Sandhill Cranes

When it comes to my appreciation of Christmas, I’m a real Scrooge, so every December I search for a photo destination to escape the crazy commercialism of the season.  One Christmas a few years ago I settled on Bosque del Apache along the Colorado River in central New Mexico – one of the most beautiful National Wildlife Refuges in the United States. The name means “Apache Woods” and was given to the wide floodplains by early Spanish explorers who were frequently attacked by Apache warriors who camped beneath the cottonwoods along the river.  The Spanish invaders and Apache encampments are now a distant memory and today the area is a major wintering area for great flocks of bugling sandhill cranes. 

The cranes begin to arrive from their Arctic nesting grounds in late October, and by Christmas there can be over 10,000 of them settled onto the refuge.  Corn and grain crops grown in the refuge induce the birds to overwinter and keep them from leaving the area and potentially damaging the surrounding farmers’ fields. 

During the night the cranes retreat to the shallow water of ponds where they are surrounded by vigilant neighbours and more easily alerted to the approach of nocturnal predators such as coyotes.

On cold evenings, the ponds where the cranes seek nocturnal refuge sometimes freeze.

The wintering cranes share the refuge with great numbers of wintering snow and Ross’s geese.

The birds stay in the refuge until early February when the first noisy throngs start to head back north again. Nothing quite compares with the unearthly wild music of a flock of bugling cranes as they fly overhead. Few sounds in Nature can stir the embers of the human heart like the primordial chorus of a flight of loquacious cranes. A trumpeting crane can be heard as far away as 4 kilometers (2.5 mi.), and loudness of its calls results from an especially long trachea (windpipe) which coils inside the keel of its breastbone, greatly amplifying the sound.

As well as being a loudmouth, the sandhill crane is also a painter that purposefully dabs its feathers with vegetation to alter their colour. One time in the northern Yukon I hid under some camouflaged cloth and spied on a pair of cranes while they preened.  I saw both birds repeatedly pick up wads of wet mud and rotting vegetation and dab it on the feathers on their back and sides.  Afterwards, I examined the mud, and it was full of red iron pigments.  Applying the pigmented mud stained the birds’ gray feathers a rusty colour.  Biologists speculate that painting its plumage during the breeding season camouflages a sandhill and helps it to avoid detection when it is sitting on its nest on the tundra.

Two summers ago, in the Canadian Arctic, I accidentally flushed a well-camouflaged, incubating crane off its nest when I was less than two metres away.  The adult immediately mounted an elaborate distraction display to lure me away from its exposed eggs. 

Another time in the Arctic, I again failed to see a crane incubating on the open tundra. When the bird flushed, I saw it had been warming a newly hatched chick.  Typically, egg number one hatches two to three days before egg number two.

Sandhill cranes usually “dance” as part of their spring courtship ritual, but this pair was displaying at the end of July.  Both birds were moulting and missing primary flight feathers and likely had never nested or had lost their clutch to an egg thief.  Either way, I’m guessing that this late season dancing session was simply an attempt to reinforce the pair’s life-long bond.

About the Author – Dr. Wayne Lynch