Living on the farm has made me very aware of the fragility of birds. I didn’t really think of them that way before. They could always fly away, and if they died flying into windmills or hitting skyscraper windows, well, how common could those accidents be?
There have just always seemed to be plenty of birds around. It’s only watching birds come to our farm and nest, and then witness the disappearance of the little ducklings and goslings, that I’ve come to understand how precarious they are. And of course we hear about the impact of the gulf oil spill on them while they’re wintering and see them arriving while there’s still snow on the ground and hope they’ll be able to keep up with the challenges provided by humans and nature.
I’m reading a book, on recommendation from a FB friend who saw an earlier photo of the cranes, called The Echo Maker by Richard Powers. It’s a novel set in Kearney, Nebraska, along the Platte River, which is a major stopping ground for sandhill cranes making their way north. Roughly 500,000 cranes stop along the river every year between February-March for a few weeks, eating and preparing for the remainder of their flight north– some as far as the Arctic Circle. They come in family groups with last year’s offspring, but they leave in pairs, the same pairs they will be in for life.
Someone said that they always lay two eggs. I have a photo from 2011 of the pair with a single offspring. Last year no babies ever emerged from the wetlands. So I was anxious this year to see if they’d be successful.
Just a few days ago Steve first spotted the babies with their parents, coming across the path and back into the tall grass and flowers of the prairie to eat. The parents are very alert and protective, but I’m heartened to see how big the little guys are! It certainly feels like they might make it if they’d gotten to this stage.
And so tonight I’m celebrating the presence of the twins on the farm. May they make it through the summer, all the way south, and back to Nebraska next winter, before making two more pairs and gracing someone else’s wetlands.
