journey, which is the work of the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership, is an attempt to reintroduce the migratory whooping crane to eastern North America. There are currently only 77 wild migratory whooping cranes in eastern North America. The birds will fly back to the Midwest in the spring without the help of the ultralight pilots.
