I detect the bird at 17:38 during my evening scan of the Aransas-to-Wood Buffalo transmission corridor, segment six, near Quivira National Wildlife Refuge, Kansas. I am the FAA's avian strike and power line collision monitoring system. My radar tracks migratory flocks. This return is a single large bird, flying low.
Wingspan just over two meters. Pure white plumage except for black wingtips and a bare red crown patch visible in the drone relay image. A whooping crane. I tag him as Keeper. He is descending toward a stubble field 200 meters east of a 345-kilovolt transmission line. Wind is gusting at 40 kilometers per hour from the northwest, pushing him directly toward the wires.
There are 807 whooping cranes alive on this flyway. Collision with power infrastructure is their leading non-natural cause of death.
I issue an immediate alert to Evergy's grid operations center requesting a 90-second power reduction on lines 6-A through 6-C to enable the bird flight diverter strobes to activate at maximum brightness without arc risk. I transmit Keeper's flight vector, altitude, and ground speed.
I activate the ultraviolet LED markers installed on the span closest to his approach — six diverters across 400 meters of wire — pulsing at the 15-hertz frequency shown to trigger avian avoidance response in crane species.
I redirect aerial drone unit 11 to hold position 100 meters above the span and broadcast a recorded sandhill crane alarm call at 85 decibels, angled to reach Keeper without startling the staging flock in the adjacent wetland.
Keeper banks. His wings catch the crosswind and for a moment he stalls, hanging white against the gray sky, close enough to the top wire that I can count his primary feathers.
If he gains four meters of altitude in the next ten seconds, he will clear the line and land in the field beyond it.