Grumpy Cranes

To arrive at dawn at Nelson Lake on a morning in May is to step into the height of natural potential. Arriving migrants awaken the woods. Rails lurk and flit from sight in cattail margins. Red winged blackbirds, male and female, bicker and fight over their chunk of marsh.

On May 3, I parked at the old entrance and walked quietly into the preserve along the main trail. Blue-gray gnatcatchers were busying it up in the oaks. These birds twist and wheeze their way through life, posing briefly on each branch they meet. A few years back a pair built a nest almost in hand’s reach on a long bur oak limb. The nest was made from bits of lichen and spider web. A masterpiece of natural engineering.

Everything of consequence in nature is a question of engineering, one kind or the other. The muskrat dens built from mud and cattails are converted to nest platforms by the geese. The beaver dam that once plugged the southwest exit stream kept the water levels high for years. In May the whole preserve seems to be under construction. Nests show where birds place their hopes and mud holes show that some creature got out and about for a stroll in darkness last night. Crayfish? Frogs? They’re all rising to the surface in the make or break pattern of spring.

The first large creature I encounter is a lone sandhill crane. It stands waist deep in a conflicted landscape of new grass and burnt cattail stems. Out with the old. In with the new, spring always says.  The bird at first has its head down and is digging vigorously in the ground with its beak. I know that turf. It is boggy, wet and full of peat. What might he or she be digging out? There must be something good to eat down there. When the crane raises its head on that long neck, its expression seems forlorn or tired for some reason. Through the mist the bird’s rust colored plumage looks dirty. It’s probably just west and tinged with black ash from walking through the burnt cattail stems.

The anthropomorphic side of me asks: Can a crane have a bad day? Was it banished from its nest site by an ornery mate? Kicked out of bed for snoring? Do cranes even snore? Imagine that sound! But I doubt it. A snoring crane could fall prey to coyotes or other predators, and given that they’ve made it through some 60 million years of evolutionary history, I doubt that such a fateful slip in adaptation would serve them well.

I leave the bird to its morning devices after taking a few photos. It would be the first of 10 cranes I would see on site that morning. A group of five has been hanging out together in the center of the marsh. There were two more preening by the north shore of the lake, just past the viewing platform. Another two were working the prairie plots west of the woods.

I heard the different sets of cranes all calling from separate points during my walk. Their voices raise as if in a cone of sound.

Then, a disturbing sight. The paraglider that used to fly around south of the forest preserve now has found the wide open spaces of the prairie restoration. He’s got a full mile of open air between the woods and Bliss Road to the west. The sound of his roaring engine carried across the burnt spaces of the prairie. He looked like an odd bug hanging by a spiderweb below a brightly colored canopy. To and fro he went, having fun on a Sunday morning. Then he spooked a crane feeding on the prairie and it flew northeast, fast as it could go (it seemed.)

But then the crane settled down by the broken-tile wetland on the north end of the prairie. It looked around in a nonchalant manner and proceeded to walk within 75 feet of me on its way to the savannah. (photo at right)

The fact of the matter is that sandhill cranes are highly adaptable birds. In Florida they hang out on suburban yards, casual as herons on a fishing dock. I’m not saying that the paraglider did not have a disturbing effect on the bird, or that cranes are immune to human disturbance. In DuPage County certain portions of Pratt’s Wayne Woods are banned to human presence during crane breeding season. But where do we draw the line? If there were motorized hang gliders buzzing over the lake (which seems unwise, but people do a lot of unwise things) should we not be concerned for nesting cranes, bitterns or for that matter, Canada Geese which are common but protected species?

One wonders what laws cover use of motorized paragliders over county forest preserves. I wonder if such laws even exist.

Perhaps that’s why the first crane I saw looked so grumpy. He doesn’t like the new neighbors.