Pilgrimage to the Cranes

Sandhill cranes at sunset at Jasper-Pulaski Fish and Game Area (photo by Tim Wallace)

The premier ornithological spectacle of this region is the sandhill cranes at Jasper Pulaski State Fish and Game Area near North Judson, Indiana. Specifically there is a large field that is overlooked by a capacious wooden viewing area. This field is a staging area where cranes gather late in the day as they return from the fields in which they have been foraging. As the darkness takes over, the birds ascend again to spend the night in a marsh nearby. The same process is repeated in spring, but the cranes numbers, swelled by the young of the year and a greater propensity to linger, rise to their maximum in the late fall, when up to 35,000 birds have appeared. Unlike hawk flights or lake watches, the success of which is dictated by weather conditions, the cranes at Jasper Pulaski will be on display throughout November. I have been there when a light snow covered all, and I have been there when it has been raining. Once in a while, as it was last Saturday, it was mild and windless. So in addition to a field full of cranes, there was a viewing stand full of people.

White-tailed deer making for land after being almost two miles offshore at Miller, IN (photo by Tim Wallace).

I was there leading an Evanston North Shore Bird Club field trip. In the morning we started at Miller, where we knew that winds were not favorable. We met Michael Topp and watched snow buntings and horned grebes. Then, Tim spotted a most remarkable thing that none of us had quite seen before: just barely discernable in the scopes was the head of a deer over a mile offshore. It swam rapidly from the east to west, and only as it approached the US Steel Pier to our west did it begin to come to shore. From where we first caught sight of the animal we could not quite tell whether it had antlers or not, but as it approached the beach we could see it was a doe. Eventually it reached water shallow enough to stand in, but it seemed wobbly and reluctant to actually leave the lake. Eventually, however, it bounded into the low foredunes. The energy such a swim would have consumed suggests that only a compelling reason would have forced it to engage in such behavior. Bill Eyring, one member of our group, suggested it had been chased into the water to avoid dogs or some other predator. I don’t have any better ideas.

About then Michael received a call on his cell and learned that there was ancient murrelet in St. Joseph Michigan, about an hour away. It would be a lifer for me, as I have obtained unsatisfactory views on the Pacific coast and missed one by a day at Evanston, Illinois back in 1982. (I went looking for the bird, couldn’t find it, and then went out of town for a few days. In my absence, the murrelet became very easy to locate: my friend Dave Johnson picked up my late parents and showed it to them. It was the only species my mom and dad ever saw that I have not.). I knew that of the folks present, only Tim would want to chase the bird and we could have probably arranged something but we decided to stay with the plan, and headed south towards the Kankakee River basin where the cranes were waiting.

Our principal stop before reaching the cranes was Kankakee Fish and Game Area, near where the Yellow River joins the Kankakee. Up until about 1900, the Kankakee River was a vast swamp from South Bend to Momence, IL, three miles west of the state line. People estimate that it was anywhere from 400,000 to million acres in extent. What remains of it in Indiana is a series of refuges that never stayed dry, despite early efforts to drain the whole province. Most of the refuges are largely closed in the fall due to hunting, but there is one part of Kankakee Fish and Game, near the headquarters that usually holds a high variety. So indeed, we were treated to numerous ducks (gadwall, pintail, wigeon, ring-necked,) and three species of geese, including the uncommon greater white-fronted. By then we had been joined by another group of birders, and a good many of our comrades were enjoying species they had not seen before.

We headed to the cranes and they were flocking in the thousands. The last official count, taken earlier the preceding week, found over ten thousand. The people present are a mix of those who are professional naturalists leading groups to those who otherwise have no interest in nature. If any bird can engage the human consciousness, it is cranes. The great Aldo Leopold wrote this: “Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language. The quality of cranes, lies, I think, in this higher gamut, as yet beyond the reach of words (Sand County Almanac, “Elegy for a Crane Marsh.”) It is unfortunate, though, that the state of Indiana provides no interpreters to present information or otherwise maximize this wonderful learning opportunity.

 I can stare at these magnificent creatures seemingly forever, or at least until dark (whichever comes first). And that is what we pretty much did, before heading off to dinner at North Judson. But tugging at my brain were regrets that we did not go chasing after the murrelet . . .

Sandhill cranes with landing gear extended (by Tim Wallace).

          

Tags: Jasper-Pulaski State Fish and Game Area, sandhill cranes, snow bunting, white-tailed deer