Chase Pilot: "That's The Last Thing I'd Do"

It's become something of an annual right in hopes of saving an endangered species. But the serene flight of a flock of whooping cranes from Wisconsin to Florida was interrupted by moments of confusion and panic last month when another ultralight pilot got to within 100 feet of the processing, scattering the flock and reportedly endangering the pilot leading them.

"It's when the cranes blast ahead of the aircraft like that that things become dangerous," because the birds could collide with wires atop the aircraft, Joe Duff told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "The guy was probably nothing more than curious, but that's the last thing I'd do -- fly behind or beside another ultralight. The pilot can't see you."

Duff is one of several pilots who lead the cranes to central Florida every year. The team is so sensitive to disturbing the rare birds that some of the pilots actually don costumes that make them look like birds themselves.

The whooping crane, at five feet tall, is the tallest birds in North America. They were all but extinct when Duff's organization, Operation Migration, stepped in to lead the birds from their summer refuge in Wisconsin to their winter homes in Florida.

There is one other flock of migrating whooping cranes. With about 270 birds, it summers in Canada and winters on the Texas Gulf Coast.

FMI: www.operationmigration.org