Counting Cranes

To riff on a familiar phrase, “If you restore it, they will come.” As a regular volunteer bird monitor at Midewin for many years, I was thrilled to glimpse my first cranes there — in the air and on the ground — about a decade ago. By 2020, the year I left to head up the Roger Tory Peterson Institute in Jamestown, NY, the sounds and sightings of cranes at Midewn were more frequent, but no nests had been confirmed.

Five years ago, volunteers at Midewin began participating in the Midwest Annual Crane Count, headed up by the International Crane Foundation. This year, my first year back in Illinois, back to volunteering at Midewin, I signed up to count cranes.

I’m a natural early riser, but I had to set the alarm to make sure I was up at 3:30 am and on the road by 4 for the hour drive to Midewin, where I met the other volunteers at the Explosives Road Trailhead. From there, we broke into our several teams. I joined longtime volunteers Cindy and Glenn. The protocol, per ICF, is to remain in one location for two hours, beginning at 5:30 am. We drove to our spot, near to a confirmed nest location. Due to the cold and blustery conditions, we hung out in Glenn’s truck with the windows partially down to listen.

The first hour, the dawn emerging slowly due to thick cloud cover, was quiet — we heard few birds, at all. And then, in the grey light, a glimpse of large grey wings. We scrambled out of the truck and spied two more flying. A little later, we spied three cranes in the tall wetland grasses, but couldn’t be sure they were the same or different than those we saw on the wing, so our count total remained at three.

Walking a little way down the trail, bundled up against the biting cold, we heard Sora Rails and American Bitterns calling, but not a peep or chortle from the cranes. Then, scanning with our binocs, we saw them. Three Sandhills. Four. Five. No, six. Six Sandhill Cranes.

I’ve been volunteering at Midewin since it was established in 1996. At that time, an estimated 3% of its 20,000 acres remained in native vegetation. Today, thanks to the concerted efforts of the US Forest Service and a devoted core of nonprofit organizations — including the National Forest Foundation, The Wetlands Initiative and Openlands — about 20% of Midewin has been restored to its prairie origins.

If you restore it, they will come.

The return of Sandhill Cranes (and the occasional Whooping Crane) marks a fateful milestone in Midewin’s recovery, its healing. “Their annual return,” writes Aldo Leopold in A Sand County Almanac, “is the ticking of the geological clock. Upon the place of their return they confer a peculiar distinction. Amid the endless mediocrity of the commonplace, a crane marsh holds a paleontological patent of nobility.“

For me, the bonus joy of participating in my first Midwest Crane Count was to do so on its 50th anniversary. Kudos to the International Crane Foundation. Since its founding in 1971, it has emerged as the global leader in crane conservation. I have visited ICF in Baraboo, WI many times. Each time, I come away even more awed and inspired. Each time I hear the rattling trumpet call of a crane, my heart can’t help but swell with gratitude for ICF. As Leopold reminds us, “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 millenia which underlies and conditions the daily affairs of birds and men.”