5 years of acoustic monitoring ("voiceprinting") of the last wild population of the Whoopimg Crane grus americana (by sonography)

In 1999 I started the introduction of my sonographical voiceprint method (Details) on behalf od the Whooping Crane Recovery Team for monitoring the last wild and selfreproducing population of grus americana. This is the world wide most endangered crane species with only a little more than 200 individuals in the wild population.

In the first 2 winterrs (99-00 and 00-01) I was recording myself in Aransas, after that, local collaborators have taken over this work and sent me the recordings for analysis.

We know now about 90% of all paired cranes which claim a territory. Some of the pairs could be traced back to the first recordings in 99, for others, I was able to identify the territory both in the breeding as in the wintering range.

In February 2005 I was invited to present these results on the yearly Whooping Crane Recovery Team Meeting, here the presentation: presentation in pdf.

The interpretation of the spectra so that we can identify individuals (hence the single male and the single female) is more complicate in the case of grus americana, however feasible. E.g., we found that the old pair #1 is not any more together (female dead) and that the old male of #1 appeared as a single male in winter 03-04 (PDF) and this winter paired with a new female (PDF).

This method has shown its value as a non-invasive technique to identify individual birds and their mate especially in this world-wide important and very successful species recovery and reintroduction program.

More details:
Winter_2003-04-ANWR (PDF)
Summer_2004_WBNP_overview (PDF)

For further information about behaviour, sonography, voiceprinting of cranes in the world: http://home.nikocity.de/craneworld/