This book 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 of 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.
David H. Ellis grew up in eagle country in the Rocky Mountain West and was fascinated by golden eagles from early childhood. His PhD dissertation is the monograph on golden eagle behavior. He has lived in 16 US states and has visited all of them, as well as more than 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 US, Japan, Siberia, and, most of all, Mongolia. His falcon research focused on pallid falcons in Patagonia, saker falcons in Mongolia, and peregrine populations in Arizona. His publications exceed 200 articles, chapters, or books, and include three volumes on crane research.
Reviewed in the Belgian journal L'Ornithologue, January 2002.