Pilots may fly in the sky just like birds, but Joe Duff flies with them.

Duff, who had just planned to take a little time off work in 1993 to help friend Bill Lishman work on formation flights with geese, is still going strong with the effort 14 years later. He now serves as team leader, CEO, and senior pilot of Operation Migration.

The nonprofit group, founded in 1994, uses ultralight aircraft as "parents" to teach birds, including Canada geese, sandhill cranes, trumpeter swans, and most recently, whooping cranes, their migration route. The birds’ parents would normally teach them the route, but that knowledge is lost when the species is reduced.

That was a particular problem for the whoopers, whose numbers were as low as 15 in the 1940s. Today, because of their reintroduction efforts, there are 125 birds, including 25 breeding pairs, Duff said.

Duff said he learned to fly in the Yukon Territory, but worked as a photographer, primarily for the major automobile manufacturers, with a studio in Toronto.

"Believe it or not, I used to be trendy," he said. "Now I have a good collection of hip waders."

While perfecting their techniques with sandhill cranes, Duff said they discovered the birds became too tame and used to human contact and voices. So they created costumes that mask their human appearance and voice for the whoopers.

Whoopers are much more difficult to train than other birds, Duff said. "Sandhill cranes, for instance, tend to flock so it’s easy to keep them together. But whooping cranes tend to be two parents and one chick. Just by putting 20 birds in one group, you’re putting them in an unnatural situation."

He recalled one situation where Canada geese, used to his voice, flocked around his feet when someone started a motorcycle nearby. But if the same thing had happened with whooping cranes, they would have taken off and hidden, he said. "They’re just more independent."

Operation Migration is still reeling from the death of all 18 birds that they took to Florida in 2006, Duff said. Seventeen of the birds drowned in their pen during an unexpected and severe storm; a predator later killed the last bird.

"It couldn’t have happened at a worse time," he said. "We managed to lead all 18 birds all the way to Florida and had a 100 percent survival rate. We lost a whole year’s work, and it will change the demographics of the flock."

The worst part, Duff said, is that they lost birds with diverse genetics that made for a strong group, and that will cause problems in the future.

The 2007 season is off to a discouraging start, too. They started with 30 eggs, he said, but because of diseases and other problems, they have only 17 birds.

The most frustrating part of Operation Migration is fundraising, he said. "Only 3 percent of fundraising dollars go to environmental projects," Duff said. "This is not difficult. It’s hard work, but it’s not rocket science."

But the work is worth it.

"It is satisfying," he said, "to see the previous generations of birds surviving in the wild."

Want to learn more?

Although Operation Migration CEO Joe Duff is no longer at EAA AirVenture, you can learn more about the group and its efforts by going to www.OperationMigration.org. David Sakrison will also talk about ultralight crane migrations today from 2:30 to 3:45 p.m. in the EAA AirVenture Museum. Sakrison is the author of Chasing the Ghost Birds: Saving Swans and Cranes from Extinction.