Note: Though I’m not a Dawn Chorus writer, I had the Dawn Chorus Kossacks — all of you — in my mind and heart as I stood watching, enthralled. I knew you’d all love to have been with me.
… or a Dance of Cranes. It is also called a Construction, Sedge or Siege of Cranes. I wanted to call it a dawn chorus — which it is — but obviously I couldn’t do that. I vacillated between Congress and Dance, both of which are accurate. [A grouping of owls is called a Parliament of Owls — clearly smarter than cranes but that’s a political thought….]
My friends and I arrived early Friday afternoon. After signing in and signing up for Saturday events, we headed south to the Refuge. It’s not hard to find the “best” sighting of the afternoon (or morning). You just wait until the roadside and pull-outs are lined with vehicles. You join them, grab your camera and binoculars, and head over to stand next to the biggest zoom lens! Later, we drove to my favorite spot, more than a pull-out but less than a rest area. The cranes are often closest to you there (see photo, above). And when you’re closer, their dances are more spectacular.
Each year, hundreds of thousands of Sandhill cranes migrate along certain corridors, once early in the year, once in late autumn. Each year, tens of thousands of them stop in the San Luis Valley of southern Colorado, in the area of the Monte Vista and Alamosa National Wildlife Refuges, to rest and feed before traveling on.
In honor of this, Monte Vista and Rio Grande County and the Monte Vista NWR, Audubon, and other groups put on a festival over a long weekend in March. This year was the 35th annual festival. I have been privileged to go a number of times over the years and my heart always soars! I went this year, March 9-11.
During the MV Crane Festival, you can participate in a number of events — tours and lectures, as well as viewing with a group or on your own (well, with hundreds of your closest new birder friends) — and spend a few hours browsing through the festival headquarters, where you can buy all kinds of interesting bird- and nature-related books and other items, from photos to jewelry to pottery to knitted ponchos and more. There is food to buy and rangers to speak with. You can sign up to be a Friend of the San Luis Valley (which means a friend of the three refuges, Monte Vista, Alamosa, and the newer Baca). You can register your presence at the Festival and sign on for one of the tours and glean the latest sighting of a bald eagle or great horned owl and many shorebirds, water birds, raptors, and maybe elk and coyotes, as well as the thousands of cranes we all came to watch take off and land and stalk majestically around local ranch lands as they browse for the grains left behind after harvest. (THANK YOU, local ranchers and farmers!)
We waited through the afternoon, reveling in the cranes and their buddies the Canadian geese and some dabbling ducks. In late afternoon, the cranes begin to organize for the night. They begin flying in to the Refuge in small, medium, then larger groups. The song (or noise) builds, as they speak among themselves and jockey for position and await their friends. Suddenly, the sky darkens as thousands descend almost at once. They land, shake themselves. Greetings are had. Dusk is descending. They are settling in for the night. So we leave to do the same.
Saturday morning, it’s back to the Refuge for the Dawn Lift Off. Again, it’s quiet. Then a few begin to rouse, conversations begin — “Let’s go. Wait a bit. Which way? That way. No, that way. Fred, are you ready yet? Ok. Let’s go.” — Or something like that. But I do not mean to make light of this. This “dawn chorus,” if I may call it that, begins in low tones, a few birds, then a few dozen, a hundred, more, more, more, until the choir is sounding loud and clear. They leave as they arrived: a few, a pair, a dozen, dozens, hundreds, then thousands! Then they’re gone, the field almost empty; they are off to local agricultural lands (all private but accommodating thanks to enlightened local ranchers and farmers) for the day.
The USFWS brochure on “Spring Crane Viewing” says these cranes spend more time in the San Luis Valley than at their wintering and breeding grounds. In spring, they begin to arrive mid-February and leave by early April, with peak migration usually in early March. Cranes are fairly predictable, which makes it easy to watch them throughout the day, mostly from pull-outs along county roads and from the MV Refuge itself. They feed from sunrise to mid-morning and late afternoon to sunset. Midday, they “loaf” in wet meadows and uplands. They “roost” through the night mostly in shallow open water, found in abundance at the Refuge through creation of a series of canals and wetlands. It is their return to their roosting locations that we watch at sunrise and sunset.
This Saturday, though, there was a bit of a change. From the great crescendo of sound, indicating imminent group lift-off, they suddenly went totally QUIET! The ranger nearby was surprised, uncertain what was happening. Then someone yelled, “Coyote!” And sure enough, there he was, trotting along toward the cranes. No, he did not get close enough to harm one (though we’re told in can happen). And suddenly mass lift-off — just not with the accompanying fanfare we have come to expect.
We call these cranes the Rocky Mountain population. The USFWS says it breeds in greater Yellowstone and Grays Lake NWR in Idaho and winters at the Bosque del Apache NWR in New Mexico. This year, though, we learned there is a small group of cranes that are not migrating any longer but have settled in a Colorado location! Exciting news! And something to keep watch on! But also no doubt indicator of climate change and the ancient cranes amazing adaptability!
Sunday morning, we drove to the Alamosa NWF and then a back road home, past the Baca NWF, along a country road filled with raptor nests. The Festival sponsored a photography workshop and Hawks Aloft Raptor Tours, as well as a keynote address — this year on the Sandhills and Cinnamon Teals in the SLV — and other lectures by various experts. Hawks Aloft also has a living exhibit of owls and hawks, so you can view them up close and learn more about them. This year was a great year for them as well! But that’s another subject.
What I love most, other than the Sandhills themselves, is the collaboration among the National Wildlife Refuges managed by US Fish & Wildlife, nonprofits like Audubon and Friends of the San Luis Valley, and the farmers and ranchers of the area’s privately-owned farmlands which provide essential feeding habitat. Without the private landowners, I doubt we would have this celebration of the return of the cranes to the Valley each spring.