Crane SoundSlides
Here is a Soundslides project of the crane trip. Hope you enjoy it!
Monday, March 10, 2008
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Platte River Buffet
Sandhill cranes stop in Nebraska to eat. To get from the Platte to their nesting grounds in the far North--as far north as Siberia for some of them--cranes must add 20% to their body weight. With the average Lesser Sandhill weighing in at five to eight pounds, according to the Rowe sanctuary, each bird must pack on between one and and two pounds in just a few weeks.
It is frustrating to all of us that so little is known about how these birds lived before the introduction of agriculture into the area. These days, cranes get 96% of their food from cornfields, where they eat virtually nothing but corn. See here. In this, they are perhaps not so different from humans. As journalists like Michael Pollan are increasingly making clear, processed food in this country is likely to be made of corn and corn syrup, and nearly all our meat is fed on corn. See here. Pollan and others argue that this is bad for us. What wonder if it is bad for the cranes.
Sure, they still do a bit of foraging in wet meadows for tubers, snails, and sedge, which were presumably their ancestral food. But at 4% of their intake, isn't that a bit like the parsley that comes with your corn-fed hamburger and corn-syruped soda? We're still looking for more information on what effects the cranes' new diet might have on them.
Emma Marris
It is frustrating to all of us that so little is known about how these birds lived before the introduction of agriculture into the area. These days, cranes get 96% of their food from cornfields, where they eat virtually nothing but corn. See here. In this, they are perhaps not so different from humans. As journalists like Michael Pollan are increasingly making clear, processed food in this country is likely to be made of corn and corn syrup, and nearly all our meat is fed on corn. See here. Pollan and others argue that this is bad for us. What wonder if it is bad for the cranes.
Sure, they still do a bit of foraging in wet meadows for tubers, snails, and sedge, which were presumably their ancestral food. But at 4% of their intake, isn't that a bit like the parsley that comes with your corn-fed hamburger and corn-syruped soda? We're still looking for more information on what effects the cranes' new diet might have on them.
Emma Marris
A Comparison
When we watched the cranes come in last night, I thought the process was very slow. They came in around 6:30 p.m., and didn't land until after 8. By then it was already dark, and I could no longer tell if they were circling, or landed. As they circled, decided whether to land, I was constantly reminded of kids on roller skates playing crack the whip. The birds would all fly out wide and the ones on the end seemed to fall off, but then they would just continue in the arch and circle back the other way. The sound, a unanimous rattling and roar, was the last impression I had from the night before we left to walk back under the clear, star-filled sky.
This morning, we were back to stare at the cranes. They were right were we had left them on river, and still calling out in the dark. According to last night's guide, Carl, they never stop calling, and never really sleep during the night. The sound was different, more sporatic, more individual language. I was able to pick out single birds, or at least pairs. Since it was still dark at 6:15 a.m., which felt like 5:15 a.m., because of daylight savings time, the sounds were the first impressions, too. It seemed as if they were calling to each other to get up and go eat. The group directly in front of our blinds didn't join the others flying until right before we left. I kept noticing smaller groups that would touch down in that one, as if to say, you're missing out-the morning has begun. The roar or the entire group of thousands and thousands was overwhelming. The only thing that compares so far is the roar of a crowd at a baseball game or concert, but this experience adds spirituality.
Brooke Tacker
This morning, we were back to stare at the cranes. They were right were we had left them on river, and still calling out in the dark. According to last night's guide, Carl, they never stop calling, and never really sleep during the night. The sound was different, more sporatic, more individual language. I was able to pick out single birds, or at least pairs. Since it was still dark at 6:15 a.m., which felt like 5:15 a.m., because of daylight savings time, the sounds were the first impressions, too. It seemed as if they were calling to each other to get up and go eat. The group directly in front of our blinds didn't join the others flying until right before we left. I kept noticing smaller groups that would touch down in that one, as if to say, you're missing out-the morning has begun. The roar or the entire group of thousands and thousands was overwhelming. The only thing that compares so far is the roar of a crowd at a baseball game or concert, but this experience adds spirituality.
Brooke Tacker
First Look
Around 12:00 p.m. Saturday - Sandhill cranes catch and ride thermals in the air making their flight look almost effortless.
Around 8:00 a.m. Sunday - Sandhill cranes fly over a field near the Platte River. The cranes look for food in corn fields and wet meadows during the day and return to the river at night.
Rebecca Legel
Saturday, March 8, 2008
A Natural Wonder?
The Sandhill cranes around Kearney seem as if they are from an earlier, unspoiled time when huge flocks of birds and sprawling herds of ungulates roamed the prairies. A time before human beings screwed everything up.
But upon closer inspection, this exuberant explosion of wild life is actually an artifact of human changes to the landscape. The cranes are densely concentrated in this spot precisely because much of the river has been made inhospitable to them. The Platte was once wide, shallow and sandy, just like the cranes like it. They like to stand in the middle on sandbars, out of the way of land predators. But thanks to extensive water use by humans, rough icy spring flows that once sliced off vegetation are no more and much of the river wooded over. The river around Rowe is kept sandy and wide by means of humans operating large vegetation clearing machines.
And no one is quite sure if there are fewer or more cranes than there were before their diet changed from tubers, bugs and lizards to the human-provided feast they now rely on: corn left behind by the combines.
The cranes did their thing for millions of years without us, but we've altered the deal. If humans disappeared tomorrow, what would become of the cranes?
Emma Marris
But upon closer inspection, this exuberant explosion of wild life is actually an artifact of human changes to the landscape. The cranes are densely concentrated in this spot precisely because much of the river has been made inhospitable to them. The Platte was once wide, shallow and sandy, just like the cranes like it. They like to stand in the middle on sandbars, out of the way of land predators. But thanks to extensive water use by humans, rough icy spring flows that once sliced off vegetation are no more and much of the river wooded over. The river around Rowe is kept sandy and wide by means of humans operating large vegetation clearing machines.
And no one is quite sure if there are fewer or more cranes than there were before their diet changed from tubers, bugs and lizards to the human-provided feast they now rely on: corn left behind by the combines.
The cranes did their thing for millions of years without us, but we've altered the deal. If humans disappeared tomorrow, what would become of the cranes?
Emma Marris
Poetry of Flight
One of the reasons cranes are here in Nebraska for several weeks is to stock up body fat for the rest of their flight north and because once they reach destination they are going to be more concerned with mating than they will be with food. Since the cranes are storing up body fat, they conserve energy by using thermals to get altitude to continue the journey. So why then do they use thermals during their four weeks of feasting when there is not need to fly that far?
I liked the answer from our guide for the morning, Kent Skaggs: “Why do they do it? Guess the question is why not?”
We were on a road next to a cornfield earlier today and the cranes were playing with the thermals. With no signal, hundreds of birds rippled into the air calling and giggling to each other in voices that are unlike any other sound. The sight is something like a lazy and loose tornado or a living canvass with gracefully sweeping brushstrokes of minute detail combined with the depth of the intricate and quickly changing flight paths.
“This is not something you can describe over the phone,” Kent said. “You really have to get people to experience it.”
Other birds
There are several other birds migrating through the same area. Snow geese are some and they covered one hill alongside the freeway in a way that made us look twice because it just looked like the rest of the leftover snow around. Also, they fly much higher and look like a quilting pattern of white stitches in the eggshell blue sky connecting pieces of the clouds.
Jessica Petzel
I liked the answer from our guide for the morning, Kent Skaggs: “Why do they do it? Guess the question is why not?”
We were on a road next to a cornfield earlier today and the cranes were playing with the thermals. With no signal, hundreds of birds rippled into the air calling and giggling to each other in voices that are unlike any other sound. The sight is something like a lazy and loose tornado or a living canvass with gracefully sweeping brushstrokes of minute detail combined with the depth of the intricate and quickly changing flight paths.
“This is not something you can describe over the phone,” Kent said. “You really have to get people to experience it.”
Other birds
There are several other birds migrating through the same area. Snow geese are some and they covered one hill alongside the freeway in a way that made us look twice because it just looked like the rest of the leftover snow around. Also, they fly much higher and look like a quilting pattern of white stitches in the eggshell blue sky connecting pieces of the clouds.
Jessica Petzel
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