Crane music in the sandhill staging area
- Bruce Glick: Gone Birding
- November 18, 2018
- 1440
Last week I made two trips to a sandhill crane staging area located about 45 miles southwest of Goshen. This is a relatively new location for the cranes, or perhaps the numbers have just been increasing in recent years.
It’s an area with several good-sized marshes surrounded by corn and soybean fields. Some of the rural roads are paved while others are gravel. There is very little traffic, despite being only 1-3 miles south of U.S. Route 6 and about the same distance east of U.S. Route 35.
In September I had donated a birding trip to the online auction of the Michiana Mennonite Relief Sale. Brenda Phillips, a professor of sociology and well-known expert on disaster relief including a book about Mennonite Disaster Service, was the top bidder for the birding outing. She had suggested the Nov. 10 date and was interested in seeing sandhill cranes.
On my scouting trip I was glad to see that at least 2,000-3,000 cranes were still spending their days in the now-harvested corn fields while flying to the marshes for the night.
I was there in the late afternoon, and there were small and large groups of cranes flying throughout the area. I was glad to see a rough-legged hawk as well as several red-tailed hawks soaring over the fields. At one of the marshes, a belted kingfisher perched on a no trespassing sign.
On Saturday I met the group of six birders at the little town of Walkerton. It was very cold with the wind chill near zero, not a good day to be outside for very long.
Fortunately our plan was to drive the roads, stopping whenever we saw cranes. That worked out fine with lots of sandhills all through the area. Several times we saw hundreds of cranes very close to the road.
My favorite time of the morning happened when 700-800 cranes flew low over our heads, making lots of wonderful crane music. It was a magical moment. Hearing and seeing so many of these huge, beautiful birds seems to amaze anyone who has a chance to experience the cranes. You don’t have to be a birder to be moved by these birds.
As we were driving past a small sand and gravel operation, I saw a raptor ahead of us. We stopped, got out and watched as a powerful peregrine falcon soared past us, quickly disappearing to the south.
When it was time to leave, we decided to make a stop at Potato Creek State Park on the way home. That turned out to be a good decision as the nature center offered close-up views of a good variety of birds at their feeders.
The first birds we saw were three purple finches and nearly a dozen pine siskins. A lovely male eastern towhee joined the colorful blue jays and cardinals. Since most of our group were not birders, this gave them a chance to see a nice variety of birds, all of them very close to the viewing windows.
It turned out to be a delightful day, despite the weather. We agreed we should do it again next spring when the cranes will be back again on their way north for the summer.
Good birding!
Reach Bruce Glick at Bglick2@gmail.com or 330-317-7798.