ANGOLA, Ind. (AP) _ An endangered whooping crane that recently appeared in far northeastern Indiana has attracted the attention of birding enthusiasts.
After the crane was spotted late last week in Steuben County, retired state interpretive naturalist Fred Wooley went searching for it. He and his wife found the crane Sunday foraging for food in a farm field.
That crane is banded and was born in 2012.
Wooley tells The (Angola) Herald Republican (http://bit.ly/1QtgCgb ) it's “disconcerting'' for biologists that the crane isn't with others of its kind because the birds need to reproduce.
Whooping cranes are among the world's rarest birds, with only about 600 still surviving. All of those birds are descendants of 15 cranes that lived in coastal Texas in the 1940s.
Whooping cranes are protected under state and federal laws.
