The first time I heard sandhill cranes bugling from afar, I was out walking the dog. It was a sunny December day not too many years ago, and a strange, distant cooing seemed to be all around me. What was it? Where was it coming from?
I finally figured out I was hearing the calls of the numerous large sedges (new vocab word for you) of birds flying in loose V formations high, high in the sky, their loud, rattling bugle unceasingly filling the airspace beneath them. Not long after that, I saw a newspaper article about the sandhill crane migration, which prompted some Googling and a Youtube video to confirm that these were the birds I'd witnessed. It was a lucky coincidence I was outside at the same time as so many of the cranes were flying by on their way south. I had never heard or seen these birds before -- how is that possible? Perhaps I had simply never noticed.
Now one of my favorite joys of winter is a chance encounter--from a very great distance--with these noisy travelers. I went outside for a few minutes yesterday to stir the compost, and a group of cranes just happened to be flying by. Their calls filter down to the ground from such heights, I have to look around for a minute before I can pinpoint the sedge in the air. In the late winter or very early spring, I also enjoy the luck of noticing their return north.
This past October, I had a close encounter for the first time. I was driving into a church camp in southeastern Wisconsin, and there were two sandhill cranes just standing around in a field by the gravel road. I've read these cranes are tall, and up close they are surprisingly so. The red cap over their forehead only makes their curious gaze more intense and mysterious.
I don't know why the sandhills delight me so much. Maybe it's because their call is different from the other more commonly heard birds in the area. Maybe it's because of the encounter's brevity and reliance on happenstance; it's like finding a penny on the sidewalk. No matter, really, other than I just wanted to share one of my favorite things in this season of favorite things.
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