Field Notes: Sandhill Cranes

~by Jim Eagleman

At first, it’s a distant sound, way off, like a muffled churning—some call it a rolling trumpet.

By habit I scan the sky as sounds get closer. Soon, sounds become calls and help point to a distant V. It may be separate, or at times combine with other Vs overhead. I call that a bonus. Once I read that migrating geese and ducks fly in V formation and it’s always a female in the lead; I wonder if that’s true here? It’s cranes this time, not waterfowl. I try counting as they spread across the sky. I listen and watch.

These elegant, long-legged, long-necked migrators are sandhill cranes, and they grace our Brown County skies twice a year. Like other migrating visitors, I watch and listen for arrival in spring, and a fall departure. The call is haunting, ancient. The sandhill is a bird that has been around since the Pleistocene. Dating back two million years in the fossil record, cranes and their relatives may have flown over and fed in similar habitats as they do today.

Their name refers to their choice range like the Platte River, on the edge of the Nebraska sandhills. On the Great Plains, cranes frequent these traditional feeding and staging areas. It’s estimated that except for New England, cranes are found throughout all other states. Their numbers have increased due to large ag fields with waste grains, protected sandbars, and noted mating success. Pairs tend to mate for life and stay with their mates for two or more decades. Their varied diet consists of vertebrates, small mammals, snails, and weed seeds. Corn is a common food used to fuel long distances. Social groups feed throughout the night with bills probing the ground. A brown stain on chest feathers is sometimes evident. In northern Indiana counties, cranes stick their bills in the muck of iron rich wetlands, then preen their feathers leaving a rusty orange color. My friend and colleague, Fred Wooley, a “north woods naturalist,” says he has been fooled more than once when he sees that color moving through a Steuben County fen. He first thinks deer, only to focus closer on a sandhill. While their graceful flight is most impressive, I’ve seen these birds up close. There’s more to watch. They stand about three feet high, with a general body length of 60 inches, and an estimated weight at ten pounds. The crimsoncolored cap is barely visible at a distance, but it may be the first thing I notice. In the flock, a few flap their wings while I walk closely. My field guide said their wingspan is about 75 inches, or six feet plus. The long, pointed black bill and red forehead contrasts against white cheeks. I marvel at their beauty, but it’s their stamina, an inherent ritual, that amaze.

Sandhills migrate through Indiana and some breed in our northern counties. During migration, large flocks stopover at Goose Pond Fish and Wildlife Area, near Jasonville and Jasper-Pulaski Fish and Wildlife Area in northwest Indiana. Both properties allow great viewing of these magnificent birds. I’ve also watched them in corn stubble fields along Interstate 65 north of Seymour.

Years ago, I got a call from a group working with whooping crane reintroductions asking if I could suggest a Brown County field. The recovery team needed a place for the birds to spend the night along the same migration route used by sandhills. The whooping cranes numbers were at concerned status. An ultralight aircraft led the whoopers. These birds originated in western Wisconsin and traveled to Florida that fall. It was a treat was to see these magnificent birds up close. Now my trips to see sandhills include a hopeful sighting of whoopers, their numbers now encouraging.

Back home, I pull down my old copy of Sand County Almanac and read again Aldo Leopold’s account. The crane was a bird of mystery and delight to this biologist and scientist. His poetic essays lift the reader by sharing thoughts on biology, history, and the crane’s endurance on earth. Regarding the marsh where they land, “an endless caravan of generations that has built of its own bones this bridge into the future, this habitat where the oncoming host may again, live, breed, and die”.

Of what value is the existence of this great bird? Does it deserve more attention than the equally impressive event of a scarlet tanager or wood thrush completing its annual trip? Are birds in general, and cranes, mere indicators of the health and longevity of our natural environment, despite its decline? Do they hold a message?

“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

To inquire about this or other articles, contact the author at: jpeagleman@gmail.com