A comment has been posted asking if the Whooping Cranes are likely to suffer from this cold weather and what if they don’t migrate?

I’m no expert, but I know that northern hemisphere cranes tend to be pretty tough critters. Sandhill Cranes routinely migrate north into Nebraska and the Dakotas in March when the Great Plains’ weather can be pretty forbidding.  There is abundant food for cranes with all the corn being harvested and the weather really isn’t too bad so far. We’ve heard from the International Crane Foundation that there are still a bunch of other Sandhill and Whooping Cranes at Necedah NWR in Wisconsin that haven’t even started to migrate yet. I think we are all surprised that these birds have stayed here so long, but apparently they like it here and when they are ready they’ll go. The older birds in this group have migrated both ways on their own before, in fact, there is only one bird of the five that is on his first ultralight-free migration. My guess is that they are fine, and one day they’ll be gone.