By Sara Wright
Last weekend I went to visit the Sandhill Cranes in Fryeburg. Sadly, machines were tilling the field in which the cranes were trying to feed and the cranes departed. Listening to haunting cries, I glimpsed only a few aggregates under an otherwise empty blue dome.
When I lived in New Mexico, I had the privilege of living with cranes each winter. Early in November I would anxiously await the first arrivals, identifying the birds by their collective bugling sounds long before I saw them. I never outgrew the joy of beginning each day by listening to crane conversation that began before daylight with purrs, soft trills, or tweets.
Each pre-dawn I walked down to the river. Some days I could see the outlines of one of these stately birds standing watch in the riffles. Male cranes take turns guarding the others until first light.
Meandering into the bosque, a wetland along the river, I would keep watch for cranes in flight overhead. Small groups would pass over always deep in conversation. If I was late, I watched cranes lifting off from the edge of the field by the river soon followed by other small groups. I kept a sharp eye out for the crane convocations to separate for the day. Some mornings if it was cold, cranes would stay and feed in the next field. Then I was able to watch them leap into the air, and sometimes after one crane would display enthusiastic jumps, a whole group would join in! It was easy to identify the youngsters by their higher pitched calls. I rarely found them while the sun was high though I spent a lot of time searching! I didn’t mind their daylight absence because around twilight I would return to the river’s edge to witness their return. Small groups of trumpeting cranes arrived from different directions to gather together in one large group to spend the night.
All winter I structured my mornings and evenings around the lives of these birds, so I learned a lot about distinguishing the different kinds of calls as well as behaviors. Brrring, rilling, bugling, trumpeting, trilling, peeping, the list goes on.
I dreaded the end of February each year because I knew the sandhills would be leaving. One aggregate would gather with a couple of others high overhead and with piercing cries that I can still feel in my bones, circle around a few times and then head north to breed. Oh, the cobalt sky seemed so empty after all had gone, but, because this leave taking was a process, it stretched over a couple of weeks.
Cranes are Elders in every sense of the word, ancient relatives following patterns that stretch back to antiquity. The way they live, migrating out of seasonal necessity, returning to home places twice a year, celebrating through community and song in life and death, is a way of being that embodies flowing like a river… And for that, their magnificent beauty and inherent wisdom, I thank them.
The elegance of cranes has inspired humans throughout the world for millennia. For some these birds are guardians, for others an incarnation of the souls of the departed. Cranes embody dancing for joy and are also depicted as goddesses. Crane qualities of wisdom and endurance appear in many mythologies, but cross culturally they are most often associated with the prayer for peace.