Whooping Cranes decide they'd rather stay in Alabama

In Alabama, we always say that if we could just get people to come and visit, they'd see how nice it is here and want to stay.
That's how nine juvenile endangered whooping cranes apparently felt.
After more than a month in the state, the birds, whose human-led first migration got grounded in North Alabama for more than a month, have indicated a strong preference for staying in Sweet Home Alabama. Though they had been imprinted to follow ultralights gliders piloted by people dressed in whooping crane costumes, these cranes refused to continue their planned trek to Florida.
So their human handlers with the non-profit Operation Migration are trucking them from their current location in Winston County to Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge in Decatur, where seven wild whooping cranes are already wintering as well as 11,000 sandhill cranes.
This year's migration was stopped in Alabama while the operation worked through a regulatory issue with the Federal Aviation Administration. Once they were able to fly legally, the weather didn't cooperate.
When it finally did, the birds didn't seem very interested in following the ultra-light, "It was a bit of a fiasco," said Liz Condie, Operation Migration spokeswoman.
One day they only got 5 miles. Another day ended in a multi-hour "crane rodeo," as the ultralight kept trying to coax the birds into formation and rounding them up when they broke away. Condie said any number of factors could have changed the cranes' behavior from the long delay, to the unusually warm winter weather.