According to the article, where do whooping cranes spend the winter?
Basic Understanding of a Variety of Texts · TELPAS Grades 4–5 reading. The correct answer, and the reasoning behind it.
Reporting category 2: find the main idea and key details, and follow what happens in stories and informational texts.
Read the passage. Then answer the questions.
The Whooping Crane
The whooping crane is the tallest bird in North America. It can stand nearly five feet tall. It has snowy white feathers, a red patch on its head, and black tips on its wings that show when it flies. Its name comes from its loud call, which can be heard from far away.
Every fall, many whooping cranes fly more than two thousand miles from their nesting grounds in northern Canada to the Texas coast. They spend the winter in the salt marshes of the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge and the land around it. There, they wade through shallow water and eat blue crabs, clams, and berries.
Whooping cranes once came very close to disappearing. Many of the wetlands where they lived were drained to make room for farms and towns. Many birds were also hunted. By the early 1940s, fewer than thirty wild whooping cranes were left in the world.
People worked hard to save them. Laws protected the birds from hunters, and their winter home on the Texas coast became a protected refuge. Scientists began counting the cranes every winter to see how they were doing. Slowly, the number grew.
Today, there are several hundred whooping cranes in the wild. They are still rare, but each winter, visitors to the Texas coast may be lucky enough to see these tall white birds stepping slowly through the marsh.
The question
Choose the best answer.
According to the article, where do whooping cranes spend the winter?
- in nesting grounds in northern Canada
- in salt marshes on the Texas coastCorrect answer
- in the mountains of Mexico
- in farm fields near small towns
Why “in salt marshes on the Texas coast” is correct
This is a detail question. Paragraph 2 says the cranes fly from northern Canada to the Texas coast and spend the winter in salt marshes. Because both places are in the same sentence, students who read quickly may mix up where the birds start and where they end up.
Why the other answers are wrong
- in nesting grounds in northern Canada — Canada is where they nest in the warmer months; they fly away from it in the fall.
- in the mountains of Mexico — Mexico is never mentioned in this article.
- in farm fields near small towns — Farms and towns took over wetlands; the cranes do not winter there.
Practice more of this
More reading practice for Grades 4–5, or see the TELPAS practice test for 4th and 5th grade.
This is an independent study resource. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the Texas Education Agency or the official TELPAS program. All questions here are original practice material written to match the published test design.