Every fall countless thousands of migrating sandhill cranes gather at the Jasper-Pulaski Fish and Wildlife Area in northwest Indiana. The crane has a coltish grace, standing four feet tall on spindly legs that at takeoff bounce in backbeat to the flap of the wings and before landing splay apart, slowing the 12-pound bird for a bouncy touchdown. Feeding in a marshy meadow, it struts with slow, angular precision, its plumage plain pale gray to brown except on the forehead, where the feathers fall out at maturity to reveal a patch of scarlet.
I worried that I’d waited too long–the ground was already covered with a light blanket of snow. Jim Bergens, property manager at Jasper-Pulaski, had said the cranes usually leave when the weather turns.
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I climbed the stairs of the viewing platform at Goose Prairie and found other crane watchers already up top. Snowy furrows, 500 yards across, stretched a mile to the west in front of us. I could see several hundred cranes strutting about the field, many of them quite close. It was a sign that a lot more birds were still in the neighborhood and would return as daylight faltered.
As they approached the field the birds separated into threes and fours–family units, says Stotz. The foreground of the field began to fill in. In the distance there were so many birds I couldn’t see the muddy snow anymore.
