Hustle Your Bustle

Greetings from Nebraska where we are here to view the sandhill crane migration.  Cranes gather here on the Platte River to rest, eat, gain weight, mingle, dance, talk and play in big numbers.  BIG NUMBERS!  500,000 cranes all together sleeping in the river at night and foraging for waste grain in the cornfields during the day.  We got up early.  We had to be at the Rowe Sanctuary at 5:45.  The volunteers there walked us out, in the dark, a half mile to the crane blind.  Walking in the dark was hard and I was glad to follow someone in a neon yellow coat.  The blind had 25 windows, one for each of us.  I chose a high window.  We waited, in the dark, for about an hour for dawn to break listening to the bird squawking, cackling, and purring.  Cranes actually purr when they're feeling content.  It was loud.  The big dipper was bright in the sky.  As the big dipper dimmed, the cranes came into view.  OMG, the river was full of cranes standing in groups.  I couldn't figure out why they were grouped in lines.  Some areas were open and others were crowded.  As the day got brighter I could see the reason they stood like they did.  The cranes were avoiding the faster, deeper channels of the river flow.  They preferred to stand on sandbars out of the current.  Soon a couple cranes took off to have breakfast.  Then ten left. Then a hundred left.  Then a thousand left.  I couldn't notice any reduction in the crowd even though the sky was full of flying cranes.  Some cranes danced. They lowered their heads and lifted their tails and jumped up and down.  This behavior is a courtship ritual but the materials said cranes also do this to relieve tension.   Sounded subjective to me.  How can they measure tension in the crane world?  I really enjoyed spending the morning with 25 other crane viewers.  We glimpsed an otter scramble by and slip into the river.  We left about 8:30 a.m. and there were still a couple thousand cranes standing in the river.  These cranes were something to see.  Unfortunately my camera, that I had packed and stored with extra batteries, was left on the couch with some other things I wanted to bring.  I doubt pictures would do it justice.  This gathering of cranes is something you just have to see in person.