As if the last month’s revelation of a pair of murdered Whooping Cranes wasn’t devastating enough, the bad news just keeps on coming. Another pair of Whoopers has been shot, this time in Louisiana. The female was killed but experts suggest the male will survive, although perhaps without the ability to fly. (Image above by AP Photo/Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.)

The pair was part of a project aimed at restoring the birds to Louisiana. (The pair shot last year in Kentucky belonged to Operation Migration’s project establishing a migratory flock in the eastern United States; there is also the last true wild flock, which winters in Texas and summers in Canada.) A reward of $1000 has been offered for information helping authorities track down the shooters; more info is here.

Seriously, hunters. (Or, rather, jerks who give the vast majority of ethical hunters a bad name.) Please get our endangered species out of your sights, and shoot something else.

Written by Meredith Mann
The lowly Red-winged Blackbirds in suburban New York triggered Meredith Mann's interest in birds. Five years later, she's explored some of the the USA's coolest hotspots, from Plum Island in Massachusetts to the Magic Hedge in Chicago to the deserts of Fallon, Nevada. She recently migrated from the Windy City (where she proudly served as a Chicago Bird Collision Monitor, rescuing migrants from skyscrapers and sidewalks) to Philadelphia, where she plans to find new editing and writing gigs; keep up her cool-finds chronicle, Blog5B; and discover which cheesesteak really is the best. And she will accept any and all invitations to bird Cape May, NJ.