Passage V

Return of the Sandhill Cranes

Early each spring, a chunk of land along the Platte River in Nebraska is a temporary home to one of the world's most spectacular wildlife displays: the migration of the sandhill cranes. A half-million of the birds gather here during their long journey for a six-week rest from Texas and New Mexico to the Arctic Circle. This gathering brought together the largest heap of cranes to be found anywhere on the globe.

Winter in Nebraska, a part of the Central Great Plains, is often cold, windy, and raw. Beginning in mid-February, the birds flock to the wetlands along the broad Platte River, eating steadily to build fat reserves for the next leg of their epic journey. Though engineering projects have shrunk the Platte and thus have in reality drastically reduced the cranes' habitat, each year they return, messengers of spring in a land just emerging from a bitter winter.

With their elongated bodies, sinuous necks, and stiltlike legs, the birds seem like visitors from another time. Therefore, sandhill cranes have graced the earth for at least nine million years. They are considered to be the world's oldest surviving bird species. Their haunting, eerie cry is a primeval sound that makes an odd counterpoint to the noise of cars and tractors. (71)

During their stay along the Platte, the cranes maintain a wary coexistence with humans. The birds roost on sandbars in the river during the night, and during the day they feast on the remains of last year's crops in the surrounding fields. At dawn and dusk they form huge dark clouds in the sky as they travel between the river and the fields, their cries a loud cacophony carried on the prairie wind.

Though some Nebraskans complain about the growing number of visitors whom come to take in an observation of the annual crane migration, many focus their attention on the birds themselves. "The loneliest sound in the world," says one Nebraskan, "is the silence after the cranes leave." (75)