As adventures go, Operation Migration's fall flight with whooping cranes is a doozy: OM founder Bill Lishman and his team of pilots lead a flock of adolescent cranes from Wisconsin to Florida in an annual mission that's part Audubon Society, part Dawn Patrol, and part travelling circus.
Four ultralight aircraft buzz through the sky, with as many as 20 giant birds flapping alongside, following the planes as if they were their parents. On the roads below, a team of bird handlers, logistics experts and mechanics follow along in trucks loaded with everything from radio-tracking systems to vacuum-packed bags of frozen smelt, the bird's favourite snack.
Next month, however, the flight plan will be different: A small group will be given a unique opportunity to see the inner workings of this migration experiment as part of a tour called In the Path of the Whooping Crane. Up to 30 people will spend 10 days travelling part of the route followed by the Operation Migration team, starting in Wisconsin, and ending in southern Tennessee.
Lishman, 67, pioneered the technique of guiding birds at his rural Ontario home in the late 1980s, eventually teaching Canada Geese to follow a homemade ultralight that resembled a flying lawn chair. His story was later told (with a degree of artistic license) in the Hollywood movie Fly Away Home.
His goose-guiding successes made Lishman wonder if the same techniques would work with other species. In 2001, he and partners Joe Duff and Richard Vanheuvelen led a flock of whooping cranes from Wisconsin to Florida, a flight hailed by bird experts as the ornithological equivalent of the moon landing.
As he prepares for his sixth migration flight with the cranes, Lishman says he's still awestruck by the experience of flying in formation with the huge birds. "It's the kind of thing you have to see to believe," he says. "It's incredible."
The new tour, he adds, will offer singular insight into the life-cycle of a rare and beautiful creature, as well as a scenic trip across America during the colourful fall season. "We think this is going to be a really interesting trip for the right person."
OM's crane mission is an internationally-recognized success story that has helped pull one of the world's most endangered species back from the brink of extinction by restoring lost migration patterns. (The North American whooping crane population has rebounded from just 15 in the 1940s to around 500 today.)
It is also one of the world's most exclusive adventures. Only a few dozen people have seen the operation up close, and only a handful have flown in formation with the cranes -- among them are a U.S. billionaire and bird fancier who donated $50,000 in exchange for a flight with Lishman.
Three years ago, I joined the OM team when I was asked to fill in for Lishman for a week. (As an experienced ultralight flier, I had the oddball credentials to serve as chase pilot, orbiting above the cranes and the other ultralights like a flying outrider, ready to track birds that dropped out of formation.) Flying with the giant birds was an unforgettable experience -- for hours at a time, the cranes flapped alongside the aircraft like winged children, then followed us down to land in remote fields. The flights were anything but easy -- we flew through valleys, wrestled with turbulence, worked to keep the birds together. And the clothing was bizarre: We wore white smocks with beaked helmets that made the birds believe we were adult cranes. Weather and other conditions permitting, Lishman hopes to be able to fly some of the tour guests in a two-seat ultralight to witness the cranes in the air.
