NEBRASKAland Magazine is dedicated to outstanding photography and informative writing with an engaging mix of articles and photos highlighting Nebraska’s outdoor activities, parklands, wildlife, history and people.
Issue link: http://mag.outdoornebraska.gov/i/1537971
July 2025 • Nebraskaland 41 science. "Into Whooperland" provides insight into Forsberg's many hours in a crane blind, and sometimes, in the most unexpected places, the reader finds humor. "The mosquitoes are fierce inside the blind this morning. Somewhere there is a breach." "Into Whooperland" is divided into the following sections, which read like chapters: "Winter Grounds," "Migration North," "Summer Nesting," "Migration South," "The Central Flyway" and "New Beginnings." It is in the Central Flyway where Forsberg chronicles his trip with Boyer in the Cessna as he attempts to follow the whooping crane's migration path through the heart of the continent. The book is part love story, part coffee table book and all documentary. The reader learns that these birds mingle. They jostle. They most certainly dance. The reader also learns all the difficult steps to rearing a chick in the wild and in captivity at the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo, Wisconsin, and how the population got so low in the first place. "Whooping crane biology would have made them especially vulnerable to hunting and egg collection," writes Beilfuss. "They are long-lived, become flightless when they molt their primary flight feathers every two to three years, reach breeding maturity at three to five years old, and raise one or (rarely) two chicks per year that require intensive parental care for about three months until fledgling … . The birds' preference for breeding in wetlands of the fertile tallgrass and northern mixed-grass prairie regions, made them highly vulnerable to habitat loss as settlers plowed and drained those lands for farming." Alongside the book's educational components are Forsberg's images. Close-ups of whooping crane chicks and landscapes of nesting grounds. Workers in crane suits. Juveniles with their parents. Birds in Canada, Nebraska, Texas and parts in-between. As a longtime contributor and former staffer for "Nebraskaland Magazine," Forsberg is known for entrenching himself in his subjects — whether it be whooping cranes in his latest book or sandhill cranes in his first coffee table picture book — "On Ancient Wings." The book also contains a chapter entitled "Building the Backup Flock" by Rene Ebersole. This tells the fascinating story of Tex, Gee Whiz The braided channels of the Platte River in central Nebraska near Rowe Sanctuary provide critical stopover habitat for whooping cranes along their migration through the Central Flyway. Bird keeper Rebecca Arnold carries a young whooping crane named Fog to be checked by the veterinarian at the Freeport-McMoRan Audubon Species Survival Center in New Orleans.