Life’s best lessons are learned from the birds

No, not the huge, mechanical cranes – the much smaller and much more graceful birds!!

We recently headed west to Nebraska to observe the migration of the sandhill cranes. Friends in the Omaha area had attended this event and suggested we visit them and the cranes. Dates were chosen, reservations made, and travel logistics were completed. But why go see a bunch of birds, you ask? Let me give you a bit of history about this massive migration.

In the 1930s and 1940s, sandhill crane populations were at an all-time low—with only an estimated under 1,000 birds nationwide—due to overhunting and habitat loss.

Information garnered from the International Crane Foundation tells us that sandhill cranes have migrated through Nebraska for thousands of years, with fossil records of similar, ancient species in the area dating back 10 million years. Each spring, from late February to early April, roughly 80% of the world’s population (approx. 600,000–800,000 birds) gather in the Platte River Valley to rest and feed before continuing to northern breeding grounds, making this the world’s largest migration event. Some of these birds continue to eastern Siberia, a journey of some 5,000 miles!

Prior to widespread corn farming in Nebraska, sandhill cranes relied on a diverse diet of starchy wetland tubers, waste seeds, berries, snails, insects (particularly larvae), reptiles, amphibians, and small mammals. They primarily foraged in the wet meadows and shallow wetlands of the Platte River valley. Sandhill cranes now primarily fuel their migration by eating waste corn left in agricultural fields, which can make up over 90% of their diet during their 2-4 week stopover. They are opportunistic omnivores, feeding these days in wet meadows and farm fields on waste corn, soybeans, wheat, roots, tubers, snails, insects, and occasionally small reptiles or rodents.

We visited the Crane Trust site near Wood River, Nebraska. It is an independent nonprofit conservation organization located on the beautiful Platte River in South Central Nebraska. We spent the night as “tourists,” which included sunset and sunrise crane viewing, staying in cabins with rooms with private baths, and delicious catered meals. We viewed the migration in heated riverfront blinds which allowed us to see, relatively closely, some 5,000 birds as they settled for the night and then left the next morning to find the food necessary to complete their northern migration. We visited late in the migration season; earlier visitors saw 10,000-15,000 birds at one time. Believe me – (only) 5,000 birds in one place, at one time, was an amazing sight, long to be remembered! I will always remember the grace with which they settle onto the fields and into the water of the river.

These birds have visited the Nebraska area for thousands of years. They have learned to adapt to the changing landscape, necessitated when the vast prairies become monster cornfields. They were hunted nearly to extinction, and the changing climate and human needs displaced the birds. But they have survived and their numbers continue to grow. They work together, sharing food and homes and protection with each other. Their needs are simple and instinctive: eat, migrate north, reproduce, then journey south to repeat the cycle. Simple. Peaceful. Graceful. We should pay attention to nature and be thoughtful in our place in the world and how much we interact.

Help others whenever we can. Indeed, we must, in order to survive, as do the sandhill cranes. And that’s all that matters.