“Turn here, they’re heading north!” I directed my fiancé as we navigated the gravel roads of Crex Meadows Wildlife Area near Grantsburg, WI. We’d spotted a line of sandhill cranes flying through the sunset sky, and were following them toward what we hoped would be a spectacular evening of birdwatching.
Thousands of sandhill cranes converge near this wetland complex each fall. They spend their days fueling up for migration by gleaning waste grain from recently harvested corn and soybean fields nearby. Then, at dusk they rise from the fields and stream into the wetlands. By roosting together in shallow water, the cranes make it harder for their numerous possible land predators, like coyotes, wolves, bobcats, and fishers to sneak up.
As we puttered along the grid of gravel roads trying to triangulate the most likely landing area for the flock, I felt like I was reliving my childhood of being on the chase crew for my grandpa’s hot air balloon in central Iowa. The difference was that Grandpa could communicate his plan to us through the radio in the old farm truck, and he was aiming for an accessible landing pad.
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| Balloons don't ALWAYS land in an accessible place...Photo by Larry Stone. |
These cranes had no concern for our viewing access. At the Crex Education and Visitors Center, we’d been warned that a recent influx of visitors had spooked the cranes away from some of their usual, easy-to-see roosts. Even when people are quiet, stay in their cars, and stay out of the wetlands, the birds may choose to go elsewhere. Luckily, this extensive wetland complex has plenty of space away from roads where the cranes could go to get some privacy.
That ability to hide makes it hard to keep track of their numbers. A few days after our visit, on October 29, the Wisconsin DNR conducted the annual survey of the crane population. Eleven staff spread out among known roost locations in Crex and the nearby Fish Lake Wildlife Area. Arriving before dawn, they prepared to witness the early morning commute of cranes from their bedrooms back to their breakfast fields.
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| Some cranes stay right in Crex Meadows and feed there throughout the day. This family to two adults and one juvenile crane were spotted earlier that afternoon. The second adult is feeding with their head down and is quite invisible in this photo. You can tell the adults by their red head, and the juvenile by the lack of it. |
“The total count with Crex and Fish Lake was 7,754 cranes,” reported DNR wildlife biologist Joe Dittrich when I called him up the day after the survey. In contrast, the average over the last three years was 13-14,000. That’s a sharp decline. Dittrich wasn’t too worried about the numbers, though. The morning of the count had been extremely foggy, especially at the Fish Lake unit, with visibility of only 100 yards. He suspects that they missed about half of the birds there. It’s also possible that some birds have already continued on south to their winter habitat in southern Georgia and Central Florida. No banding or telemetry efforts have established more specific migration routes or schedules for the birds who pass through here.
Even if some of the birds have left, Dittrich assured me that a good number of them will likely stick around until the wetlands begin to freeze up during the day. With the warm fall we’ve been having, that might mean we have several more weeks to witness this phenomenon. The Crex Visitor Center is happy to provide current information if you call 715-463-CREX.
“I really like their calls,” Dittrich told me when I asked what he liked best about the cranes. That’s no surprise. Many of us have heard one or two cranes give their thrilling, rattling, bugles during spring migration or nesting season. The cacophony of hundreds or thousands of these ancient voices echoing across the sunset is unforgettable.
Aldo Leopold wrote eloquently of the cranes in the “Marshland Elegy” chapter of A Sand County Almanac. “Our appreciation for the crane grows with the slow unraveling of earthly history…When we hear his call we hear no mere bird. We hear the trumpet in the orchestra of evolution. He is the symbol of our untamable past, of that incredible sweep of millennia…”
That isn’t mere hyperbole. Cranes are some of the oldest living birds. In Nebraska, a 15-million-year-old crane skeleton records their ancient stake on the territory. Over that time scale, the habitat has changed more than the bird. Several glaciers advanced and retreated. The last one here in Wisconsin sent a flood of sandy outwash southwest from the Bayfield Peninsula, creating the Northwest Sands Ecological Landscape. Then a rogue, northeast-flowing section of ice dammed up some of the meltwater, which created Glacial Lake Grantsburg. The lake’s calm water accumulated clay sediment. Together, the patchwork of sands and clays, along with science-based wildlife management, has turned this area into a destination for nature lovers of all kinds.
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| FIGURE 6. Advance of the Grantsburg Sublobe, an offshoot of the Des Moines Lobe, overriding the St. Croix Moraine blocking southward drainage of the Mississippi River, and forming glacial Lake Grantsburg. Source |
And yes, I was thinking about the glaciers as we stood at the edge of the wetland watching the flocks of cranes appear on the horizon, stream in over our heads, and descend with legs dangling into the water we knew was hiding behind grasses and shrubs. That old ice is the reason the cranes are here, and this winter’s ice is the reason they will leave. In between, their rattling cries send an awestruck shiver down my spine.
I took this video on October 14, when the cranes were still landing just north of Main Dike Road. Spectacular! Turn up your volume!
Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too. Natural Connections 3 is almost here!
For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Fall Calendar is open for registration! Visit our new exhibit, “Becoming the Northwoods: Akiing (A Special Place). Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.
