I will long remember the winter of 2026 as one that was too cold, too dark and far too long. Even the snow proved to be less than beautiful after mingling with ice and sticking around for weeks on end. A few unexpected birds turned up in Philadelphia—Tundra Swan at the Discovery Center and an Indigo Bunting at Bartram’s Garden—and provided a few moments of relief to winter’s gloom. But their presence was fleeting and I easily turned back to hibernation mode.
I therefore decided that I needed to experience something new and different to snap me awake. I longed for spectacle and razzle dazzle. As luck would have it, my counterpart in the Great Plains invited a group of Audubon staff out to the Rowe Sanctuary on the South Platte River in Kearney, Nebraska, the self-proclaimed Sandhill Crane Capital of the World.
And so, this week, I found myself silently walking in darkness along a trail that led to a bird blind where I took my place among the other pilgrims. Although the sun had not yet risen, already the Sandhill Cranes were stirring, their calls resounding across the braided river. Thousands of them congregating in this small part of the world, finding food in the nearby fields that would fuel their journeys to summer homes as far north as the Arctic, and searching for mates in the shallows of the Platte. As the sun began to rise and soft light hit the water, the birds began to awake, their honks becoming a wall of cacophony that moved up and down the river. Then groups of the birds—hundreds at a time—lifted off together, dancing through the sky in waves simultaneously chaotic and synchronized.
I had wanted a spectacle and certainly I got one. But in the exuberance, the joy, the motion, I also encountered peace and calm. Which, as it turns out, I needed more.
I hope that you too will find what you need from birds this month.
--Suzanne |
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