The flight of the cranes

“Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language. The quality of cranes lies, I think, in this higher gamut, as yet beyond the reach of words.”
— Aldo Leopold, “Marshland Elegy,” A Sand County Almanac

March can be a cruel month in these parts. Mild temperatures promising spring can be rudely interrupted by bracing, cold winds bringing heavy, sloppy snow. Since we moved to West Dundee from Chicago, however, March for me has become one of the most exciting, anticipated times of year. It’s when the sandhill cranes fly north over our area on their spring migration.

In our first spring in West Dundee nine years ago, we were puttering around our backyard one day and heard a strange sound. We both stopped to listen. It seemed to come from far away yet was distinctive. Unlike the raucous, assertive calls of geese, this was a haunting, plaintive, urgent sound. Looking up, we saw them: a large flock of sandhill cranes heading northwest, high overhead. The vocalizations of many birds, overlapping with each other, created a chaotic cacophony of sound. Here is another writer’s description:

“ . . . the primeval sound rushed in, halfway between a croak and a song, the music of dry bones rattling.  It surged and fell in a regular rhythm, like waves of water washing against a shore. . . . The sound of the sandhill cranes is like the roaring of the sea in a conch shell; when you have finally heard it, you recognize that you have always known it.  It is like the cry of a loon or the howling of wolves or the warning rattle of a snake, an article in the universal language.”
— Paul Gruchow, “The Nebraska Sandhills: The Flight of Cranes,” The Necessity of Empty Places

Watch this short video to experience what we heard that day and many spring and fall days since.

The sandhill crane migration in spring and fall is one of the most impressive wildlife shows in North America. In mid-February, over 450,00 of these magnificent birds start leaving their wintering grounds in Texas, Mexico, and the southeastern U.S, including Florida, to their breeding sites, which are mostly in the Arctic and subarctic regions. At some stopover locations, especially in the Platte River basin in Nebraska, thousands of them may be seen at one time. Having heard the sound produced by flocks of 100 birds, it’s hard to imagine the din of thousands in one place. I long to witness that awe-inspiring spectacle.

To be situated along one of the continent’s main migratory flyways is one of our greatest joys in living here. This past week, I’ve seen hundreds of cranes passing through, in flocks ranging in size from 20 to over 100 birds. Most of the time they’re flying straight, in an orderly V formation. All of a sudden, the straight lines break up into seemingly random disarray. The group starts circling, rising and rising in a corkscrew motion as they try to catch the thermals (warm air currents) that will enable them to glide at a higher altitude, thereby conserving energy for another long day of flying hundreds of miles. In this brief video you can watch a flock swirling upward to pick up the thermals, the cranes’ complex aerial dance. I have noticed their vocalizations increase when they are catching the thermals – as if they are directing each other’s movements. Then, just as suddenly and mysteriously, they reform into their straight V lines and off they go toward their home for the season.

I have asked myself why the seasonal spectacle of the migrating cranes moves me so. Standing as tall as four feet and with a wingspan of five feet or longer, they are impressive in size. With long, elegant necks; slow, graceful movements and a bright red patch on their foreheads, they are beautiful. When they fly, they are as aerodynamic as nature could make them, with necks stretched out like an arrow and lengthy, slender legs trailing straight behind. I love their eerie calls, an ancient sound heard over this land for millions of years. They also represent a conservation success story. Although two subspecies are endangered because of diminishing habitat, most of the population is growing at a healthy clip, and increasing numbers are breeding in the northern Midwest, including northern Illinois. Our own local breeding pair has raised a brood over the last two years, if not longer.

All of those things make sandhill cranes compelling. For me, it’s even more about what they represent: dramatic reminders of the reassuring rhythm of the changing seasons. As the cranes circle higher and higher to catch the thermals, my heart rises with them. Then I feel better equipped, as they do, to set out once again and move forward with life.

“The Sandhills” by Ted Kooser

The language of cranes
we once were told
is the wind. The wind
is their method,
the current, the translated story
of life they write across the sky.
Millions of years
they have blown here
on ancestral longing,
their wings of wide arrival,
necks long, legs stretched out
above strands of earth
where they arrive
with the shine of water,
stories, interminable
language of exchanges
descended from the sky
and then they stand,
earth made only of crane
from bank to bank of the river
as far as you can see
the ancient story made new.