Flying Home

[eve]

Please watch the abc-tv this evening, 13 Jan, at 7.30pm. It's a doco from the BBC's Natural history Unit about whooping cranes. Apparently the cranes' gripping journey south reveals a tragedy about this vast effort to raise a few chicks and lead them to Florida - part of a nation where 12,000 cranes are shot by hunters every year. Analogous with huge amounts spent by zoos to breed certain species whose caged offspring will never see the vast tracts of natural habitat in Asia, Africa, and Sth America, those wild areas are being demolished at an alarming rate.

[eve]

Well I don't know if any of the posters here watched the doco, but hope some did, as it was the most beautiful and amazing story. The narrator was John Pearce, the camera work was magnificent, and the group of scientists who raised the whooping cranes from the time they hatched out were superb. They dressed up in white sheets, with a mask, and on one arm there was a long extension with an imitation neck and crane's face on it, so that the chicks followed them as their 'mothers'. Teaching them to fly was awesome, and now, although there are so few whooping cranes in the wild, this little group are now able to live in the wild, and another lot is being raised. It's good to see something positive sometimes. Renews hope.

[Roxy]

Sounds like a sad, but beautiful story Eve.