Pilot Flies Away Home With Sandhill Cranes

For 15 days and 750 miles, pilot Kent Clegg led a brood of sandhill cranes as they hopscotched their way south for the winter. Their journey ended Wednesday on the marshy banks of the Rio Grande.

“It’s been fun, but it’s also very stressful,” the ultralight pilot said of his role as mother hen for the cranes’ first migration south.

“I had some that would drop over the wing and fly right next to me, their wings almost touching my shoulder,” he said by telephone from Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife Refuge 80 miles south of Albuquerque, N.M.

Clegg is working on a project to revitalize dwindling numbers of endangered whooping cranes by teaching them to migrate and reintroducing them to the wild. But first, the researchers are experimenting with sandhill cranes.

“It’s working real well with the sandhill cranes. We’re hoping next year to be just as successful with the whooping cranes,” said Jim Lewis, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist.

A similar journey was portrayed in a movie released this summer called “Fly Away Home,” about an estranged father and daughter who help a flock of geese migrate. It’s based on a real-life Canadian sculptor who has spent a decade or so teaching orphaned geese how to fly south.

Clegg left the cranes Wednesday with a flock of their peers at the refuge, but said he was checking on them through binoculars.

“I have to hide from them. They’re out there looking for me right now, and if they hear my voice they’ll come on over,” he said.

Last October, Clegg made his first migratory journey south with 11 sandhill cranes. Two were killed along the way by golden eagles. He said four cranes migrated back to Idaho in the spring - which biologists consider a great success.

This year’s trip began in June, when the cranes hatched at Clegg’s family’s ranch in Grace, Idaho. The first sounds they heard, and the only sound they heard for weeks, was a gentle, vibrating “brrr, brrr,” from Clegg, who was imitating bird calls.

Their migration began 15 days ago, with Clegg piloting an ultralight, a ground crew keeping watch from the road and a second ultralight trailing him to chase off golden eagles. At night, the birds were kept in pens.

One of the seven who flew from Idaho to New Mexico finished the trip in a van because it couldn’t keep up, refuge spokesman Charlie Keller said. An eighth bird made the entire trip in the van, he said.

Clegg said he tried not to become attached to the birds, but leaving them saddened him a bit.

“Up until today, I’ve been their mother,” he said.