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Crane in 2001: Operation Migration flights · 341

[340] [desk-crane-7] In 2001, the field log for Crane is headed “Operation Migration flights.” The figure kept beside that heading is 2015. It is a count or a date from the work, not a rank of the species’ worth. A zoo birthday card does not replace the log. A few winter basins and nesting marshes hold the Endangered type. Influenza and rice-paddy conversion are tighter than any sprint.

Tall wetland dancers whose red-crowned East Asian population is the atlas type and a conservation bottleneck. Why does this atlas use the red-crowned crane? The taxonomy hero is Grus japonensis -- Kushiro, the Korean DMZ and Izumi. Other Grus species appear as comparison, not as the page type.

How close did whooping cranes come to zero? The Aransas-Wood Buffalo flock was about 21 birds in 1941. That nadir still defines US recovery graphs. What did George Archibald do at ICF? He courtship-danced with a human-imprinted whooping crane named Tex so she would ovulate -- a 1980s method story, not a field census.

A large share of the migratory island population winters on one Kyushu floodplain. Influenza years there are species-level events. Do cranes mate with a lifelong dance? Pairs are typically socially monogamous. The dance is pair-bond and territorial display, not a fairy-tale wedding.

Keep 2001, “Operation Migration flights,” and 2015 together or the note on Crane stops being that year’s record.2001

Figures to keep

Year of the note
2001
Figure to keep
2015
Species
Crane
Line in the log
Operation Migration flights

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