It’s time to crane our ears skyward and eyes toward open water

I saw a report yesterday on Twitter that, just a little south of our area, the first sandhill cranes of the season were heard. So far we’ve neither seen nor heard any cranes around the Carlos Avery marshes, but this week we’ve either been inside, avoiding getting snowed on, or outside running the tractor and snowblower clearing snow off the driveway. Neither of those activities is conducive to seeing or hearing cranes, but we’ll keep our eyes and  ears open when (if?) the snow finally stops. (Walking the dogs has been reduced to very brief excursions so it’s unlikely we’d be on a walk as a flock flew over.)

mid-March sandhill cranes, early spring

Photo by J. Harrington

Several years ago we were fortunate to get some pictures of sandhill cranes at Carlos Avery in mid-March, but  that was a year when the snow had melted by then. I doubt this current snow cover will be gone in a week, maybe not even in two weeks, but soon, some day after tomorrow, we’ll awaken to bare ground and  birds singing and open water. Meanwhile, we can start shopping for the t-shirts proclaiming “I survived the winter of 2022-2023!” 

It is now less than two weeks until the spring equinox! Before we get to that equinox, there’s the Great Waters Fly Fishing Expo, Friday through Sunday, March 17-19 at Hamline University in St. Paul. Head on down and check out what’s new in fly fishing and conservation in the Midwest. Although we don’t support FB, we do support Minnesota Trout Unlimited and the chapters that are hosting the event so here’s a link to the page on FB.

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

descended from the sky

and then they stand,

earth made only of crane

from bank to bank of the river

as far as you can see

the ancient story made new.

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