Wings Across the Desert: The Great Motorized Crane Migration

by David Ellis

Overview

A story of experimental crane migration & release.Wings Across the Desert documents a quest to determine if a flock of cranes could be trained to follow a truck on a long-distance migration and arrive wild enough to survive after release. This fast-moving, and often humorous, odyssey describes the training of tiny crane chicks and then the truck-led convoy of the grown birds on a bone-jarring, backroad migration over the mountains and across the deserts of Arizona. David Ellis' cranes and his team of unshaven, obsessively dedicated craniacs suffer collisions with powerlines, eagle attacks and close calls with an array or trains, trucks and cars. The mood of this true adventure story varies from playful to mournful as the wonder and harshness of nature imprints the journey's outcome.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780888394804
Publisher:	Hancock House Publishers
Publication date:	06/13/2001
Pages:	184
Product dimensions:	0.22(w) x 0.33(h) x 0.01(d)

About the Author

David H. Ellis grew up in eagle country in the Rocky Mountain West and was fascinated by golden eagles from early childhood. His Ph.D. dissertation is a monograph on golden eagle behavior. He has lived in 11 U.S. states and has visited all of them, as well as 50 nations, generally in pursuit of bird (mostly raptor) research. These travels involved work with harpy eagles in Central and South America, bald and golden eagles in Alaska and Canada, and golden eagles in the U.S., Japan, Siberia, and, most of all, Mongolia. His falcon research focused on pallid falcons in Patagonia, saker falcons in Mongolia, and peregrine falcon populations in Arizona. His publications exceed 300 articles, chapters, or books, including three volumes on crane research.