Blue Goose ~ Day 254

February 5, 2015 ~ Gadsden, AL to Decatur, AL (Point Mallard Campground)

I drove north to Wheeler NWR on the Tennessee River. This was my third visit here, the previous two stops were on trips to visit Maria and Richard in 2012 and 2013. Wheeler is just off I65 and is a 35,000 acre refuge, a place of water and fields, dry wooded uplands and swamps which attracts thousands of wintering waterfowl and Sandhill Cranes. The sandhills starting showing up in 1997 with just a  few birds. More and more cranes came each year, and in 2013 there were an estimated 12,000.

And then in 2011, the best laid plans.....

WWW.FWS.GOV

The original plan when the migration began on October 9, 2011, was to have the pilots of Operation Migration guide the [Whooping]cranes to St. Marks and Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuges in Florida. While it is sometimes difficult to interpret why birds do what they do, they did not follow the ultralights further south from Alabama, where they had waited as weather and issues with the FAA grounded them for over a month. The FAA later provided a waiver for the pilots, but weather, then the cranes, did not cooperate. The Partnership determined transporting and releasing the cranes at Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge would be best for the cranes.

I've mentioned it before, but for anyone with an interest in Operation Migration, their web site has wonderful photos of Whooping Cranes with history and current information about the status of Whooping Cranes. There were only 15 individuals in 1941. This year, that many wintered at Wheeler alone with the total population now approximately 400.

Wheeler NWR - AL

I didn't see any but talked with local people who stop by the refuge intermittently, and they do see them fairly often. These folks were not birders and didn't have binoculars but were just excited and interested that an "endangered bird is in our backyard." There is never many people at any of the refuges, so I love seeing ordinary citizens at these natural theaters, appreciating what they see. Two of them told me they come less often than they would like...maybe two to three times a year, but were quietly proud the Whooping Cranes chose their neighborhood.

Sandhill Cranes at Wheeler NWR - AL

The heated observation building was a wonderful inducement to linger and scan the hundreds of ducks, geese (including White-fronted), herons, egrets, grebes and thousands of Sandhills. The several feeders at the VC were busy with sparrows, warblers, finches, cardinals, titmice, nuthatches and chickadees. There were Carolina Wrens, a Brown Thrasher working the grass alongside the entrance road and a field full of crows.

I stayed at Point Mallard campground but almost was denied admittance. The pretty blond woman at the registration took my information, and when she realized I only had a mini van, she looked conflicted and said, "We usually don't allow people to sleep in their vehicles....ya know, the transients don't have a place to go and they come here......" I asked her if I looked like a transient and she agreed I didn't and said OK, I could stay. This was not a state or national forest campground. While in a pleasant area, there were bright obtrusive lights and it got cold. Very cold, like 19 degrees, which it was in Wells, Nevada, the night I stayed there, but that was the high desert. This is Alabama for heaven's sake....

The VC at wheeler had a tribute display to a former manager, Tom Atkeson, who had mapped the refuge as a young biologist in 1939. He then joined the Army and was severely injured in an antitank explosion in Texas. His arms were severed, he was blinded, his face burned. He spent two years with Army specialists in various hospitals. But he loved Wheeler....

WWW.FWS.GOV

At first his hopes of returning to the Fish and Wildlife Service seemed rather bleak. While Atkeson had been at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington D.C., he had visited the Service's director, Ira Gabrielson, whom he had once met at the Wheeler Refuge several years before. He told the Director of his desire to return to the Service after he got out of the Army, and Gabrielson assured him that he would be welcomed back. However, when the time actually arrived, Gabrielson was now retired and others in a position to hire him were not sure that a blind man without hands could perform viable work at a refuge. Atkeson's persistence, however, got him back his job at Wheeler on the condition that he employ, at his own expense, a personal assistant who could drive for him and would always be at his side. Back on the refuge, Atkeson concentrated on memorizing refuge trails and the general lay of the land. He also began learning special skills to help him compensate for his lack of sight. Eventually, his knowledge of the refuge became so keen that soon he could tell exactly where the vehicle in which he was riding was at any time by the degree and the number of turns it took and by the sound its wheels made on the roadway.

Despite his having a degree in forestry from the University of Georgia, with graduate studies from Auburn University, and a love of the natural outdoors that he had acquired early in life while growing up on the family farm near Columbia, Alabama, who would have thought this severely disabled man might one day be promoted to refuge manager? To his advantage, there was the invaluable refuge experience he had obtained, as a sighted person, at Wheeler before the war and his being gifted with a superior natural intuition. But perhaps it was also due to the personal courage he displayed whenever he stood his ground in pursuit of something he believed in or when he showed a willingness to try new ways of doing things. Whatever it was that influenced his superiors in 1962, he was named that year as Wheeler's refuge manager.

As refuge manager, Atkeson reintroduced to the refuge numerous species of wildlife that had once been driven off or had died out when the land had been cleared for agriculture and during the building of the Wheeler Reservoir. He brought in a starter population of otters from the Okefenokee Swamp, and added wild turkeys, muskrats, racoons, beavers, bobcats, opossums, coyotes and grey and red foxes. Other wildlife that were attracted to the refuge's now- welcoming habitat included two endangered bats species and scores of bird species.
He also instituted the practice of cooperative farming, whereby local farmers were permitted to cultivate refuge lands to produce crops that, after harvest, would provide a food source for ducks, geese and other wildlife. He had noted that while ducks and geese could land on the reservoir, it provided little in the way of food for wildfowl because the water was too deep to admit the sunlight needed for growth of aquatic plants.
Harvey Fowler, a supervisory park ranger who worked for Atkeson at Wheeler, looks back at his friend's 25-year tenure there with deep admiration. Managing a refuge of this size, he noted, was a challenging job for even the most able-bodied person, he said. But in spite of the injuries he sustained in World War II, Fowler said, "as a refuge manager, Tom was brilliant — one of the very best."
Another former refuge employee, retired forester Richard Bays, said Atkeson depended on the eyes of his workers and encouraged them to share all they saw with him.
"He wanted to know about everything. It was almost as though he thoroughly enjoyed living vicariously through the experiences of others," Bays said.

During President Ronald Reagan's administration, he was also named Federal Handicapped Employee of the Year and he and his family were invited to the White House where President Reagan presented him with the award. He told a journalist later that his family enjoyed the trip to Washington, but that he despised the word "handicapped" commenting, "If I do a good job I don't mind getting credit for it, but I don't want to be a successful cripple."

All part of National Wildlife Refuge history...

American Wigeon at Wheeler NWR - AL

There were a few other trails and viewing places which I checked out but never did see a Whooping Crane.

I found a Starbucks and worked for an hour in late afternoon. A handsome gentleman came in wearing a long black coat. It came to within one inch of the floor and had black  shiny buttons. He got coffee in a china cup and sat down to read at the table next to me. The next morning, he came in again but in regular clothes. The coat was wonderful and evocative.