On the second day of the Great Midwest Crane Fest, the temperature hung below freezing and a stiff wind blew. Winter was in the air. The sandhill cranes felt it too.
Anne Lacy, a self-professed “craniac,” said it was great weather for migrating.
“Kind of chilly, the birds might be inspired to leave,” said Lacy, senior manager of the International Crane Foundation’s North America program. “Sunny skies, so it heats the ground and creates thermals. And a very brisk north wind today, so that helps push them on their way south.”
Last weekend, wildlife enthusiasts flocked to Baraboo, Wisconsin, for the Midwest’s first crane festival. Hosted by the International Crane and Aldo Leopold Foundations, the celebration came as the eastern population of sandhill cranes are partaking in an ancient autumn ritual: carb-loading before they jet south to places like Kentucky, Alabama, and Florida for winter.
A century ago, sandhill cranes were on the brink of extinction. Today, there’s about 90,000 of them in the upper Midwest, half of which call Wisconsin home.
The festival was conceived to celebrate and “emphasize one of the great wildlife success stories that we have” in the Midwest, said Richard Beilfuss, CEO and president of the International Crane Foundation. Participants joined workshops on wildlife photography and attended lectures on crane biology and conservation history.
During the day, the cranes feed on leftover corn from neighboring farms. They glide across golden fields, dining in big parties. In the evening, they stage in the thousands on the wide Wisconsin River.
“Staging is when they come together pre-migration,” Lacy said. “They stay for a week or more, gleaning food from cornfields. So it’s perfect, that matches up with the grain harvest.”
These ancient migrations predate colonization.
This same stretch of river that the gangly, gray-blue birds love is home to many Ho-Chunk effigy mounds, said Bill Quackenbush, the tribe’s historic preservation officer. Quackenbush spoke about their history and culture in one of the sessions.
“They’re actually described as grave markers,” he said. “These earthworks you see in and throughout our ancestral footprint.”
But by the early 1900s, over-hunting and habitat loss brought the eastern population to the brink of extinction. In the 1930s, they’d disappeared from most of the upper Midwest states, and just 25 breeding pairs remained in Wisconsin.
In 1937, Wisconsin conservationist Aldo Leopold wrote his Marshland Elegy essay, mourning the loss. "Their annual return is the ticking of the geological clock," he wrote. Until humans intervened.
“It’s some of his most beautiful prose,” said Stan Temple, an ornithologist and senior fellow at the Aldo Leopold Foundation, in a lecture on the crane’s comeback. “The essay kind of ends on a downer note. Enjoy it while you can because it doesn’t look like they’re going to make it.”
What Leopold couldn’t see was their slow progress — a product of the cranes’ slow and limited reproductive behavior. They only have one or two young, known as colts, a year, and their flightless young are very vulnerable to predators.
But a couple decades before Leopold’s elegy, in 1918, Congress had passed the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which prohibited hunting and selling of the species.
Eventually, the cranes made a dramatic recovery. Wetland protection and farmers’ commitment to the birds’ recovery also played an important role, Temple said.
Today, the sandhills are doing so well that we need to re-learn to live with them. With the population booming, all the best breeding grounds have been claimed, and stragglers are nesting in golf courses and foraging in parking lots. They’ve learned what newly planted corn looks like, and in the spring, they’re causing crop damage.
“The landscape in Wisconsin — with our beautiful wetlands and our great agriculture — is because of these fertile, post-glacial soils,” Lacy said. “These birds adapted to those changes that we put on the landscape. Now we are seeing what the repercussions of that are.”
Earlier this year, the Wisconsin legislature considered and ultimately turned down a bill that would have created a hunting season for the sandhill crane — one potential solution to the crop damage problem, hunting advocates have suggested. The birds are hunted in some other states, including Minnesota, Kansas, and Alabama.
Lacy said hunting wouldn’t be an effective way to address crop damage. “That would not reduce the population enough to affect crop damage,” she said. “It would be in the fall regardless, and crop damage happens in the spring.” Revenue from a sandhill hunting season wouldn’t cover the damages either.
Instead, Lacy said the solution needs to work within agriculture itself. She was involved with the development of Avipel, a non-toxic chemical whose bitter taste deters the cranes. The International Crane Foundation is working to help farmers adopt it more widely. Currently, farmers shoulder the cost of the treatment.
“We’re really concentrating on making sure this product is available to them,” Lacy said. “That it’s effective, it’s affordable, and it’s something that they can use that doesn’t put a strain on their already-busy schedule. That’s a lot, but we’re trying.”
Come evening, Temple led a wagon full of craniacs down to the riverside. It was overcast and chilly, but spirits were high.
The viewers crowded into a blind: something like a shipping container, with a wide window, where they could ogle the cranes without scaring them.
The group peered through binoculars and cameras. More and more birds flew by to join the party, technically called a “siege.”
The cranes chose a patch on the other side of the river. They like roosting on the river’s long sand bars, where predators can’t reach them. Their rattling cries shook across the river.
“They would probably try to select a spot that has a little bit of shelter, where they’re a little out of the wind,” Temple explained.
As climate change makes our winters warmer, the sandhills are leaving later and returning earlier. Some may not find the need to fly as far south, overwintering in Indiana wetlands. That offers the territorial birds the advantage of getting home to claim breeding grounds that much sooner, Temple said. Elsewhere in their flyways, the cranes face drought and sea level rise.
Jennifer Zoller, one of the participants of the evening tour, came with her husband from River Falls. The festival was a belated birthday present. She thought the cranes looked like they were mingling at happy hour.
“I am seeing literally hundreds of cranes, all walking along the shore,” she said, as she looked across the river, following the cranes through binoculars. “Some of them look like they’re eating or drinking. Mostly they’re just hanging out.”
Groups came in twos and threes to join the siege. One bird flew solo.
“I’m betting that it’s a young crane that stayed out in the foraging area, and its parents left,” Temple said.
It was like he got lost at the mall. He would use sight, smells, and sounds to find his parents, Temple said. Someone was skeptical. How could the young crane find them in that crowd?
“Cranes probably think all people look alike,” Temple replied.
Soon, heavy with corn and grub, the cranes will leave for warmer skies. They’ll wait for sure signs of winter: the river freezes over or snow blankets the fields. They’ll be back in the spring.
