Timing is everything #phenology

Despite the continued pattern of rain and more rain, the days keep getting shorter and the nights longer. Leaf colors continue to emerge, in fact, tamaracks are beginning their golden glow. For the record, yesterday's weather forecast was incorrect. We never did see the sun, but that didn't keep us from taking the Daughter Person [DP] and Son-In-Law[SIL] to dinner to celebrate their anniversary.

On the way home, as we traveled North from Washington into Chisago county, we discovered several fields full of sandhill cranes. They must have numbered in the several hundreds, feeding in rain-drenched farm fields and wetlands. A few years ago, we had the pleasure of watching sandhill cranes' premigration flocking in fields that now lie along the route from our house to the "new home" of the DP and SIL. The flocks we watched yesterday evening were more numerous and larger than the ones in the August 2013 photo below. We didn't get any pictures yesterday; the time of day, cloudy skies, water-streaked fields and gray birds provided a pale palette with almost no contrast. Even if I were a much better photographer, conditions would have been tough. A few years ago, the Minnesota Conservation Volunteer magazine told the story of the resilience of Minnesota's sandhill cranes.

The recently completed Minnesota Breeding Bird Atlas and the DNR Minnesota Biological Survey both document the current distribution of sandhill cranes in Minnesota. When compared with the 1979 distribution map, these survey maps demonstrate an incredible wildlife success story. Count totals for the past three years show an average of 5,000 cranes in the northwest. In fall 2015, more than 11,000 cranes were counted at Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge . It seems likely that most of those cranes are residents, since most Wisconsin-origin cranes would likely stage at Crex Meadows Wildlife Area  in Wisconsin.

end of August sandhill crane flocks

Photo by J. Harrington

Since we're not yet close to peak color, we still have that to look forward to. Perhaps the sun eventually will shine for a day or so. Halloween and Samhain will roll around come the end of the month. That's often when we reach peak color around here and the local tamaracks mirror dawn's golden shine. The year of the wedding, colors developed earlier and stronger than we're seeing this year. It didn't even rain on the ceremony. That was then. This is now. If we watch carefully enough, we'll discover each time has something to be enjoyed, in or out of season. I intend to sneak back to the crane fields and see if they're there and the sun is shining. I'll have a camera with me.

early October 2014 St. Croix valley colors

Photo by J. Harrington

The Sandhills  

by Linda Hogan

The language of cranes
we once were told
is the wind. The wind
is their method,
their current, the translated story
of life they write across the sky.
Millions of years
they have blown here
on ancestral longing,
their wings of wide arrival,
necks long, legs stretched out
above strands of earth
where they arrive
with the shine of water,
stories, interminable
language of exchanges

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