Promises of Spring

The first green buds break

the sandy soil beneath my feet

Overhead the wings of sandhill cranes

beat a rhythm through the clouds

their cry heard long before they are seen,

Returning from the south, two by two,

bringing with them promises of spring.

Linked to Macro Monday.

(Click here for an audio of the cry of the sandhill crane.)

Sand Hill Cranes in a Wheat Field

In this part of Michigan, fall would not be fall without sand hill cranes feeding in the newly sprouted wheat fields...

(This may not be the greatest photo in the world, but sand hill cranes are one of my favorite things about living in this part of the country. I always love seeing them as I am driving through the country side visiting my patients. It is not unusual to see flocks of 100 or more in the corn, wheat, and soy fields this time of year.)

Trio of Cranes

With October comes the flying of the sand hill cranes. The cranes roost at night in wetlands and in the morning leave family by family to gorge themselves in the newly harvested corn and soybean fields or (to the farmer's dismay) in the newly planted wheat fields. They are storing energy to make their long migration flight from Michigan to Florida where they will spend the winter.

Sand hill cranes usually only hatch out one little crane-ling each spring. The little crane stays with his parents all summer and fall and flies with them to Florida. Over the winter he finds a mate there and leaves his parents. When we see a trio of cranes in the sky most of the time we are seeing a parent with their young crane.

Linked to Skywatch Friday.

Morning Light

 Photos from my walk this morning.

Michigan in March

My part of Michigan is made up mostly of barns and corn fields and trees. I stopped for a few minutes today along the side of a country road to make some phone calls and snapped this photo. This is the landscape I drive through every day.

Though it is hard to see in the corn stubble, we do have about 8 inches of snow on the ground. It did not get above freezing today, but spring is on the the way. I can tell because the sand hill cranes are back in the cornfields from overwintering in Florida.  I saw my first lone couple on Feb. 19th. Today though I saw several dozen.  I can't help but wonder if they wish they had stayed in Florida for  a bit longer. There has got to be much more food there right now.

Speaking of cold and snow, I stopped on my way home and picked up the antidote to cold and snow:

Shadows was right there, when I took the little pot of campanulas outside to photograph. He sure has this thing about flowers.

Miss Calico came along to see what all the fuss was about. Apparently she is more of a normal cat and does not seem to be inordinately fond of flowers.

I like how the light from the setting sun turned the snow ever so slightly pink in the above photos.

I sometimes wonder if sunsets would mostly be very plain if it weren't for jet trails. We live below the flyway from Detroit to Chicago. It seems that the prettiest sunsets occur when there is lots of haze in the sky from dissipating jet trails. Take for an example tonight's sunset:

The sunset was even prettier 20 minutes later:

Sandhill Cranes in a Corn Field

This was a fuzzy photo, but after playing around with the contrast and exposure I decided to post it, as it is one of the better close ups I have gotten of sandhill cranes on the ground. We aren't seeing them so often these days. Most have headed south to Florida for the winter. They will be back in March to find nesting places.

A Glimpse of Michigan's One and Only Whooping Crane

I learned about him on my first visit to the crane sanctuary.

On my first visit to the sanctuary back in early October, I was impressed by the group of half a dozen or so very serious looking birders, speaking in hushed voices and staring at an empty sky through high powered binoculars and telescopes. I felt awkward and out of place, kind of like I had accidentally stumbled into a church in the middle of a worship service.  I tiptoed around them and went off to explore the woods by Eagle lake.

It was still too early in the season for the major flying of the sandhill cranes as they gather together to migrate south. Other than a few small flocks of cranes and some Canadian geese, there weren't many birds around. I couldn't help but wonder what it was these people were so intently looking for. I had a hard time believeing they were that interested in sandhill cranes--if you want a good  view of sandhill cranes, all you have to do around here is drive down a road by a corn field.

As I was exploring off the trails, I came across someone else who was hiking off trails and we struck up a conversation. He told me that they were on the outlook for a whooping crane that was flying with the sandhill cranes. The large white whooping crane had been seen each night for the past week coming in to roost in the marsh in the sanctuary. I had never heard of a whooping crane before, but I was informed that it was a very rare bird, and it was a very exciting and amazing thing to have one in Michigan.

Turns out the this whooping crane is one of maybe three hundred wild whooping cranes in the world and appears to be the one and only whooping crane in Michigan. Whooping cranes are an endangered species that are being reintroduced to the wild by Operation Migration, a group of dedicated people who teach the young whooping cranes how to live in the wild and how to migrate south in the winter.  They use ultralight aircraft to guide the birds on their first migratory flight.

Today on my way home from work, I spotted a patch of white in the middle of flock of sandhill cranes in a corn field and got my first glimpse of the whooping crane. These photos where taken from at least two thousand feet away, so please pardon the blurriness.

I've spent most of this evening on the internet trying to track down the number of this crane. Operation Migration gives each crane a number and permanent bands on the legs to to make it easier to track them. They also have a bio and photo of each crane they have hatched, even the ones that died very young, on their website.

It turns out he is DAR 37-07. (DAR stands for direct autumn release--he was part of a group of young birds that were released with older birds in the hopes they would learn how to migrate by following the adults--as opposed to being taught to migrate by following the ultralight aircraft.) It looks like he might make Michigan his summer home. It is the males who pick a nesting territory and bring their mates home. Males begin looking for a mate when they are three to four years old. He was born in 2007 so it is possible he may bring a mate back to Michigan with him next spring. Whooping cranes can live 25 to 30 years and mate for life. They usually lay two eggs, but so far not many of the eggs in the wild have hatched. But even if they do hatch, the survival rate for the wild chicks so far has been very low. For an example, this year seven young cranes hatched in wild this spring, but only two survived summer for the migratory flight this fall.

Another very blurry photo, but if you look closely you can see the bands on his legs--right leg is Red/Green, left leg is Red/Green/White. The colors match up with DAR 37-07's colors.

The only other crane that I can find that was know to have spent a significant amount of time in  this part of Michigan was number 516--and he actually has an interesting story which you can read here.  But sadly he hasn't been seen in either Michigan or Florida since 2008, and is presumed dead. 516 is the crane that is pictured on the crane sanctuary's home page.