I stepped out the door to the bakery and paused. A faint bugling. Yes, cranes! Overhead! Looked up and saw perhaps twenty birds, flying high and heading south.
But this wasn’t Chisago County and those weren’t Sandhill Cranes. I was on the island of Gotland in the middle of the Baltic Sea and those were Eurasian Cranes.
There are 15 species of cranes worldwide, all belonging to the bird order Gruiformes. Some are small, like the Demoiselle Crane of Ukraine and southern Russia, which stands just under three feet and the largest is the Sarus Crane, breeding in Pakistan and India, Indochina and Myanmar, standing tall at almost five feet. The Eurasian Crane is bigger than the Sandhill, but smaller than a Sarus Crane. Yet, they are clearly cousins. They present the familiar profile in flight—necks fully extended, legs slightly drooping, with the steady slow wingbeat. The resonant call, emitted in flight, is similar enough to perk up the ears of birder from Minnesota.
In Gotland’s part of the world (Gotland belongs to Sweden), there is only one crane species, the Eurasian. The birds nest in Scandinavia, northern Germany and Poland, the Baltic countries and Russia. They migrate to points south in the fall: eastern Africa and also southern Europe like France and the Iberian Peninsula. The flock I saw were en route.
Later, Tom and I would hear cranes on the Lùneburg Heath, a nature reserve on the North German Plain and also calling from agricultural fields on the expansive floodplain of the Elbe River, a biosphere reserve in eastern Germany. These may actually overwinter in the area. Like Sandhill Cranes, Eurasian Cranes are omnivorous, pursuing high protein fare like frogs, snails, fish, and insects when feeding young and preferring harvested farmland in the winter, foraging initially in cereal stubble and switching to corn later.
Like our cranes, the Eurasian Crane population is on the rebound. In the United Kingdom, they were considered regionally extinct in the 1970s (Sandhills were essentially absent in Minnesota in the 1930s and 1940s.) Biologists attribute the extinction to wetland drainage and hunting. Then the birds recolonized on the Norfolk Broads, northeast of Cambridge and later, a crane recovery program successfully reintroduced birds in southwestern England.
In Germany, there is a network of crane counters keeping track of numbers. Since 1965, there has been a ten-fold increase in birds. The population tally is just under 100,000.
Because cranes nest in shallow wetlands, marshes and other seasonally wet areas, they are always going to be vulnerable to habitat loss through urbanization, dam construction and intensified agricultural land use. Crane lovers need to be vigilant about the birds having enough space in which to live.
Minnesotans are fortunate to have the International Crane Foundation’s headquarters at Baraboo, Wisconsin, off I94 between Devil’s Lake and the Wisconsin Dells. The center is a tremendous resource with nature trails, live birds, and museum displays. There is a downloadable app for people to use on self-guided tours. Furthermore, the Great Midwest Crane Fest is coming up on November 10-11, 2023 in Baraboo and the public is invited.
To check out the festival, click here: https://greatmidwestcranefest.org/
To learn more about the International Crane Foundation : https://savingcranes.org/
And hear the wild call of Eurasian Cranes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uv_TmYgtqXI
(the recording is from a wetland in Sweden; you can also hear a Eurasian Blackbird in the background.)
Thank you to the International Crane Foundation for supplying all images and the range map.
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