As the sun begins to dip below the horizon, the sky fills with the birds–long lines of birds, great black clouds of birds, whirling and uttering strange, uncanny cries in the fading light.
They keep coming from every part of the sky, one battalion after another, looking for a place to rest in the river. Their gurgles and hoots fill the dusk. Darkness spreads, and still the sandhill cranes–their great wings outstretched, their long skinny legs dangling behind them–keep coming.
As a rite of spring, there’s nothing like these birds’ March and April migration across the U.S. Experts consider it one of the most extraordinary avian extravaganzas in the world.
Sandhill cranes, members of one of the oldest living bird species, fly as far as 7,000 miles annually to hatch their young in the far reaches of Canada and Siberia, then trek southward to spend the winter in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana and Mexico.
Central Nebraska is hardly known as a tourist destination. Yet come spring, a 60-mile stretch of the Platte River becomes a must-visit for the cranes heading north to mate and nest. More than a half-million birds arrive by mid-March.
No explaining instinct
“How do the birds know this is their species’ chosen spring vacation place?” asked Larry Keller, executive director of the Crane Meadows Nature Center in Grand Island. “It seems they just drop out of the clouds, and they’re here.”
Fossil records indicate this migration could date back almost 9 million years. Historically, the Platte was an ideal place for these skittish and graceful creatures to stop and fatten up on worms, insects, grain, snakes and frogs.
In the 1840s, when settlers from the East began passing through what is now central Nebraska–they, too, followed the Platte–the river was more than a mile wide, with shallow sandbars in the middle and deeper channels on either side.
The birds roosted in the sandbars at night, prepared to take flight if they heard predators splashing through the water. During the day, the cranes feasted in wet meadows on the river’s flanks, bulking up by 20 percent before heading north to reproduce.
As the farmers came, planting prairie lands adjacent to the river with corn, reservoirs were built on the Platte, drawing off water for irrigation and power generation. River flows diminished, reducing 200 miles of prime sandhill habitat by almost two-thirds.
Still, these birds, a symbol of longevity and wisdom in Asian cultures, not only survived but also thrived. By some estimates, their population has almost doubled to nearly 600,000 over the last 50 years.
Corn left over after mechanical harvesting accounts for as much as 95 percent of the cranes’ diets. Larger numbers of birds crowd into smaller spaces, making the migration more spectacular for enthusiasts.
“You wouldn’t have seen this number of birds in the sky in the settlers’ time,” said Gary Krapu, a research biologist at the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center in Jamestown, N.D., a unit of the U.S. Geological Survey.
Increasingly, people in central Nebraska realize that is a good thing. A recent study put the economic contribution of the cranes to local economies in Grand Island and Kearney at $25 million or more a year. Tourist shops are filled with crane T-shirts, books, cards, calendars and coffee mugs.
Building cranes too
An Audubon Nebraska sanctuary in Kearney is raising $1.5 million to build a large Platte River education center, due to be finished next year. The Crane Meadows Nature Center near Grand Island is spending $2.2 million on renovation and expansion of its center, also set to open next year.
Conservation groups are working to preserve more prime habitat in and along the Platte to help sandhill cranes and endangered birds that come here, such as piping plovers, least terns and rare, threatened whooping cranes.
There is a sense–long overdue, some would argue–that the birds are as much a part of central Nebraska’s heritage as the pioneers.
“It’s the one thing that sets us apart from every other community in the U.S., the fact that these birds come here,” said Renee Seifert, executive director of the Grand Island/Hall County Convention and Visitors Bureau. “We’re trying to instill a sense in this community that this makes us special.”
