Cranes on the Platte

     The Platte River on the mid-western prairie in southcentral Nebraska is the spring staging area of the greatest annual gathering of north-migrating birds in North America.  During March and into early April, over 600,000 migrant sandhill cranes congregate each evening for about six weeks on the sand bars and shallows of the Platte, a night-time habitat that probably makes them feel safe.
     Sandhill cranes winter in southern Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.  Their first major stop in their annual journey north to Canada, Russia and the Great lakes area to raise young is the Platte River with its many braids of shallow water and sand bars in the American mid-western prairie.  There they rest every night in March and early April and feed in Nebraska corn fields each day as they wait for spring to catch up to their restless urges to push north.  
     I've been watching the great, miraculous pageant of migrant sandhills on the Platte almost every early morning and late evening this spring on our computor.  The cranes leave the river every morning to feed mostly on waste corn kernels in Nebraska's many, large harvested corn fields.  The cranes' adapted to eating corn and flourish in abundance on it during their spring migration north.  
     Every evening during spring, these hundreds of thousands of sandhill cranes return, flock after flock after flock, to the Platte's sand bars and shallows to rest for the night.  At first, only a few groups of them are seen in the distance.  But, in a short time, more and more gangs of cranes appear in the distance as the first groups seen circle the Platte to finally settle on it.  Soon many long lines and V's of sandhills, first appearing as scribbles in the far-off sky in all directions, glide across the sky like wavelets sliding up a beach.  The first incoming groups of cranes are on the river while many other flocks, both near and distant, rapidly approach the lovely waterway.  Closer congregations of cranes resemble silhouetted strings of beads moving swiftly across the sky.  
     Bunching up more and more as the minutes tick by and darkness increases, incoming groups of cranes, with many of them croaking at once in an unending din, become masses as those large, stately birds circle the river again and again and lower and lower to the gently flowing water.  Now one can see the long, dangling legs of each crane.  And as each pinwheeling mass of sandhills repeatedly passes close over the river, several birds drop out of it with each pass and land on a sand bar or a shallow with many others of their kind.  Meanwhile, more and more and more masses of cranes circle the Platte as evening progresses.  And they, too, will, finally, settle on the river, creating great congregations of sandhills all yelling at once, causing an ear-splitting, but wonderful, din of crane voices.    
    Close to dark, the sky and river are full of scribbles, strings and masses of croaking sandhill cranes.  And still scribbles of them come forward from the distance.  They seem to come to the Platte with no end in sight, even when darkness prevails, judging from their croaking in the sky when they are no longer visible.  But, I suppose, they all, finally, settle on the shallows and sand bars of the Platte River for the night, amid their incessant, gutteral trills.
     The evening flights of sandhill cranes are wonderful enough in themselves, but magnificent sunsets add to the beauty and wildness of the cranes and the Platte on the mid-western prairie.  Striking sunsets silhouette the noisy cranes in flight as they approach the lovely, sky-reflecting Platte, creating a near-religious, natural experience almost beyond belief.
     The cranes stand, tightly-packed, on sand bars and in shallows of the Platte all night.  But early each morning in March and early April, the majestic cranes leave the Platte, gang after noisy gang, to feed in corn fields, creating yet another wild spectacle as they depart the river.
     I saw other kinds of wildlife on the Platte while watching the magnificent flights of the cranes on our computer screen.  Several times I saw pairs of Canada geese, a few ring-billed gulls or little groups of common merganser ducks on the Platte, but not all at once.  Sometimes, I saw the mergansers diving under water after small fish.  And once I saw three bald eagles fighting over a dead crane on a sand bar.
     One lovely evening under a wonderful sunset, I was happy to see eleven white-tailed deer wading through the shallows of the Platte from one shore to the other.  And the next beautiful evening I excitedly counted 24 American white pelicans resting together on that same river.
     Seeing masses of majestic sandhill cranes and other wildlife on the Platte River was exciting and satisfying to me.  The great sandhill migration in spring is one of innumerable, wonderful natural happenings on this planet that we can enjoy, and be inspired by.