Whooping Crane Sculpture - Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, Texas 2010

The Aransas National Wildlife Refuge Visitor's Center, currently being remodeled, will feature a life-size realistic sculpture of the endangered whooping crane by Artist/Sculptor Ralph Trethewey. At four and one-half feet tall, the bird will be displayed where children can stand nearby and size up their stature next to America's tallest bird.
Completed May 28, 2010, the bird is cast in polymer and hand-painted by Trethewey . This latest commission joins other birds for National Wildlife Refuges in the Continental U.S., Guam and Hawaii. Species he has carved or sculpted include the bald eagle, peregrine falcon, bittern, caspian tern, Hawaiian honeycreepers and the greater yellowlegs.
The whooping crane summers in Northern Canada and winters in the Aransas Refuge in South Texas. We humans with steady jobs, (if wer'e lucky enough to have one), and a permanant street address, can only dream of migrating to more favorable weather until we retire. Not so the whooping crane-- and they don't even have to come up with air-fare!

Whooping cranes are North America's member of the "Birds of Heaven," as the world family of cranes is sometime called. Elegant and almost entirely white, they are the images of dreams. Once near extinction, the population in North America is now about 400. Of these the largest flock of over 260 birds winters at the Aransas Refuge.