Dancing in The Swamp and The Plains: A Nature Essay on Sandhill Cranes

Seven needles gnawed at the layers of skin on my back. The garage I was in felt as if it was being swallowed by the surrounding industrial park, slowly sinking into a marsh that held it all. I looked at the concrete walls above me printed with the phrase “You Are Still Alive” while the syncopation of punk rock and the whir of old-school tattoo rotors filled the room. As sweat beaded down my fully exposed torso, I took a minute to reflect. Why I was back in my small Wisconsin hometown paying someone to brand me with the image of a bird using pitch-black India ink and a dash of bright, crimson red? I was there, for one, because the ceiling message was true. I was still alive, despite hours of what felt like a pack of feral cats opening a piñata inside my back. The Antigone Canadensis, known as the Sandhill Crane, was still alive, too. The ancient species has seen the downfall of almost all life to have ever existed on Earth. It wasn’t until the Industrial Revolution that the 10 million-year-old bird had ever been absent from Wisconsin marches or faced significant threats to its population. Yet, the Sandhill Crane is and remains an appendage to the entire North American landscape — and now myself, serving as a reminder of the beautiful absurdity required to maintain life on Earth.

The wandering, supple bird with prehistoric vogue is named after a land feature in particular abundance along the Platte River in Nebraska — Sandhills, which cover nearly one-quarter of the state’s surface. Westerners have come to regard the grass-stabilized dunes as having little to no instrumental value other than housing grids of mechanized farms. Despite this, an estimated one million Sandhill cranes (4 of 5 in existence) use the area in March every year as a pit-sop while en route to the North for mating season. It’s when the stale landscape momentarily shimmers from the red-capped convoys dense enough to eclipse the sun.

For the last 10 million years, while the Platte River etched itself into the river valley and long before humans crossed the Bering land bridge, Sandhill Cranes have been returning here to feed on whatever the land can spare ahead of warmer seasons. The rise in monocropping has limited food assortments, but bounties can still be plentiful. Scientists estimate the cranes pluck upwards of 1,600 tons of corn from Nebraskan fields each spring.

Mammals adapt. Life adapts. Changes in opportunities for nourishment disrupt the way a species interacts with its environment. Just as the first nomadic humans searched for suitable lands while evolution took place around and within them, birds continue to shift their routines, especially migration patterns, to satisfy their own ecological needs — but not necessarily the Sandhill Crane. It’s a wonder; after being forced to live off of barren lands in decimation, the bird continues to make its annual pilgrimage, gathering in the same way to the same places.

Western science predictably turns to migration patterns and breeding locations when attempting to describe the behavior and family tree of the Sandhill Crane. Depending on what institution you ask, there are six subspecies. The greater, lesser and Canadian Sandhills are the most common and are found passing through the Nebraskan Platte River valley. Lesser Sandhill Cranes are slightly smaller in size to compensate for breeding in sparsely vegetated Arctic climates. The greater and Canadian breed other areas of North America, weighing in at up to 15 pounds with an 8-foot wingspan and height of 4 feet, on average. The three remaining are the rarer, non-migratory subspecies differentiated solely by their habitats — the Floridian, Cuban, and Mississippi swamplands. Each species has a similar appearance despite variances in size and migration destinations.

Adults are an ombre of grey until the fall when they preen by nibbling at the base of their feathers using a bill packed like chewing tobacco with iron-rich mud, Accompanied by a diet of grub found in highly pigmented soils, a burnished undertone emerges to function as a camouflaged shield, protecting the bird in its quest to find a mate. Most famous, however, is their magnificently opulent red cap. Sharply contrasted with their white bill, burying their electric-orange eyes, the bright red patch atop their head is what distinguishes the species from other winged creatures found in Western swamps.

The first time humans put themselves at real odds with the Sandhill Crane was when Europeans infiltrated North America. Colonizer settlements sprawled across the great plains and transformed wetlands into farmland, fragmenting venerable habitats and commodifying the bodies roaming them. It was truly a two-birds-one-stone when it came to the Sandhill Crane. Hunting them provided a cheap protein to feed an exploding human population and eliminating their presence mitigated damage to croplands, which had forever been their feeding grounds. Uncontrolled hunting erased them from almost all Midwestern states, including Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, South Dakota, and Ohio. Nesting pairs steadily declined across the continent. The Migratory Bird Act of 1918 was the first time crane populations were federally protected, but anthropogenic effects were already catalyzed by rampant land development during the Industrial Revolution.

Population counts in the United States continued to fall through the early 20th century, arriving at fewer than 1,000 by the 1940s. Suddenly, Sandhill Cranes became a white stag of birds. Any flash of one’s red head in a soybean field, marsh, or prairie became an extraordinarily rare experience rather than an excuse to take a rifle to the field (with the exception of the quintessential midwestern poacher). However, in a quick turn of events following the federal protections, populations returned to “healthy” numbers as the year 2000 approached.

The resident Cuban and Mississippi subspecies are still critically endangered as their habitats are confined to declining wetlands. The United States Geological Survey found in the last 200 years, 60 acres of wetlands have been lost every hour. Over 105 million acres have been decimated out of the nearly 492 million in existence before the Industrial Revolution. Wetlands put the water cycle on display. They carry rich biodiversity and are among the most productive ecosystems in sustaining life. Cranes seek out these places because there is a smorgasbord of food options for a proudly un-picky eater. Sandhill Cranes prefer to eat berries, seeds, and other aquatic, primary-producing vegetation, but they sometimes consume invertebrates slithering around riverbeds when necessary, including insects, frogs, lizards, and even small rodents if necessary. Non-endangered migratory subspecies can survive in a variety of biomes, but they favor grasslands where they can sift through alfalfa and sedge grass for most of the year. They are no stranger to wetlands, either. It’s the place to feast on invertebrates and where to find starchy sides of vegetation. USGS determined in the last 10 years, 50 million acres of North American grasslands have been lost to farming — an overall 62 percent loss of the biome.

What people share with probably all animals, especially cranes, is an innate sense of place and whatever connection that given location can foster. Despite the anthropogenic destruction that launched the bird onto the line of extinction, Sandhill Cranes persisted, nevertheless, refusing to deviate from their sense of place. Of all the areas the migratory cranes touch in their lifetime, the grasslands of the Platte River Valley are arguably the most integral. An hourglass will appear when looking at their North American migration patterns, and the valley sits directly at the waist. Few examples in human history can represent such a niche movement with the same magnitude of population density. It is here where hundreds of thousands of red-capped birds momentarily exist together, all at once; their culture put on display. Between meal times, some are seen rattling bugle songs that echo through the valley for miles. Meanwhile, others dance, bouncing and twirling between the streams and tallgrass. Parents are either preparing to send away their offspring or getting ready to greet them. Other roosts are formed as “survival groups” where bachelors, orphans, widows, and singles forage, hunt, and travel together during harsher seasons. Most are recovering from the winter’s dismal food supply in preparation for mating season. In the past century, the Platte River has been dammed to a point where only 30 percent of it reaches the crane hotspot. First the fields, now the water. Fewer and fewer opportunities to consume. Yet, more and more people, hundreds, flock to the otherwise empty, and increasingly drier, Nebraskan plains every spring to marvel at the event — some of whom likely had relatives who hunted the bird, or at least profited from their demise.

Humans have always appropriated facets of crane culture, even if it transcends commodification. Similarities between people and Sandhill Cranes have recently been acknowledged by Western society, but always have been for people living in their habitats. Humans are omnivores. Some are even redheads. They migrate, mate for life, dance, sing, congregate, ritualize, and bounce back. But a brief look into the crane’s history reflects one major difference between us and cranes. We tend to be influenced by the actions of other flock-mates instead of our tangible surroundings. The same isn’t true for the Sandhill Crane. What brings them together is what most humans have lost: respect for the wild and the instincts to move through, interact, and exist within it. People instead try manipulating the variables of space and time to simulate a sense of control over the unknown. Feelings like complacency take over and they turn to distractions — like getting tattoos. If there’s a lesson we should be learning from Sandhill Cranes, it’s one in persistence and resilience.

When I see a Sandhill Crane picking through a soybean field or soaring through the marsh, I first imagine a past, lively landscape packed tight with vibrant communities of all creatures, warm and cold-blooded. After the image dissipates, I see the crane for what it is: a loud, graceful forager whose red cap has withstood the test of time. It brings me comfort to know that humans can never fully destroy this planet. Although humans might, life on Earth will never cease to exist. The Sandhill Crane is proof of this.

References

Krapu, Gary L., et al. “Habitat Use by Migrant Sandhill Cranes in Nebraska.” The Journal of Wildlife Management, vol. 48, no. 2, 1984, pp. 407–17. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3801172. Accessed 29 Oct. 2023.

“Sandhill Cranes.” Nebraska Game & Parks Commission, 5 May 2023, outdoornebraska.gov/learn/nebraska-wildlife/nebraska-animals/birds/sandhill-cranes/#:~:text=From%20mid%2DFebruary%20through%20early,the%20Platte%20River%20at%20night.

Smithsonian Magazine. “500,000 Cranes Are Headed for Nebraska in One of Earth’s Greatest Migrations.” Smithsonian.Com, Smithsonian Institution, 1 Mar. 2014, www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/500000-cranes-are-headed-nebraska-one-earths-greatest-migrations-180949816/.

Terbilcox, Amy. “Sandhill Crane Redux: Part 1: The Leopold Connection.” The Aldo Leopold Foundation, 24 Aug. 2018, www.aldoleopold.org/post/crane-redux-part-1/.