Whooping cranes use federal and state conservation lands when convenient, but they are just as likely to stop at cattle stock ponds, small flood control reservoirs, and even sewage lagoons as they march down the flyway. This is especially true in a year like this one, when water is scarce. Severe drought has gripped the interior of the continent.

Daughter Elsa and I have a longstanding tradition of finding cranes on Halloween. This year, we found one again—one of the Church birds, the chick from last year, 2H. Their mom is 12G, who was our muse last year when we followed her and her family on migration.

I had an intimate experience with a whooper family and their chick (10J), who stopped for a few days on a restored wetland in a sea of corn, within sight of my dad’s family place south of the Platte River. My dad passed away last September. He would have been delighted to know this connection.

I had an unlikely intersection with another whooper family—a pair with a chick—and a lone sandhill crane on the Platte River. The whooper chick (15J) happened to be the one National Geographic writer Rene Ebersole was using to help tell her story. It was a complete stroke of luck to find it. 15J’s father also has telemetry (D35), but it’s at least 12 years old and no longer transmitting.

Finally, I photographed a trio of whoopers—two adults and a chick—flying across a blue sky, traveling together as a family. But oddly, telemetry data showed that two of the birds (chick 4J and adult female 6G) didn’t begin their migration from Wood Buffalo as a family at all. A deeper dive into the telemetry may help solve the mystery.

Whatever the case, these birds were at the tail end of fall migration. Telemetry showed no other birds farther north. Most rivers were now locked in snow and ice, and yet these three were still in northern Nebraska, anchored to the Niobrara River. They still had 1,200 miles to go to reach the Texas Gulf Coast.