The Primeval Grace of Sandhill Cranes

Many years ago I took a road trip to Alaska with a friend.  On our last day in the state, before crossing back into Canada, we camped east of Fairbanks in an extensive aspen grove in it’s full autumn glory.  As we took his dog for a walk through the glowing trees, a strange, primordial noise filled the air, and soon the afternoon sun was blocked by thousands and thousands of giant grey birds – Lesser Sandhill Cranes, honking and calling as they started their long journey south, which would take them to the Platte River in Nebraska before some of them would then head southwest to Arizona.  Here they would join thousands of Greater Sandhills coming in from other parts of the country.  These are the same species (Grus canadensis), but different subspecies.

The numbers of Sandhill Cranes that winter in the Sulphur Springs valley of southeastern Arizona have been increasing over the years, as various landowners restore wetlands and plant crops to feed them through the winter.  Counts have exceeded 40,000 in recent years, and every once in a while, a Whooping Crane or two joins the crowd.   The cranes bring in a lot of tourists, and have generated a few festivals in their honor.  The sight and sound of thousands of cranes overhead is truly something to behold.

Cranes are rather noisy birds, and use a variety of vocalizations to communicate with each other.  They have a soft, almost gurgling contact call, used at close distances.  During the breeding season, males and females engages in unison duetting to accompany their gangly, hopping dances.  They also have a guard call, used as a threat to keep other cranes and predators away.  And of course they have their flight and gathering calls.

A few days ago, I headed over to the Sulphur Springs Valley to watch and record the cranes.  At the Willcox Playa Wildlife Area, I was fortunate enough to arrive just as the cranes were returning from their morning foraging, and best of all, I was the only one there.  I was able to approach their loafing area fairly close, set up my microphone, and then kick back and enjoy the warm sunshine as thousands of cranes flew in.  They came in small groups, a dozen or two or three.  A group would arrive, descend in near-perfect unison, banking and circling together with wings outstretched, only at the last minute splitting apart to choose their individual resting spots.  You could hear the calls of arriving groups from quite a ways away, and the sight or sound of an incoming group would cause the landed birds to start calling, as if to say, “over here, we’re over here!”.  More birds would join the calling, so that by the time the new group landed, the cacophony  was deafening.  In the following recording, you can hear the calls between a distant approaching group, and the group already on the ground:

As I lay there in the sun, I pondered these calls.  They could almost certainly identify their mates and their offspring and parents.  How many others could they identify?  Was it just relatives versus others?  Or could they identify hundreds or thousands of extended family members?  Did birds that bred in different areas have different dialects?  What other information was contained in their calls?

After an hour or so of recording and watching, when it appeared that all the cranes that were going to spend the afternoon at this spot had settled in and the birds had grown quiet, I headed south to the Whitewater Draw Wildlife Area.  This is a lovely restored wetland, that not only attracts cranes, but lots of other waterfowl and marsh wildlife.  Unfortunately for me, it also attracted quite a few other crane watchers, who’s lively conversation limited how much recording I could do without recording their conversations.  But it was a lovely afternoon nonetheless, and I enjoyed watching the cranes, ducks, herons, killdeer, blackbirds and other marsh inhabitants.

The call of the cranes is not really a pleasant sound.  Kenn Kaufman describes it as a “guttural crowing rattle.”  But it’s a very primal, evocative sound.  Every time I hear the cranes, I’m taken back to a beautiful fall day in Alaska and the wonder of watching and hearing thousands of giant birds overhead.

A longer version of this recording appears in the album Crossroads.

References:

Kaufman, K. 2000. Birds of North America.  Houghton Mifflin Co.

Recording notes:  Recorded with a Zoom H4n and Audio Technica AT2022 and FEL SK3 preamp.  Recording subject to high pass filtering.