The Experience: A Raucous Crowd of Boisterous Birds

(I recently made a three-day visit to the Platte River, staying in a cabin on its banks just outside Kearney NE. These two essays document the background for my visit and then my impression of bearing witness to one of the greatest migration experiences in the world.)

On a recent trip to see the Sandhill Cranes in migration, my daughter and her family - including three grandchildren - joined me to spend an evening in a blind overlooking a large length of the Platte stretched wide and shallow. As the sun set, wave after wave of Sandhills arrived to populate the many sandbars beginning with those most upriver and furthest from view. As one sandbar would become crowded with birds the next one downriver would begin filling in. At first, we could just barely see the birds gathering in the distance. Groups were flying and then landing to join those already on the ground.

The sound of Cranes calling would be carried intermittently on the breeze, with an occasional flyover of small groups being heard as well. Yet, as the group of birds grew larger it moved closer and closer to us from upriver. The sound of Cranes calling also grew louder, reminiscent of the most wonderful evenings I had spent on Horicon Marsh near home when I witnessed large gatherings of Cranes in that location.

Yet, this night wasn't over.

As the sun dipped below the horizon and the skies transitioned to night, the tempo of the bird arrivals remarkably quickened. Wave after wave of birds could be seen in the air, all of them essentially headed to the river. Some flew in the familiar V formations. Others appeared to be flying in pairs or even solo, while still others flew in groups so tightly packed and disorganized that they threatened to crash into one another and fall out of the sky.

That didn't happen. Instead, each Crane purposely picked a spot in the sand or the shallows at the front of the mob already on the ground and gently - yet quickly! - inserted itself to join with the others. Thousands upon thousands of Cranes were arriving by the minute, and in the dusk you could see the increasing surge of birds on the ground appearing as a slow--moving tsunami flowing downriver. We sat awestruck at the sight and the sounds and the beauty of it all. Within minutes, the flow of the birds washed over us in a chaotic rush of shadows and noise before the laggards moved past to fill in more areas a bit further downriver. The skies became less full of cranes arriving, even as the sound of Cranes remained as a very loud and boisterous roar.

I have always loved the squawking trumpet call of the Sandhill Crane. Even the singular Crane calling can sometimes be heard at a distance of a mile or more, while the unison calling of a pair of these birds is thrilling to behold and the check calls of Cranes in flight will always draw my eyes skyward. I have often heard these birds described as pterodactyls. It is true that these birds are basically indistinguishable (in an evolutionary sense) from the Cranes that flew over these parts in pre-history. Yet I assume they are identified as prehistoric creatures mostly for the sound they make. To hear a Crane call is to hear a voice from our ancient past, and we experience at our core a sense that we are privileged to walk in the presence of such old Souls. Their voice proclaims a loud fanfare (or alarm?) that ties us to this Earth and humbles us in the reality that we exist as one small part of a continuum of creatures that have populated this earth since time immemorial.

The Cranes that gathered on this night on the Platte were a raucous bunch! I've heard and have marveled at the sounds of these cranes many times throughout my life, yet I was not prepared for the experience of hearing tens of thousands of cranes gathered in one place. It was almost disorienting at times. I was made dizzy and almost anxious in disbelief at what I was hearing. I could, with some difficulty, pick out the sound coming from individual birds but the main impression was of a roar arising from this crowd. Indeed, I laughed at one point as I tried to arrive at a comparison to what I was experiencing, thinking it was not unlike sitting at Camp Randall Stadium watching my beloved Badgers beat The Buckeyes with a game-winning field goal as the clock runs out. What a roar it was from this crowd, and what a delightful experience!

Yet, again, this night wasn't over.

Sitting now in near darkness, I became aware of a disturbance among the birds a short distance - perhaps a half mile - from where we sat. The roar of the crowd changed, becoming implausibly even more loud and much more urgent. In the last light of the day I could see a black wall of shadows rise up along the southern shoreline to my left. Apparently, something spooked the Cranes at that location (a Coyote, perhaps?) and thousands were now going airborne and heading north.

As this mass of Cranes reached the northern shoreline, they turned south to fly downriver. I quickly became aware of how directional is the call of the Cranes as the volume ratcheted higher as the heads turned in my general direction.

I remember becoming concerned for my own hearing as the decibel level continued increasing, thinking "It can't possibly get any louder than this!"

I was wrong.

As the lead grouping of the frightened Cranes flew downriver, they suddenly turned back south, putting them - and all who followed - on a course that would take them directly over our blind at low altitude. The volume increased dramatically as I now was looking head-on at these massive shadow-shapes in the dark sky. Within moments they were all passing overhead in a steady wave, accompanied by a whooshing of air and the flap of wingbeats. The sound was absolutely deafening, and my ears would be ringing well into the next day. Yet, it isn't the sound that sticks utmost in my memory. It is instead the totality of the experience. The earth shook on this night under the weight of Pterodactyls and Whoopers and Sandhill Cranes, all sounding an urgent alarm.

Tears welled up in me in awe and appreciation, to be sure, but also with a tinge of dread and despair. Having heard the urgency of an epic trumpet call warning, I found myself fearful of a silence that perches menacingly just beyond the Climate Changed horizon.