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2 <br />base of the bill is pink or rosaceous, and the iris of the eye is yellow. The legs and feet are <br />gray - black. <br />The juvenile plumage is a reddish cinnamon color. At age 80 -100 days, the chick is capable <br />of sustained flight. At age 120 days, white feathers begin to appear on the neck and back. <br />Juvenile plumage is replaced through the winter months. The plumage is predominantly <br />white by the following spring and the dark red crown, lores, and malar areas are apparent. <br />Rusty juvenile plumage remains only on the head, the upper neck, secondary wing coverts, <br />and scapulars (Stephenson 1971). Yearlings achieve typically adult plumage late in their <br />second summer. <br />B. Distribution <br />Historical Distribution: Fossilized remains from the Upper Pliocene in Idaho (Miller 1944, <br />Feduccia 1967), and from the Pleistocene in California, Kansas, and Florida (Wetmore 1931, <br />1956) appear inseparable from the present form. Current evidence indicates that the <br />historical range extended from the Arctic coast south to central Mexico, and from Utah east <br />to New Jersey, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida (Allen 1952, Nesbitt 1982). <br />Distribution of these fossil remains suggests a wider distribution during the Pleistocene. <br />Allen 0 952:83) estimated that the whooping crane population in "...1860, or possibly <br />1870, totalled between 1300 and 1400 individuals." Banks 0 978), using two independent <br />techniques, derived estimates of 500 to 700 whooping cranes present in 1870 (Banks, R.C. <br />1978. The size of the early whooping crane populations. Unpublished report. U.S. Fish <br />and Wildlife Service files. 10 pp.). Regardless of the precise number, the whooping crane <br />was uncommon, and its numbers rapidly declined by the late 19th century. By 1937, only <br />two small breeding populations remained - -a nonmigratory population which inhabited the <br />area around White Lake in southwestern Louisiana, and a migratory population, hereafter <br />called the Aransas/Wood Buffalo Population (AWP), which wintered on the Aransas National <br />Wildlife Refuge (NWR) in coastal Texas and nested in an unknown location. The remnant <br />Louisiana population was reduced from 13 to 6 birds following a hurricane in August 1940, <br />and the last individual was taken into captivity in March 1950. <br />The AWP was counted each winter in Texas after the Aransas NWR was established in <br />1937 (Table 1). Limitations on the use of aircraft during World War II made census difficult, <br />but the only obvious disparity occurred in the winter of 1945 -46, when the survey count <br />was four birds less than the number of white - plumaged birds returning the following fall. <br />The principal breeding range in the mid 1800's extended from central Illinois northwestward <br />through northern Iowa, western Minnesota, northeastern North Dakota, southern Manitoba, <br />and Saskatchewan, to the general vicinity of Edmonton, Alberta (Fig. 1). Some nesting <br />apparently occurred at other sites such as Wyoming in the 1900's, but documentation is <br />limited (Allen 1952, Kemsies 1930). The whooping crane disappeared from the heart of its <br />breeding range in the north - central United States by the 1890's. The last documented <br />nesting in the aspen parklands of Canada occurred at Eagle Lake (now called Kiyiu Lake), <br />