The Sandhill Cranes have a party, and we go home happy

Fifteen or so years ago, when my wife, Fran, and I started making what is now an annual pilgrimage to Kearney, Nebraska, it was easy to find a hotel room for the weekend. Those days are long gone. It seems another annual pilgrimage, the one we go to observe, has captured more of the public imagination.

Sandhill Cranes dance as part of their mating ritual. They also mate for life. Not that the two are related, but maybe we could learn something anyway. People should dance more. It could be good for their relationships.

Each year, between late February and early April, about half a million Sandhill Cranes pass through an hourglass opening along the Platte River, roughly between Kearney and Grand Island – about 50 miles of farm fields and pasture. It’s a place where, in March, the wind can blow hard and cold, though the cranes don’t seem to care. They stand around like people at a cocktail party, dipping occasionally to pick up an hors d’oeuvre and chatting, except when they leap into the air and dance to indicate their willingness to carry on the conversation in a bit more intimate manner. Spring is coming in, after all, no matter what the weather might say.

This year, we made our hotel reservation months ahead and almost missed the boat. We finally found a room at the Wyndham Microtel which, fortunately, turned out to be more than adequate and priced right. There were plenty of other birders staying there. We could recognize them by the lump of flesh at the base of the skull that makes even the skinniest of them look a little like a Sumo wrestler. It’s caused by staring up into treetops for hours on end trying to identify warblers that refuse to sit still long enough get a bead on. But that’s another story.

The cranes were, as always, an inspiration. If you haven’t seen them fill the sky as they return at sunset to their roosts on the river’s sandbars, you owe it to your appreciation of life and beauty to do it. They’re large birds that make a croaking sound as they fly, feed and roost. Their long legs stretch out behind them, and they form ragged Vs as they pass in silhouette against a sky still lit in shades of orange and crimson. Fran and I always leave their great gathering revitalized and renewed after a long winter.

The cranes aren’t the only draw that gets us to the Platte each year. This time, we picked up a few new species for the Big Year list: Lesser Scaup, Western Meadowlark, Gadwall, Killdeer, Trumpeter Swan and American Wigeon. That got us to 99 species. Brother Terry in Montrose, Colorado, sent in a few of his early spring sightings, so we ended up breaking the 100 species mark at exactly the same time we did last year. We need to up our pace.

Official Big Year species count as of March 27: 105