Sandhill Cranes
When I first heard the rattling call I was walking along a small lake in Ontario, east of Sault St. Marie and West of Sudbury. I’d been driving my little camper for eight hours, after getting up in the lovely Two Rivers Campground in Algonquin Provincial Park. Since I was tired and since it was late in the day I thought: you are hallucinating. There can’t be Sandhill Cranes here in the far north in early September.
When, at 3 in the morning, I again heard that distinctive call I thought: this is a dream, no cranes.
In the morning, I emerged from the cocoon that is my little camper and scanned the range of RVs in the tidy campground, the set up mobile homes for those who came through the season, the more portable campers that were there a night or two. My eye was drawn to a bird feeder tempting in Goldfinch set up near one of the mobile homes. And there stood two cranes. Not plastic statues of cranes, as you might imagine in such a campground, real winged, breathing birds. They tip toed as delicately as a long-legged bird can, inspecting the short grass and only half-wary of me and a woman walking her dog. Cranes. In Canada.
I’ve always seen Sandhill Cranes in Arizona, the desert, and so think of them as birds that love the heat and dry. They fly into Wilcox, east of Tucson, by the hundreds, thousands, landing and taking off all flailing legs and wings. But there never seem to be actual collisions. I’ve stood, mesmerized by the loud, purring sound of the birds, and by the sheer numbers, all come to spend the winter there where it’s warm, where there’s food.
When I first heard the rattling call I was walking along a small lake in Ontario, east of Sault St. Marie and West of Sudbury. I’d been driving my little camper for eight hours, after getting up in the lovely Two Rivers Campground in Algonquin Provincial Park. Since I was tired and since it was late in the day I thought: you are hallucinating. There can’t be Sandhill Cranes here in the far north in early September.
When, at 3 in the morning, I again heard that distinctive call I thought: this is a dream, no cranes.
In the morning, I emerged from the cocoon that is my little camper and scanned the range of RVs in the tidy campground, the set up mobile homes for those who came through the season, the more portable campers that were there a night or two. My eye was drawn to a bird feeder tempting in Goldfinch set up near one of the mobile homes. And there stood two cranes. Not plastic statues of cranes, as you might imagine in such a campground, real winged, breathing birds. They tip toed as delicately as a long legged bird can, inspecting the short grass and only half-wary of me and a woman walking her dog. Cranes. In Canada.
I’ve always seen Sandhill Cranes in Arizona, the desert, and so think of them as birds that love the heat and dry. They fly into Wilcox, east of Tucson, by the hundreds, thousands, landing and taking off all flailing legs and wings. But there never seem to be actual collisions. I’ve stood, mesmerized by the loud, purring sound of the birds, and by the sheer numbers, all come to spend the winter there where it’s warm, where there’s food.
To see the birds there in Canada, on their migratory path south, perhaps to Wilcox, was to witness one of the great events in the natural world. Scientists have spent a lot of time studying migration, and still it remains a half secret (some aspects of how birds navigate are understood). I like this. I prefer when we don’t know, the natural world remaining a wondrous mystery, something to appreciate rather than master. Whenever I encounter a migrating bird—spring and fall—I marvel over the intersection of our lives. How was it that these Cranes, on their precarious path south, had landed here at this campground by a northern lake and that I had as well? The odds seemed fantastic. I already felt lucky that I had managed to spend the night in a clean, quiet, beautiful campsite, now I felt double lucky that it came complete with Cranes.
This, it turns out, is my favorite sort of birding: to travel some place beautiful and to be surprised by what I find, what I see, what I hear. If you bird in this way—with no expectations, with eyes and ears open, ready to see what you can—you can never be disappointed. The disappointed birder is the one who goes out looking for Cranes and doesn’t find them. That I wasn’t even hoping for, or expecting the Cranes, made it feel not like a bird sighting but a miracle sighting.
As I pulled out of the campsite, a woman who had been photographing the sunrise, shared a smile and an appreciation for the Cranes. “Keep an eye out when you drive West,” she said, “there are fields of Cranes.” And she was right.
Black-chinned Sparrow
Sandhill CranesI like a bird that announces itself: the Vermilion Flycatcher that I saw on my last morning in Tucson or the Acorn Woodpecker with its familiar cackle and flaming red head. The more subtle birds become, but are not as immediately loveable. I learned on this trip to Arizona that the flycatchers that don’t vocalize are maddening—did the tail flick up or down? It matters. Sparrows also fall into this category of work to love. You have to pay attention to the details. The mustard eye line. The streaking on the chest—is it fine or splotchy? The rufous patch on the wing. On this trip, I was ready to give sparrows all of my attention.
Sandhill CranesI like a bird that announces itself: the Vermilion Flycatcher that I saw on my last morning in Tucson or the Acorn Woodpecker with its familiar cackle and flaming red head. The more subtle birds become, but are not as immediately loveable. I learned on this trip to Arizona that the flycatchers that don’t vocalize are maddening—did the tail flick up or down? It matters. Sparrows also fall into this category of work to love. You have to pay attention to the details. The mustard eye line. The streaking on the chest—is it fine or splotchy? The rufous patch on the wing. On this trip, I was ready to give sparrows all of my attention.
Learning my ducksJanuary 18, 2012, my friend Deb and I drove from her place in Bisbee, north to Whitewater, a series of ponds and grasses, an oasis in the desert. The Sandhill Cranes were landing at Whitewater. This is an event. A large bus was parked in the lot as people walked out to peer at the mass of elegant, tall gray birds with their red crowns. Watching Sandhill Cranes land and take off is a dizzying experience. They flail toward the earth, all legs and wings; at times they seem to stall mid-flight, plummeting to earth. At the same time, others launch toward the air, two birds on a near-collision course. But here’s the thing: you never see two birds collide.
We walked out a breakwater and saw the silhouettes of two roosting Great Horned Owls (satisfying an unending need for owls). A Greater Yellowlegs waded in the water and a Killdeer called as it flew by. There were lots of ducks to enjoy in the impoundments around the cranes. We ate lunch and perfected our duck identifications: there was a Cinnamon Teal with its elegant cinnamon colored head, there were Gadwall, with their black butts, and Pintails with long necks, a white stripe snaking up from the chest. There were rumors of a Sora, which a small army of cheerful photographers waited to document.
The sun beat down on us in the exposed grasslands. Mid-afternoon I was tired so we headed toward home. I was dreaming of a nap.
“Want to go look for the Black-chinned Sparrow?” Deb asked.
I felt my heart flutter.
“We could walk up M Canyon and look for one,” she said, her eye trained on the road.
I pointed to a red-tailed hawk on a pole, peering out at the vast desert, raw with overgrazing.
M Canyon isn’t really M Canyon, but I don’t want to tell anyone where this is. It’s a secret spot, the sort of place locals keep to themselves.
“Of course,” I said.
We drove to the end of the Canyon and set out, passing a range of make shift homes. A copper-colored dog joined us on our walk, cheerfully bounding ahead, then rejoining us as if we had always belonged to each other. There were stone walls flanking the trail and amidst the grasses mesquite trees. We saw a few Vesper Sparrows in the bushes, but not much else. We pushed on into the Canyon, where it became fantastically quiet. Not a bird in sight. We enjoyed the sense of calm, the shifting, dropping light, the cooler temperatures after a hot day in the sun. But I was starting to feel discouraged.
We headed back downhill to the point we had last seen a bird. We stood. We pished. We gazed into desert brush, at rocky small cliffs.
“There it is,” Deb said with confidence.
I put my bins to my eyes. And there perched the elegant compact gray bird, with a faint black splotch on its chin, announcing itself to the world: Black-chinned Sparrow.