There are two great migrations left in
the new world – one is the caribou in Alaska and the other is the
crane migration in south-central Nebraska. I've seen cranes in their
winter grounds in New Mexico however Nebraska said theirs was
different. Nebraska said something like ½ million cranes pass
through a 50 mile stretch of the Platte River. Now, the Platte is
not the Missouri so I don't think Lewis & Clark witnessed that
particular migration however I wanted to revisit a couple places in
Nebraska before picking up my Lewis and Clark journey and the crane
migration seemed like an interesting starting place.
So I started out, on St Patrick's day,
in a sleet storm. Eventually I drove south far enough that I left
the ice behind. Due to this and that it was late before I actually
left the cities so it was fairly late when I pulled into my first
Nebraska State Recreation Area. Although Nebraska’s SRAs stay
open all winter, water is turned off so only 'primitive' toilets are
available. Unfortunately the only pit toilet I found was locked.
Why would a park lock their pit toilets? It seemed to go with the
day, I was very tired so stayed the night. Fortunately I found a
coffee/pit stop a few moments into my morning drive.
In a couple of hours I arrived at
another SRA outside of Kearney where I had planned on staying only a
couple of nights before moving to a different site at the eastern end
of the migration channel. Fortunately a field just outside of the
area had about 1000 birds feeding when I drove in. I immediately
decided I'd stay longer and arbitrarily paid for several nights. The
wind had been picking up during my morning drive so I was willing to
believe the predicted 50mph gusts for the evening. A quick check of
my stores verified I'd forgotten to pack the tie-down ropes. Maybe I
wouldn't need any however a previous wind storm had damaged scout so
I chose to take no chances. A quick trip into town, a few minutes
time tying her down and I felt safe leaving scout set up with or
without me inside.
One of my summer purchases had been a
batch of Dollar Tree noodles that fit quite well into the folding
channels visible from the inside of scout. Putting noodles in the
channels cut drafts by half. By mid-afternoon it looked like a
blizzard outside and occasional gusts rocked scout on her wheels.
However my small heater kept her warm enough to be comfortable.
The official crane festival didn't
start for a few more days but the cranes didn't know that, and the
Rowe Audubon Sanctuary catered to the cranes, and us paying public.
The only space I'd been able to get in one of their blinds was on
this snowy, blizzardy night so I put on a hundred layers of clothes
and drove to the Sanctuary. Roughly 60 of us showed up to freeze
ourselves for a couple of hours in expectation of seeing some cranes
sort of close up.
For the next two hours I stood
mesmerized watching cranes, pulling away from a viewing hole only
long enough to ask a question of our guide and clean the snow off my
glasses. I looked but there were no birds. Our guide assured us they
would come; each evening was different however they would come. At
first they came in ones and threes; family groups our guide said.
Then they started coming in fives, tens, 25, 50 and too many to
count. They flew by heading upstream. Eventually they moved closer.
I could see dust motes of birds, specks of birds and then streams of
birds dropping below the tree line as they settled onto sandbars on
the lee side of the river. A guy had a spotting scope he let me look
through. The birds were walking back and forth in little groups.
And the yammering they make is so
incessant it hurt. Our guide said they sleep in the river so they
will hear predators sneaking up on them. I don't know when they are
quiet enough to hear anything. My camp was so close to the river the
cranes put me to sleep at night and woke me in the morning.
Sometime during each day I went out
bird hunting. And each day I found someplace where I simply stopped
and watched. They eat, walk around, fly around and yammer. Not
really so much to see,c but they scratched an itch inside me I didn't
know I had. I'm sure I saw at least 100,000 birds flying in to
settle for the night. To see birds with a 6ft wing span fill the air
over my head, to look at birds nearly as tall as I, stirs a part of
me that still believes in things that go bump in the night.
And then one day I was ok with leaving
so I did.
